Status of Women Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Would that also mean not-for-profit organizations?

[Janet Veitch]

No. It would mean organizations fulfilling a public function. So it could, for example, cover utilities companies.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I see. Okay. That's interesting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Am I over?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, you are over.

Ms. Davidson, for seven minutes.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thanks very much to our presenters. It's certainly been an interesting morning, in hearing the different aspects, as we have, from the different countries.

My questions, to start with, are going to be directed to Professor Rubin, please. It was very interesting to hear about the San Francisco experience. It's amazing that one city has passed the ordinance when the nation has not and when apparently others have not.

Have other jurisdictions looked at doing the same thing that San Francisco has done? Is this something that is catching on? That's one question.

I think you said at the end that there has been very little, if anything, done at this point. Have there been any improvements? Has this made a difference at all?

You also referred to some challenges that were apparent in the public works department. So I wondered if you would like to specify some of that and maybe just talk a bit more about those challenges.

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

I would like to also say that even though the United States has not ratified CEDAW, about 20 states and more than 50 cities have passed resolutions in support of the country doing this.

In terms of what individual municipalities have done, in September 2007, Fulton County, Georgia, which is the home of Atlanta, Georgia, passed a resolution with the objective of making gender equality central to the way Fulton County government works. One of the components of the resolution includes resource and budget allocation as key elements. It's particularly notable that this was not explicitly framed within a human rights context, as it was in San Francisco. But it really is framed in terms of gender equality. I think a critical thing here is that just like in San Francisco, where the head of the board of supervisors was an advocate, the person who has been pushing this is one of the members of the Fulton County Commission, whose name is Barbara Boxer. She was the one who brought this in. So Fulton County is actually doing this.

Just yesterday I got an e-mail from a woman there, saying they are actually moving along. We did some training there in December, and there were a number of people from various departments within Fulton County who were there to learn how to do a gender analysis, how to think of gender budgeting. The people who weren't there, though, were the people from the finance office. I think they realize that for this to move along, that has to happen.

Los Angeles passed an ordinance to provide for the local implementation of CEDAW, but Los Angeles is not moving along very quickly. They're still getting their feet wet. So in terms of other places in the U.S., that's sort of it right now.

In terms of what's happened in San Francisco, I didn't mean to imply that nothing has happened. In fact, there have been a number of areas where there's been a rather large step taken, especially in the area of violence against women and also in juvenile probation. The department of juvenile probation has actually been looking at how they house their young women relative to their young men when there's a need for housing. So there have been movements, but it's just that in the budgeting area it's been very slow. One of the reasons, I believe, is that for many of these advocate organizations budgeting has not been high on their list. They know it's important, but they've been looking more at violence against women and more pressing questions, they feel, than looking at the budget issue. I think that's one of the challenges, to really get all of this coalition active again and to get them to start to realize how important budgeting is in terms of everything else that has to get done.

Some of the other challenges...to get the people from the finance department to really say, “This is what we're going to do”.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Could you comment on the specifics with the public works department that you referred to in your presentation?

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

Oh, I'm sorry. When the department of public works was first approached with this, they said that fixing sidewalks and street lighting really does not have any gender implications.

Everybody is affected by this. The department on the status of women and other people in San Francisco sat down and worked with them, and they came to realize, for example, that when they do curb cuts for wheelchairs and strollers, most of the people who push those wheelchairs and strollers are women. So there is a differential impact. They also saw, for example, with street lights, that in areas near parks and other rather dark areas, the people who are most in danger of crime are women.

They actually came to realize that there were gender implications of many of their expenditures, but they had a very difficult time in collecting the data that could actually document these implications.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

What do you see as a way forward for your group and for the San Francisco experience? How is it going to be ensured that it continues and that there are improvements made?

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

Well, one of the things--and this is very important--is the leadership in San Francisco. If you know San Francisco, its leadership is always in the forefront of doing things like human rights. They feel that promoting gender equity is very important.

The mayor has now said he is going to have more work done on trying to look at the impacts of spending. He wasn't actually ready to have them look at the impacts of city spending. But because there are all of these budgetary problems at the state level, the mayor and the finance people are saying that a good place to start would be looking at the impact by gender, race, and other characteristics of the state cuts. This would be a way for the city to use this information to say to the state, “Look at the differential impacts of your cuts on men and women, people of different races, people with disabilities and so forth.” So that's one area.

There's also a lot of movement in non-budgetary areas such as violence against women, the treatment of young women in jails, and young women on probation and so forth. But on the budget front, I mentioned to you what is happening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

We now go to Madame Deschamps.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you.

Good morning, mesdames.

I listened carefully to the testimony of each of you, who come from elsewhere on this big planet. I heard about all the efforts made by each of the organizations to make submissions to each of your governments to put in place policies to improve the status and economic security of women.

Based on your experience, could you tell me which policy is the most effective? What should the government focus on to improve women's economic security, in particular? Should we talk about tax policy or income tax cuts? Should we focus more on all matters pertaining to income support, such as employment insurance benefits and pension income? Should we guarantee a minimum? When I say a minimum, I'm thinking of our Guaranteed Income Supplement and the minimum wage, which should be indexed to the cost of living to guarantee a minimum level for the poorest people in our societies.

Can you give me an answer based on your experience?

[Janet Veitch]

There are many things we would like to see—we have a long shopping list. Looking at economic support, I would say that within the U.K. we have a system of child care tax credits where parents, particularly mothers, are able to get a tax credit to enable them to return to the labour market and pay for child care. That has been an extremely successful policy in allowing women to access the labour market.

More recently, we have also recognized caring responsibilities in the pension system. I would like to see more done on this, but it has been very helpful. People are now given pension credit towards the state pension for periods when they are outside the labour market, undertaking caring work. The tax credit system has had a redistributive effect—taking money from men's income and giving it to women, which is why we have called this policy “From the Wallet to the Purse”.

Finally, our national child care strategy, which this government brought in nearly 10 years ago, is a proper U.K.-wide strategy to ensure that there are good-quality affordable child care places for all women who need them. This gives women access to the labour market, and it's an excellent policy.

On all of these, I would want to see more done, but I think those are useful areas.

If I have time later on, I would like to refer to the work on violence against women. I think it is a key cause and consequence of women's inequality, including their poverty.

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

I agree with Janet that these are all critical issues, but I think there is something overlaying all of this; namely, when tax policy and income support programs are considered, there should always be a gender component. That's the important thing. What happens is that many times gender budgeting is over on its own. People talk about gender budgeting and then they talk about government policy. I think what's important is to bring them together.

For example, in the United States, when President Bush's tax cuts were put into effect, people did a lot of analysis on tax incidence. You heard that these were tax cuts for the rich, but nobody really looked at the gender impacts. Nobody looked at the income distribution and said who was going to benefit by gender.

Critical in all of the policies you just mentioned—and in gender budgeting initiatives, tax policy, income support policies, minimum wages—is to get gender considered as an integral part at the very beginning when analysis is going to take place. How is this going to effect women? How is this going to effect men?

You asked which of these is most important. They're all important, but I'd like to know what the impact is on women and how it is going to be different from the impact on men.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have one minute left, Ms. Deschamps.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

We've talked a lot about women's economic security, but I would like to make a brief detour to talk about women's rights.

I believe that we all agree on this subject and that we have all criticized the lack of funding within our governments and the under-representation of women in our government institutions. We have not yet achieved parity. We also have major groups that, through their work and research, can provide a lot of information, tools and recommendations to our government bodies to improve, among other things, the law, defence and economic security of women.

I would like to know your opinion on this. I think we could provide more funding to these women's groups whose studies are often highly relevant to the issue of improving the status of women and gender equality.

[Janet Veitch]

I'll just say quickly yes. I know you heard from Debbie Budlender previously, and one of the key elements of gender budgeting for Debbie, I know, is the use of active and informed NGOs.

And I would say you have the expertise already in your country of women's organizations that have done a lot of research on this. That activity can easily be harnessed, and a very small amount of money is required to allow that to happen. So I would absolutely support that as a mechanism for getting women's voices and women's expertise into the policy-making process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, madam.

We now go to Madam Mathyssen, for seven minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to address my first question to Ms. Veitch. You were talking about the impact of violence against women and didn't get to expand on that. I wonder if you could, please.

[Janet Veitch]

Yes, certainly. This is something we've identified as a key cause and consequence of women's inequality generally--but specifically their poverty--for a whole range of reasons.

For example, for a labour market that is heavily gendered, as our labour market is--and most are across the world--women are kept out of male-dominated segments of the labour market by sexual harassment and by violence generally. We think a lot can be done to address that and a lot more needs to be done.

Specifically, the Women's Budget Group in the U.K. is a member of the End Violence Against Women coalition in the U.K., which, each year, does an audit of all government departments' work on violence against women. We've just published this year's report, called Making the Grade? We have a specific question in that to each department on the resources and the budgets they put into their violence against women initiatives. And it's very noticeable, as Marilyn said, that they don't actually know how much money they're putting into these issues.

We believe that is a key indicator of the political will around violence against women and also the understanding of what needs to be done and how it relates to the remit of every single department of government.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Rubin, I want to give you a chance to answer the question in regard to support and funding for women's organizations, NGOs, doing the research and providing the information to government in order to make policy decisions.

[Prof. Marilyn Rubin]

I think it's critical. One of the themes you hear over and over again is the lack of data. Many of these organizations are working on how to build these databases where an excuse can't be given of, “We don't know”, or “We can't do anything because we don't know how we're affecting men and women differently”, and some of these groups are actively involved in data collection.

But it's really interesting. I ran out of time before, but I just want to mention something. Somebody else had asked me about where else this is taking place in the United States. An interesting place where gender budgeting is taking place is in Korea, and that's where I met Janet.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that in Korea there is actually a gender budget research centre that is part of the Korean Women's Development Institute, which is actually part of the governmental structure. Since Korea is under mandate to have a gender-informed budget in place by the year 2010, they felt this was something they wanted to set up.

So I would go even further. Not only do I think NGOs should receive funding, but I think if this effort is really going to be undertaken, there should be a concerted way to see if there could be some sort of research centre funded that focuses specifically on gender budgeting.

I know in Canada there are very active women's groups; they're all over the country. But I think it would be very useful to think of perhaps a gender budget research centre.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

My next question was in regard to South Korea. I knew you had done some work there with Ms. Veitch.

You sound very enthusiastic. How successful have these initiatives been so far?