Evidence of meeting #35 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology
Yes, I have the Catalyst research one.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Just send it to the clerk and we will make sure t it's translated and sent out to the members.
5 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology
Wonderful.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you very much for coming. I know you have to run to catch your flight.
5 p.m.
Past President, Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology
My apologies. Thank you.
5 p.m.
Liberal
5 p.m.
National Executive Vice-President, Executive Office, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Sure.
I promised I would provide the source for the statistical information related to women part-time workers. It comes from Statistics Canada, “Women in Canada: work chapter updates”, from 2006. I have a copy of it, but we can provide you with one as necessary.
Earlier on, one of the committee members asked if there were two things we wished for. I didn't get to answer that question, so I'm going to take the liberty to do that.
They would include a national child care program and the elimination of discrimination of all kinds. That would include proactive pay equity legislation. We are truly committed to ensuring that women in Canada have the ability to access full economic equality in this country. That includes access to working in non-traditional jobs. They deserve the support to fully participate from us as members of civil society.
Thank you.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you, Ms. Ducharme. And thank you, Ms. Pilon. You may stay for my little comment on Cathy's question. I think it was answered.
We cannot only look at the statistics of women moving into certain professions that were non-traditional, like medicine and law, and suggest that we've solved the problem. I can tell you things that we did to help a lot of female physicians to practise, because when I was within the B.C. Medical Association and president, and the Canadian Medical Association, we worked closely on this. One of the biggest problems that women practitioners came out from their graduation with was how did they work. Many of them were immediately trying to have a family because they were late starting and they didn't know how to do that. They didn't know how to work in medicine, because medicine is a very demanding job, as is law. You have to be there when your client needs you; you don't pick the times that people get sick or deliver their babies. So it was a demanding profession, and women were not doing the profession fully; they would work part-time.
We made some changes within our profession because we had enough mouthy women like me, and we did make changes. Those changes were won to allow for flexibility in residency programs, because a lot of women couldn't go into surgical programs because it demanded so many hours and they were having babies. So instead of doing a four-year residency in surgery, they could do it over six years by doing it part-time. So those little things that are the practical things that do make a difference had encouraged a lot more women to get into the cutting specialties--as we call them--because they tended to go into the cognitive ones because they allowed them more leeway.
So that was the start. I think what happens with women in the workplace is quite often because the demands of the workplace have remained in the old traditional demands women can't fit into those traditional demands of a non-traditional workplace. So what they have to do is those workplaces have to change. Women can go in and women can compete. Women are as bright or not as bright as men. We are both capable of doing those things, but then it's when you get into the workplace how the institutions change to make room for the realities of women's lives. In medicine that was a huge amount of work that we did, and as more and more women got into medicine more and more women pushed for those workplace changes to get them to practise. So now many women practise medicine by two people doing one practice. They get to spell each other off. It's a flexibility issue.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Yes, it takes time, but it takes a willingness for institutions to change as well. It's not just the women changing; it's the institutions that need to change. So I think that is what we discovered.
The other thing, the change that Madam Demers talked about, we found that it did take time. It has to be a generational change.
And I would like to say to Dave that today he is talking about his daughter and saying you will be able to choose what you do in a different way from your mother and your grandmother. I think it is because of men in their fifties now having daughters who are going to university, so coming out and finding themselves meeting that glass ceiling in the workplace, that men are asking why she can't move up that ladder when she's as bright as anything. They are beginning to understand the reality of some of that glass ceiling and they are also beginning to change it. But it does take time for that to happen.
Thank you very much. We have to move in camera now.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
