Evidence of meeting #23 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen
I would like to begin. I would ask everyone to be seated.
I welcome our visitors. We have with us Saman Ahsan, executive director, and Juniper Glass, director of development, with the Girls Action Foundation. We also have Paulette Senior and Farrah Todosichuk, with YWCA Canada.
I don't think I've forgotten anyone.
Welcome. We are so very glad you're here. We'll begin with 10 minutes for each panel. Then we'll continue with questions.
Ms. Ahsan, would you please begin? You have 10 minutes.
Saman Ahsan Executive Director, Girls Action Foundation
We are very pleased to be here and to share our experience with you.
I would like to invite my colleague Juniper to speak to you first.
Juniper Glass Director of Development, Girls Action Foundation
Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this opportunity to discuss this important subject, the future for girls in Canada.
I think it's very forward-thinking of the committee to have asked this important question on how to improve the economic prospects of girls in Canada.
Girls Action Foundation was founded in 1995. We have our main office in Montreal.
We have about 270 member organizations across Canada. Our member organizations have presence in all provinces and territories, and we really like to work towards uniting organizations to collaborate for the betterment of girls in Canada.
We do programs with girls. We have a young women's leadership program, and we also reach out to women to mentor, interact with, and exchange with girls. Mentorship and role modelling are some of the important issues we will bring up in our recommendations regarding the economic prospects of girls.
Why should we focus on girls? We believe that Canada will be better off if all citizens are able to achieve their potential. As we've seen on the international scale, investing in girls means investing in the social and economic well-being of the whole country, and we believe this to be true in Canada as well. As prosperous as we are, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Last year, Girls Action Foundation conducted a public opinion poll, which found that, at the top of the list regarding issues around equity of men and women and girls and boys, 96% said they felt strongly that equity between boys and girls was an important Canadian value. However, it's clear that many girls are still not reaching their potential in career and financial security as they grow up. So what can we do?
For example two-thirds of those who work for minimum wage in Canada are female. Male wage earners earn 20% more than do female wage earners in Canada, resulting in one of the highest gender wage gaps among the OECD countries.
It seems as though girls are doing well. For example, in education, it appears that fewer girls drop out than do boys, but when we look beneath the surface of girls' daily lives, there is a lot going on. There are daily experiences of harassment. Violence is still quite widespread. Girls have very low self-esteem, and these things seem to be getting worse. So schools are not super safe places for a lot of girls.
We also know that girls are more vulnerable to economic insecurity since they face additional barriers and limited opportunities related to their ethnicity, their income, their class, their ability, their immigrant status, and whether or not they have aboriginal heritage, and so on. These are all important things going on in girls' lives.
I think it's very interesting that there's more and more attention being paid by the federal government and so on to the need for greater representation of women in governance. There are some very important initiatives addressing women, for example, even on corporate boards. Companies are more profitable when there are more women in decision-making roles.
So we need to start young, and that's why we're here today—to help girls cultivate confidence, skills, and experience so they can reach their potential, and also to improve the social and educational environments in which girls are growing up. I think it's on both sides. It's not just an individual problem, such that if girls are confident everything will be fine. It's also about creating environments in which girls can be successful as they grow into women. We also know there is an intergenerational effect. The more girls and women can achieve economic stability and prosperity, the more they will contribute that to their children and to the community.
This week in Quebec a study that looked at dropout rates was also released. Obviously more boys than girls are dropping out of high school—we know that—but the impacts on girls are greater. Girls who do drop out tend to stay in poverty, whereas men are able to find other kinds of jobs.
This shows us again that we do need to start young. I will now pass the mike to Saman Ahsan, who will speak about our recommendations.
Executive Director, Girls Action Foundation
Thank you, Juniper.
Based on our experience with girls and young women over the past 15 years, we feel that an important recommendation is to create and sustain all girls' programs that develop self-esteem, critical thinking, and leadership skills. At first glance it may seem that these are not very closely linked to economic prosperity, but in fact they're part of a vicious cycle that hampers girls' development and makes it difficult for them to reach their full potential.
There's still a low perceived value of young girls in Canada, where they are perceived as if they can't do much. That, in turn, leads to low self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence. This causes depression, distress, and frustrations while growing up. Forty-four per cent of adolescent girls report feeling constantly stressed, and girls are twice as likely as boys to be treated for depression. Sixteen per cent of adolescent girls think of themselves as worthless.
There's a quotation that says, “The most common way for people to give up their power is by thinking they don't have any”, and that's exactly what's happening with girls. They feel powerless, worthless, and they don't have self-esteem to break out of that vicious cycle. We at Girls Action Foundation don't see girls as victims or passive recipients of development. We feel they need to take charge of their own lives. They're agents of change. They just need to be equipped with the skills to allow them to break out of that vicious cycle, to take charge of their lives, to take actions in their own lives that would improve not only their lives, but the lives of the people around them, their families and communities. And that would be the most important step in improving their economic prospects in the long term.
Our second recommendation is providing mentorship and diverse role models for girls growing up. Young Canadian girls don't have that many successful female role models to look up to, especially if they come from minority, indigenous, low-income, northern, rural, or marginalized backgrounds. Studies have proven that if girls are given positive female role models of successful women, their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is higher than girls who don't. We feel this would be an important step in helping girls realize that they can do anything to achieve their full potential, especially for their economic prosperity.
Our third recommendation is educating boys and young men to think critically about gender expectations and to promote equality between the sexes. Now, I think it's quite clear that you can't just reach out to one part of society and expect to have a transformation throughout society. So we don't just reach out to girls and women; we need to reach out to society as a whole, which includes boys and men, who are socialized in the same way as girls. As they grow up, they learn the messages about gender roles, norms, stereotypes, behaviours. They get these messages from a very young age from their families, communities, peers, the media, and from their schools and educational institutions. We need to make sure that our boys and men are educated in a way that they become active protagonists towards gender equality.
Our next recommendation is to review and address gaps in the school curriculum to ensure that gender equality is incorporated at every level of education. This is not just in the content of education, but also in the methodology and the way schools function. Schools need to be welcoming environments for girls, by encouraging them, promoting them, and to be a place where they can thrive and learn and grow to their full potential in all fields, especially in the fields that are currently male-dominated.
Our fifth recommendation is implementing and expanding programs that reduce gender harassment, especially in educational institutions. As Juniper just said, harassment is still very prevalent. Forty-four percent of high school girls report having faced sexual harassment. This has long-term impacts. It causes depression; it causes low self-worth. It can lead to substance abuse, violent delinquency, thoughts of suicide. So it can create a lot of problems. A girl who is faced with this kind of harassment is obviously not going to do her best in her studies and in her professional career, and this is going to limit her economic prospects in the long term. Not only does it cause depression, but it also perpetuates the idea of gender inequality, that women are of a lower status than men, hence they are able to face this discrimination and harassment.
Our final recommendation is providing gender-specific financial literacy education for girls and women. It has been proven in many developing countries that women are better at managing money than men. That's why a lot of social development initiatives—micro-credit initiatives, micro-enterprises, women's empowerment initiatives—all focus on women, and they teach women financial literacy skills, and that helps them take charge of their lives. When a woman is financially empowered, the effect goes on to her family and to the entire community. We feel that girls need to have financial literacy skills so they can plan for their future and improve their economic prospects in the long term.
NDP
The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen
I'm sorry to cut you off. We appreciate very much hearing from the Girls Action Foundation and we thank Ms. Ahsan and Ms. Glass for the information you've provided.
We need to move on now to the YWCA. We're very fortunate to have Paulette Senior, the chief executive officer, with us.
We also have a video conference from Victoria, British Columbia, with Farrah Todosichuk.
Welcome, Farrah, and welcome, Paulette.
Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Canada
We'll do our best.
Thanks for inviting us to make this presentation today. I also appreciate Farrah being along with us.
You may or may not know that the YW in our name stands for “Young Women”, and girls and young women are a strong focus for us at the YWCA of Canada. Across Canada, 30 of our member associations offer girls' programming to over 25,000 girls and young women each year. Advancing the leadership of girls is a priority for our work, and 25% of our boards and staff are young women, in accordance with a policy adopted by our global YWCA movement some years ago.
From our experience interacting daily with young women and girls, issues that we see impacting the future economic prosperity of girls in Canada as they become young women are: overcoming systemic barriers, affording the education they need to prosper as adults, bridging to the first career job in a time of high youth unemployment, getting back on track after violence and abuse, and access to child care for young mothers who are in the workforce.
YWCA Canada is proud of the positive impact of our programs, but ensuring the economic prosperity of the next generation of young women cannot be accomplished by programs alone. Girls' economic prosperity is tied to women's equality and to family prosperity. In 2012, women continue to earn a fraction of men's salaries, and 80% of single parents are still women, with 30% of those families living in poverty. Low-income families need appropriate income supports that level the playing field for girls in those families. Service organizations can work to ensure girls out in the community are getting the support they need around education, life skills, and leadership, but the home situations of girls directly impact their future. Continuing growth of the income gap will not enhance the economic prosperity of today's girls as adults.
Overcoming systemic barriers is also important. It is broadly recognized that specific communities face barriers to prosperity in Canada. Girls from first nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, girls from racialized communities, girls with physical and mental health disabilities, and immigrant and refugee girls—who need to adapt culturally and/or linguistically and may have lived through large-scale conflicts—all face barriers to economic prosperity. Without systemic change, these girls are less likely than other girls to achieve economic prosperity as adults. Effective programs and policies intended to enhance the prosperity of the next generation of young women need to address systemic barriers. Our remarks here today recognize that reality and apply even more strongly to girls who face systemic barriers than those who do not.
Our programs recognize the reality of girls' lives and encourage them to explore their imagination and creativity while developing confidence and leadership skills. The YWCA programs for girls and young women meet the need for gender-specific, extra-curricular community activities offering girls and young women the opportunity to build on their positive self-esteem, self-reliance, independence, and leadership skills in a non-judgmental and safe environment. Instilling a sense of leadership and empowerment in program participants develops skills to help them navigate their teen years and transition successfully into adulthood.
We have programs such as YWCA GirlSpace, which offers quality programming that addresses key social issues facing girls today and responds to their very diverse needs. We also offer the Power of Being a Girl, which is a violence prevention conference that is hosted in over 25 communities and reaches over 4,000 girls each year. It focuses on issues such as healthy relationships, body image, sexual health, bullying, and Internet safety. We also have a new program in development called Y Act Up. It focuses on the leadership and decision-making skills of girls and encourages life-long civic engagement in their communities. We know that when girls are educated and empowered they become leaders at home, in the community, and beyond, improving their economic prosperity, as well as those around them.
In terms of education, since the seventies, to quote Statistics Canada, “a dramatic reversal has taken place on Canadian university campuses.” We know that in 1971, 32% of university grads aged 25 to 29 were female; by 1991, 51% were female; and by 2006, 60% were young women. Education has immense power to improve the economic prospects of girls and young women. For example, in 2006 the median income of aboriginal people was 30% lower than that of other Canadians, but the median income of aboriginal women who held a BA or more was higher than that of non-aboriginal women with equivalent education. With 70% of new jobs requiring a university or college degree, the future prosperity of girls is tied to higher education.
Higher education needs to be accessible and affordable, and yet nationally undergrads complete school with an average loan of $19,000. Almost 400,000 students borrowed to finance their education last year.
As young women have increased their participation in post-secondary education, tuition fees have risen and grant support has dwindled. Young women leave school, degree in hand, but emerge to find limited job prospects and substantial personal debt. Young women from lower-income families trying to improve their economic prospects are certainly among those who are borrowing.
I'd like to now introduce Farrah, who will tell you of her own experience.
Go ahead, Farrah.
Farrah Todosichuk Representative, YWCA Canada
Hello. My name is Farrah Todosichuk, and I have been asked to speak to you today of my personal experience and perception of the economic prospects of young women in Canada.
This past June, I graduated from the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus on the dean's list, with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a specialization in gender women studies.
Like many young women across the country, I endeavoured to pay for my university education on my own. I worked hard, received scholarships, and received financing in the way of student loans in order to pay for my education. I am proud to have finished my degree, to have done really well, and to have really enjoyed my studies.
Right now, as I appear before you, I am also sitting with a tremendous amount of debt, however, and to be honest, I feel at a loss on how to proceed. The issue for me is that I don't have any professional experience, and without that, I find myself unable to access the potential careers that my degree can offer.
For the time being, I am working two minimum-wage jobs; however, my earnings are not yet enough, unfortunately, for me to pay for daily life and for me to make my student loan repayments. What is more, I find that working these two jobs disables my ability to access volunteer opportunities where I could build my resumé and build my networks in order to find and secure a job in my field. In this way, I find myself in a position of stagnation, unable to find and fill a position that pertains to my degree without the experience I need to attain it.
On top of this, the reality is that I have $35,000 worth of loans that are accumulating interest. Through this process, I've become like many women in Canada who are working minimum-wage jobs: I find myself now living below Canada's poverty line.
From my experience and from my conversations with friends across the board, I see that youth in Canada need more support in terms of career and financial guidance. Young women need help to build their skills, to broaden their resumés and to get the experience they need in order to make the transition from school to employment more successful.
I feel that if investments are made to work with individuals in a proactive manner, providing support, training, and services during school or before the majority of these individuals are burdened with the full responsibility of financial independence, this gap can be overcome. What is more, this guidance does not have to be specific to students or people who want to attend university. It could also be made relevant to younger and older women who are entering into or returning to the working world. This supportive financial guidance could also be made beneficial to the men of our society who are also making similar transitions.
When I was asked to speak to you today, I was overjoyed by the opportunity. This journey has been yet another positive and eye-opening experience for me. Through this, I realize that my economic position is similar to that of a vast variety of women across Canada.
Furthermore, I understand that my position is still a positive one. There are many women who face barriers and hold responsibilities that go way beyond mine. When you consider women with children, with disabilities, or with other obstacles of self-esteem or social standing, it is absolutely remarkable how broad the continuum really can be between those with financial stability and those without.
Although this has been short, I hope that what I have shared with you today helps to stress the importance of support service organizations such as the YWCA, and that in the future we continue to focus on the ways in which we can better enable the economic prospects of women in Canada.
Thanks.
Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Canada
I have some recommendations, but I don't know if I have any more time.
Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Canada
Okay. I'll go for it.
We've had some experience with delivering programs to girls. In particular, with our Youth Eco Internship Program, or YEIP, we've had incredible success focusing on girls and young women. We also think it's important to ensure that single-gender programs continue, because the success of young women in these programs becomes very important. We recommend reviving YEIP with a focus on young women facing systemic barriers.
We also recommend that appropriate services include affordable and supportive housing for girls and women, which can ensure that teenage girls who leave home to escape abuse can build a life that is economically safe and stable. We know, from our experience on the ground, that this is an important thing.
We know that achieving accessible, affordable child care services—
The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen
I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, but perhaps you could send those recommendations to the clerk—do we have them? Okay. I think that's good.
NDP
The Chair NDP Irene Mathyssen
It's certainly our pleasure.
Now we'll begin our seven-minute round with Ms. Truppe.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Thank you very much.
I want to thank Girls Action Foundation and YWCA for coming and video conferencing to give us all this information. We really appreciate that, and it will hopefully help with our study.
I'd like to ask Girls Action Foundation—I know you had a list of recommendations—what top two or three recommendations would you offer this committee on how Status of Women Canada could improve the economic participation, prosperity, and leadership of girls in Canada?
Executive Director, Girls Action Foundation
I think the first recommendation was a very important one, which is all-girls programming. That improves their self-esteem, critical thinking, and leadership skills. Girls are at the crux of this matter, and as we said, we don't see them as active recipients. We feel that they can be empowered to feel that they can make a change, and once that happens, it's a crucial step in overturning the vicious cycle. Once they start acting, they change their lives and the lives of people around him. Then their perceived value improves; they're seen as more valuable, as contributing to society.
That changes the whole vicious cycle of discriminating against girls and not letting them realize their full potential. So that is one major recommendation.
I think educating boys and men would be another very important one, because of course we can't expect girls to do it all on their own. We need to have the whole society aware of the importance of gender equality, at all levels. Everyone, not just men and boys, but the government, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, schools, the media—everyone needs to make a concerted effort, and it will only happen if boys and men also realize that they need to play their role in improving gender equality.
What would you say?
Director of Development, Girls Action Foundation
Yes, having boys and young men thinking critically about gender discrimination and inequality would go a long way to reducing the discrimination and relationship violence that is extremely prevalent in Canada today among adolescents.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Thank you.
Could you also provide some insight—it's sort of a two-part question—into what unique challenges girls face concerning economic participation, prosperity, and leadership? Would these challenges differ among girls living in urban versus rural areas? Would the challenges be different for them, or what is the same?
Director of Development, Girls Action Foundation
You're asking about the main challenges facing girls regarding—
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
What are the main challenges for girls in general? And would there be a set of different challenges for, say, urban and rural girls?
Director of Development, Girls Action Foundation
Yes.
I think it's very important to not think of girls as all the same, as one group that has exactly the same issues.
We also work with girls across the country—we're talking more about girls and less about young women, so a younger age group. What we see is that it's not so much about employment but more about the building blocks of self-esteem, confidence, seeing people they admire, setting higher goals for themselves, and also taking those steps towards their goals.
That's why confidence and freedom from harassment and violence, as well as role modelling, are very important for that adolescent and pre-adolescent age group.
We're currently leading a project right now, Girls Action Foundation, in partnership with girl-serving organizations and rural communities across Canada. We're very pleased; we'll have our results soon. Because girls in those areas face the unique challenges of more difficult economic circumstances, fewer choices of career and education, and the need to go out of their community often for post-secondary education—it's harder to access support if they are experiencing violence.
There are often more traditional gender expectations of women to fulfill the mother role only, and so on.
There definitely are unique challenges. We're also working with some first nations as well. While they face many of the same challenges as rural communities do, being isolated and dependent on resource economies, they also have the additional challenges of the history of colonialism as it has impacted their families and caused a lot of difficulties—barriers to get over in terms of success—financial, parenting, and so on.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Thank you.
There have been a number of reports that one of the most pressing issues facing executives across the country would seem to be a shortage of skilled labour. According to The Globe and Mail:
Two-thirds of executives say they are having difficulty finding qualified employees, and one-third say the labour shortage is so severe it is preventing their company from growing as quickly as it could.
Have you been able to identify in any area of your work if today's girls are less or more likely to be interested in skilled trades? Are they pursuing these opportunities or are they looking at other venues?
Director of Development, Girls Action Foundation
There have definitely been increases in girls entering non-traditional and technological fields. There's a wonderful organization called Actua. They have a girls program focused entirely on science and technology. They're part of the Girls Action Network and they do very good work, especially around math, science, and technologies.
It's part of the role modelling thing. We have Roberta Bondar, but there aren't very many more we can think of, women who have succeeded in technological fields. Maybe we need to shine more light on who is there, as well as create girl-specific spaces within schools, within community centres, where they can discover their interests. If girls are seen as being interested in that, they don't get a lot of support.