Yes, I will speak first, and then I'll pass the mike on to my colleague, Nathalie Goulet.
Madam Chair and members of the committee, I would like to thank you for your invitation to appear today.
I will introduce you to the Conseil d'intervention pour l'accès des femmes au travail, or CIAFT. Ours is a Quebec organization, made up of groups and individuals who work in the field of women's access to and integration in the labour market. It has been one of the principal defenders of women's rights at work since its creation in 1982. Our organization really believes that women's financial autonomy is primarily based on their access to paid work, on the condition that this work is paid according to its full value. We work to defend, promote and develop services, policies and programs that respond to the specific needs of women at work. We work on reconciling work and family life, pay equity and employment equity. In the last two years, this has become a very important issue for us.
We would now like to talk about women's work in predominantly male occupations. We have 50 members. Essentially, they are women's employability groups, and some work actively on the integration of women into jobs that are predominantly male. Despite 30 years of sustained work by women's groups, the situation regarding women and predominantly male occupations has not changed. Some very specialized occupations have been entered by women, but in the full range of occupations in the labour marked, very little has changed. In our member groups there are significant experiences and important expertise, but they remain scattered and unknown. Many groups are doing grassroots work to integrate women, but their experience is really scattered in geographic terms, and this expertise is not being pooled.
Women's groups must confront the enormous myth that women have achieved equality in the labour market, that when they want to achieve something, they can, no matter the sector or occupation. The success of a certain number of women is overshadowing the precariousness, the low wages and the poor working conditions of many other women. In Quebec, only 16% of women have a university diploma. Many of them go into other less well paid occupations, as we will see later.
For women who try to enter a predominantly male occupation, they remain in precarious situations in terms of integrating into the job and keeping it, when they do not face outright discrimination in hiring. There are really enormous problems of discrimination in hiring for women trying to enter male occupations. The most flagrant case we are working on at present is the construction industry. Women are being trained in a construction trade, but they comprise only 12.% of the construction labour force in Quebec. Even if they are trained, about 5% of the people enrolled in training program are women. There is a pool of women ready to enter this industry, but it is closed to them.
The labour market is still profoundly segregated by sex. There is truly structural segregation of the labour market by sex, despite an increasing level of activity by women and great advances in terms of education. Clearly, in terms of education, women are advancing very rapidly, and educated women are advancing nicely in the labour market. Other women remain concentrated in a limited number of careers.
I have also given you a table. I don't think everyone has it, but it shows segregation in the programs with the highest enrolment, in terms of vocational and technical training. We are talking about college diplomas—in English it would be junior college, technical or vocational training, and we can see the segregation. These are the nine programs with the highest enrolment and they are completely segregated by sex. We have auxiliary nurses, secretaries and bookkeepers, especially bookkeepers. They are the three biggest programs for a large majority of women. Annual earnings are about $28,000, $31,000 and $33,000.
Then we come to men, who become mechanics, electricians, carpenters, cabinetmakers, welders or electrical mechanics.
In those areas, we see that earnings are much higher. Electricians start at $47,000, but it can be much more. There are all sorts of electricians, depending on the industry, and so on.
So there is weak representation of women in the trades, in technical and scientific careers, where terms are more attractive. At the same time, there has been a decrease in funding for training and integrating women into predominantly male trades. The government is withdrawing from this concern somewhat. Not a lot of funds are being spent on this battle, while there are still multiple barriers to access for women and retaining women. We find that there is sometimes also significant resistance in the workplace.
So for all these reasons, the CIAFT has adopted a concerted action strategy in which we try, using that strategy, to create a portrait of the situation. We bring together information. We have held consultations in all regions of Quebec. The regional aspect is extremely important, because women's wages in the regions are much lower than elsewhere, since they don't have access to good jobs in terms of resources. They are really limited to health services and education, or to precarious jobs. So we held broad consultations to get a portrait of the situation. We collected information from everywhere.
We are now in the analysis phase, we are identifying the progress that has been made and possible avenues for action. There will be a mobilization in the fall. We are going to invite everyone back who took part in the process, to get their views on an action plan. We are going to hold mini-summit meetings on the issue, with all the actors.
So this is a huge project with an action plan, because otherwise, initiatives continue to be scattered and the situation doesn't change.
I will now give the floor to my colleague Nathalie Goulet, the director of CIAFT.