I'd like to thank the committee for having me here today.
I'm a research analyst with Status of Women Canada and I am responsible for the gender equality indicator project, so I'll be providing you with a brief overview of the project as requested by the committee. I think you all have a deck to follow along with.
The Government of Canada has, as we have seen from our previous presenters, a wealth of statistics disaggregated by sex; however, we have discovered that there is a need to create a link between these sources of statistics and a development of a clear set of indicators. This development of a clear set of indicators really builds on the previous work, which was outlined by Sheila and Heather, on economic gender equality indicators and violence indicators put out by the FPT forum of ministers responsible for the Status of Women.
We see that gender equality indicators are being increasingly recognized as an important tool for establishing the state of equality between women and men, both nationally and internationally. We're also starting to see elements of these indicators in other countries. For example, Britain and Ireland have started preliminary work on the creation of gender equality indicator sets, and multinational organizations such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth have also started.
For decision-makers, gender equality indicators could be quite beneficial. They provide evidence for setting policy direction; for monitoring progress on equality for women and men; for taking corrective action; for communicating any progress to a wide variety of audiences, such as policy-makers and the general public; and they support federal GBA policy.
The purpose of the current gender equality indicator project is really to develop a policy tool that tracks the situation of women and men over time in certain key domains--which I'll review shortly--on an annual basis; to monitor key gaps in progress between women and men, and of course, diverse groups of women and men; as well as to provide data to conduct gender-based analysis. We often hear from other departments that they lack the ability to access gender disaggregated data, so this project will address some of those concerns.
We are currently in the preliminary stages of the gender equality indicator project. Status of Women Canada, as the lead on the project, does coordinate a working group that has representation from a number of different government departments. I've listed them here: Agriculture Canada, Citizenship and Immigration, Health, HRSDC, Indian and Northern Affairs, National Science and Engineering Research Council, Statistics Canada, and Treasury Board Secretariat.
The role of the working group is to finalize the draft domains and indicators and present them for approval to our interdepartmental committee on gender equality, who set up the working group; to provide ongoing support to the project and work collaboratively to identify gaps; to liaise with line departments to bring in relevant expertise, feedback, and support--and of course, that includes liaising with our own research and evaluation units to bring in that expertise to help us identify the types of resources and data available. As well, working group members advise on the overall design, measurement, and plan of the project.
The working group has a number of principles that have guided its work. For example, the indicators should be consistent with international reporting, and of course domestic priorities. A key for us was addressing the interrelationship of gender with diversity factors such as race, disability, age, all that kind of thing, as well as addressing data gaps--there may be a need, for example, to collect new data for particular groups. They need to be accessible to users--the policy-makers, the general public, for example. They need to be based on the frequency and availability of data, and provide, of course, data for trends over time--we're not interested in just a finite snapshot in time, but in trends--as well as be selected in key domains. This is basically a notion that less is more. We can't measure everything under the sun, so we have to focus on the areas where women are particularly lagging.
What I'm going to present to you very quickly are the domains we have identified. They are draft domains. If you have questions about them after, I can certainly answer them.
The first one is personal safety and security, which basically looks at improved physical and mental well-being of individuals, a reduced occurrence of violence, and an increased perception of safety. Elements to measure under this domain could be things like health and well-being--so health status, including mental and physical health--rates of violence between women and men--sexual abuse, physical abuse, that sort of thing--and access to justice in trafficking. Other elements to measure in terms of personal safety and security are things like housing and homelessness, not only affordability of housing but also accessibility to housing and shelters.
Another domain is economic security and prosperity. It's basically looking at gender differences in economic prosperity. Elements to measure here would be financial security, so income and earnings, the wage gap potentially, incidents of low income, among other things—as Sheila was saying, it's not exclusive. We would also look at the work in labour markets, so labour force participation; occupational segregation, the segregation of women into what are called pink collar jobs, such as teaching and nursing; unemployment, as well as underemployment; and also measuring things under learning, not only degree attainment as youth, but lifelong learning.
The third domain—and unfortunately Sheila won't like the terminology—is unpaid work. It's the equality of women and men in terms of unpaid work. Although unpaid household work is not an indicator of economic equality, it certainly will have an impact on economic variables. So that's why it was decided to have it as a domain in itself. And of course the elements to measure here are domestic work, such as housework; care work--not only in terms of the care of children, but also care of the elderly, as well as people with long-term disabilities--to illustrate how that can affect the sandwich generation, particularly women; and looking at the impact of unpaid work on labour and income. What are the negative economic consequences of care work for women and men?
The final domain is social-political engagement. What is the nature and level of women's and men's participation in civic activities and in decision-making? Some of the elements to measure here under social and civic participation are voting participation--how many women and men voted in the last municipal, provincial, and federal elections, for example--as well as looking at social networks: What kinds of groups are they involved in? What sorts of social clubs are they accessing? What is the size and composition, for example?
Finally, look at power and decision-making: what's the representation of women and men among elected officials; senior officials in the public service, such as ADMs and DMs; as well as CEOs in the private sector; and in academic institutions, not only presidents and vice-presidents, but also tenured versus non-tenured faculty?
So those are, in a nutshell, the draft domains and indicators. They're bigger than what is probably presented here.
I do want to highlight the crosscut issues and that this project has really focused on the importance of including disaggregated information by diversity factors, particularly because we know that certain groups of women are particularly vulnerable to the effect of inequality.
In terms of next steps for the project--as I've indicated, it is very preliminary, as we just started convening the working group in September—we will finalize the draft domains and indicators in 2008. There will be a verification of these domains and indicators with key stakeholders, and of course that would include this committee as well. We would build on the input to identify specific data to populate the indicators once they're finalized and identify the forum and format indicators. Will they be one publication? Will they be concept papers? Will they be web-based? I hope selected indicators will be available in 2008-09.
That's a brief overview. I'll stop there, and I'm open to any questions the committee might have.
Thank you.