Status of Women Committee on May 28th, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

We will continue our hearing.

I want to welcome our witnesses. Firstly, we will be hearing from Ms. Claudia Mitchell, from McGill University, by videoconference; Ms. Mitchell is a professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education.

Welcome, Ms. Mitchell.

Afterwards, we will have Ms. Danforth on the telephone; Ms. Danforth is the Executive Director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

You will both have 10 minutes. Then we will have the question period.

Ms. Mitchell, you have the floor and you have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Claudia Mitchell, James McGill Professor, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University]

Thank you, and thank you very much for accommodating my change in schedule. It was very important.

I'm going to read my remarks in order to stay within the 10 minutes.

I would like to congratulate the committee for taking on this very important issue of studying the economic prospects for Canadian girls, and I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.

I have had the opportunity to read at least some of the evidence that has been presented already. In the interests of time, I will try to not simply repeat what has already been presented. Having said that, I also want to note that what I have read or that particularly has been most impressive are the presentations on aboriginal girls in Canada in relation to poverty.

I appear before you today as an academic researcher working in the area of girlhood studies as an academic discipline. In 2008, I co-founded with two colleagues an international peer review journal called Girlhood Studies, which, as far as I know, is the only academic journal that specifically focuses on girls, and not just as part of the category of children, or youth, or women.

As part of our journal’s mandate of working with girls, for girls, and about girls, we've embarked upon a set of international consultations across a variety of social and economic contexts: Nordic girlhood and the changing contexts for girls as the social welfare state changes; girlhood in Russia and the new market economies; and comparative work between Australia and Canada on girlhood. We will be highlighting this comparative work at McGill, at a McGill-based conference on girlhood, between October 10 and 12, which will coincide with the first International Day of the Girl Child.

I also appear before you as someone who works in what might be described as the global milieu of girlhood, having served three years on Plan International’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign and having conducted numerous studies on girls’ education in South Africa, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Swaziland, and recently having conducted an evaluation for the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, UNGEI.

What I would like to do now is put forward four broad areas about which I would like to offer some recommendations that come out of my work in these various contexts.

The first recommendation I have for the committee is in the context of the emerging research agenda of the Status of Women and other organizations of Canada, and that is in relation to the critical area of the direct participation of girls and young women in research. The early 1990s may have been the heyday for Canada and support for girls. CIDA offered impressive support for girl child programming, and Canada was well known for several key studies. One was the “A Capella” study on adolescent girls, organized by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, and the other was the Status of Women conference “We're Here, Listen to Us!”. What was exciting about this work were the groundbreaking innovations in terms of the engagement of real girls and what they had to say.

My own research around the globe suggests that now more than ever we need broad consultations with girls across this country, and we need funding for new scholars coming along to take on this work in participatory ways. I would like to go so far as to suggest that this committee—your committee—consider making recommendations to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to establish as a priority area work on the economic prospects of girls and young women.

As you might know, they already have several priority areas. One is aboriginal research. Another is on the digital economies. Neither of these rules out participatory work with girls and young women, but in the absence of naming girlhood as priority area, it is likely to fall through the cracks. What we have learned in the international arena with UN Women, with UNGEI, and with other organizations is that the issues have to be named as priorities in order to get on and stay on the agenda, so I've put forward this as a first recommendation.

My second recommendation pertains to the situation of studies of girlhood in the context of work with boys and young men. This is a tricky area in the global north, where girls are typically seen to be outperforming boys in many areas of schooling and of employment.

However, as the already presented previous evidence suggests, the situation for aboriginal girls does not fit this analysis. I believe the Girls Action Foundation also highlighted the new studies on school dropouts in Quebec and suggested that the work is far more complex. I would like to recommend to the committee that every effort be made to not pit the situation of girls and the situation of boys against each other when it comes to funding.

There is ample evidence to suggest that boys and men have to be allies in work with girls and women, especially in such areas as gender violence, and that Canada is in a key position to take leadership in the area of moving forward in ways that make gender studies—boys’ perspectives, girls’ perspectives, and gender relations—prominent. We need support for both boys and girls, and we need new scholarship and new policy guidelines in this area. This has been a feminist dilemma for some time. Plan International's Because I am a Girl campaign last year actually focused on the place of boys in addressing the situation of girls. This was groundbreaking work, but it cannot stop there. This doesn’t mean that we stop focusing on girls, but that we need to look to models and designs that are separate but inclusive if we are to understand economic prosperity.

My third recommendation pertains to girls, sexuality, and risk in relation to STIs and especially HIV and AIDS. This is an area that is central to my own research with aboriginal youth, both boys and girls, in the Canadian context. I know we will be hearing more about this from Jessica Danforth. It was very important when we were studying aboriginal youth leadership, particularly in relation to colonization. It is also an important part of my work in South Africa. There the rates of infection are very high, and girls and young women are up to three times more likely than boys and young men to be HIV positive.

This work links to gender violence, low self-esteem in negotiating sex in the first place, and certainly the ability to negotiate the use of condoms. I know there are many initiatives in Canada that look at girls and leadership, but I would like to recommend that we need more focus on looking at sexuality and how it links to economic prosperity, and how it links to leadership in a more direct way.

Finally I want to say something about addressing the enormous challenges of drawing together the research and programming related to girls in Canada and internationally. What is probably obvious through this consultation is that there is a great deal of work going on in the area of girlhood, but it is very hit and miss in terms of being coordinated or available through some type of clearing house. Part of that circumstance is related to the vast range of issues, and the fact that the study of girls’ lives cuts across so many different sectors that do not speak to each other—health, technology, education, social services, labour, aboriginal studies, immigrant studies, and so on. I would like to us to consider that if there is one country that could take leadership in an information age in this area of coordinating work related to girlhood, it is Canada.

What would a girl-focused agency look like? Could it be housed within Status of Women? How could it advance the kind of participatory roles I have spoken about, and how could it involve girls and young women in advisory ways? How could such a body also integrate some aspect of “what about the boys”? The complexity of studying the economic prospects for girls demands this type of attention, and it would be an important move on the part of such bodies as Status of Women Canada to establish some type of directorate on girls that speaks to the situation for girls in Canada but that is also linked to Canadian initiatives in the world through CIDA, IDRC, and other institutions.

These are my four recommendations. I thank you for your attention. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you very much, Ms. Mitchell.

We will now continue with Ms. Danforth, who is with us on the telephone.

Can you hear me clearly?

[Jessica Danforth, Executive Director, Native Youth Sexual Health Network]

Hello. Can you hear me?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Yes, excellent. I now yield the floor to you, Ms. Danforth. You have 10 minutes for your presentation.

[Jessica Danforth]

Okay. Great.

Thank you, everybody. I apologize for the awkwardness of the teleconference and not having the video facility.

My name is Jessica Danforth, formerly Jessica Yee, and I am the executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. I'm also the chair of the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV/AIDS in Canada, and the co-chair for the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus for the North America region at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Today I will primarily be speaking about my work at the Native Youth Sexual Health Network in the executive director capacity.

The Native Youth Sexual Health Network is an organization that is by and for indigenous youth. It works within the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice throughout the United States and Canada. I'm calling today from our U.S. office here on the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin. We are a completely peer-based, national organization of indigenous youth who are under the age of 30. We work in alliance with elders and communities, as well as other peoples of colour.

Some remarks we often get at our organization are: how can we be completely peer-based, how can we be North-America wide, and how can we really be by and for young people under the age of 30? We've learned at our organization over the last five years that to speak about peer-based work and actualize peer leadership means that we have to live it, and not just in a single or token role. This is something that has to be structured overall.

We're also proud to say that we're an organization that strongly supports the self-identification of women themselves. That includes two-spirited, lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, intersexioned and intersexed, queer, questioning, and other gender non-conforming women. I think it should be explicitly understood that to gender-police or press by definition what constitutes a woman in this study specifically, without including and centring the experiences of those afore-mentioned identities, will result in a severe erasure of some of the most economically oppressed women in Canada.

Classism and poverty for us are certainly tenets of the realities we face—and by “we” I'm talking about the realities of indigenous but also racialized, LGBT, and other communities of colour in Canada. As I've heard and read in the documents from the committee, the numbers and statistics are just that: numbers and statistics. You may have heard of the stark realities of violence against aboriginal women, and about the stark realities of suicide, poverty, and single-parent families of indigenous women. But it has to be understood that what is happening is in fact the systemic and structural oppression of women, both economically and socially, and that the Government of Canada itself continues to orchestrate this large and root factor at the root of what I'm calling economic injustice.

I think it's critical that we not just talk about statistics and numbers, but that we talk about achieving economic justice. This is a term I've learned working here in the United States part time, and from our neighbours and allies to the south of us. Economic justice is what we need to be centring on, in talking about the success of Canadian women and girls. Economic justice asks us to be critical in challenging and changing the systems that actually create poverty and economic injustice in our communities. Through our work at the Native Youth Sexual Health Network I want to give some examples of how we see economic injustice and economic justice working. I would like them to be included in the study you're looking at.

If we're going to talk about achieving economic justice, it first has to be actualized without the fear of economic or legal penalty. For example, if in the study we're going to talk about establishing or protecting the legal rights of poor and working-class people, we have to encourage and facilitate self-advocacy for that. We have to advocate for radical, compassionate changes in the systems we're talking about, such as housing and shelter, the workplace, courts, prisons, welfare and other public benefits, citizenship and immigration, health care, and other social services. We have to understand the interconnections between different oppressions that perpetuate economic injustice and work on multiple levels to eradicate them. We also have to work on effecting these changes through grassroots organizing, public education, advocacy, community-based research, legal action, leadership development, and coalition-building. This specifically is a tenet of economic justice, as it's understood.

One key area of our work where we see this lack of acknowledgement of economic injustice and the reality that indigenous women are facing is environmental and reproductive injustice.

In numerous places in Canada where there is resource extraction—mining, gas, oil, drilling—particularly in rural and remote and northern areas in the provinces or territories, we see so-called economic prospects and development that at the same time result in numerous and drastic changes for indigenous women and girls on a community level. While we see, for example, in northern Alberta, the tar sands and different mining, gas, and oil resource extractions, what's not understood is the escalating high rates of sexual violence; HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, including syphilis; as well as suicides, different mental health issues, depression, and the list goes on.

While one thing is called economic development, another thing can be called economic injustice. The simultaneous realities are not being understood.

I want to quote from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in which Canada said it endorsed, very, very recently, the tenet of “free prior and informed consent”. If economic justice were achieved in Canada for self-identified women and girls, then it must be achieved with free prior and informed consent. It cannot be achieved with simple consultation, or saying that we talked to certain groups of women or one token person or representative and say we have permission from them to achieve justice for them or to try to eradicate their oppression. Free prior and informed consent, as it's understood in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is something that requires Canada itself not just to consult but also to get prior, understood, and informed consent—in multiple languages, cultures, and communities—to actually do something and to do it differently.

I want to close by leaving everybody with a promising practice that we would like to see continue. We received partial funding from the Status of Women for a national partnership project we had with the Girls Action Foundation entitled indigenous young women: speaking our truths, building our strengths. This was a name that was given by our peer advisory group made up of 10 indigenous young women across Canada, which is directly coordinated by the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

It is led entirely by self-identified indigenous young women, and it includes things like a national gathering, the first of its kind, by and for indigenous young women explicitly. It also includes resource development in terms of [Inaudible--Editor]-making and toolkit creations for self esteem. It is something we would like to see continue, but again it is proving to be harder and harder to fund something that is entirely peer-led and doesn't require somebody to prove themselves otherwise.

In closing I want to say that we cannot talk about creating new funding opportunities or throwing money at different issues that continue to silo or isolate the multi-identities and multi-communities and multi-issues that people are coming from.

In the circumstances of environmental injustice and reproductive injustice that I have cited, in cases where it's called economic development but results in multiple oppressions in terms of environmental injustices toward indigenous communities specifically where resource extraction is happening, we can't talk about these without the free prior and informed consent of communities. It is very clear that what's called economic development does not have free prior and informed consent, which is an internationally upheld human right for women and girls.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Thank you very much, Ms. Danforth.

We will now move to our question period. We will start with Ms. James.

You have seven minutes.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to both of our guests.

I would like to point out that I'll be splitting my time with Madam Bateman, so could the chair let me know when my three and a half minutes is up?

If I still have an important question, I may cut you off a bit, so I apologize in advance.

My question is for Ms. Mitchell to start. You had recommendations in four different particular areas. One that was of interest to me was that you mentioned engaging young boys and young men in the equation to improve the economic prospects of girls. As you know, that's also a mandate within Status of Women. I personally feel it's very important that they're included.

You didn't really touch base on exactly how you would engage them. What is the message that you would give, or that Status of Women should give, to our young boys on how we can improve the economic prosperity of our young girls for the future? I want to get more on the message that we should be passing on to the young men with regard to improving—

[Dr. Claudia Mitchell]

I think your question is very important. There is a whole range of ways to engage boys and young men, starting with who they are in relation to the girls and women in their lives. What are their own aspirations? What kind of privilege do they bring to the situation?

For me, it's about discussion and dialogue. I think it can happen at any point. I think it can happen in elementary schools. There's the kind of work we do in life skills programs and in conflict resolution. I think it can also take place in high school and in university.

I think it's the sense of unpacking privilege and unpacking what it is that you are allowed to do. How would your life be different if you had been born a girl or a boy? I think much of this is about dialogue.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Is it as simple as saying to very young boys and girls that girls are equal and they should have every opportunity, the same as boys, and that they deserve respect? I'm looking for a definitive message that we can get out there.

I bring this up because a witness from Actua in the last session talked about how young girls in grade 4 are very interested in various topics, including science and technology. Once they're in grade 6 and grade 7, their interest levels drop. I'm trying to determine, is it puberty? What makes girls' interests in certain issues drop, whereas boys go on to achieve success in those fields? I'm trying to understand, from your knowledge, what you think causes girls at a certain age to lose interest and not necessarily go into those fields and what you think we as the status of women committee can do to encourage them, and also to include men and boys in that equation to encourage our young girls to continue with their interests in those particular areas.

[Dr. Claudia Mitchell]

I think you have to listen to girls and why they aren't going into scientific areas. I think there is a very complex set of messages here perhaps—or maybe they're very simple.

Unless you have a participatory approach, unless you have other girls and women doing this work—and I know there have been studies around mentorship and so on.... I don't think we can ever do enough of that. I think we have to take a look at what is happening to girls when they are 12, 13, and what the competing messages are.

It's totally fine for boys to make these kinds of decisions; it isn't for girls. I think that until we have a complete change of—

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

We've heard from previous witnesses that it might be a confidence issue. Do you feel that girls of a certain age start questioning themselves or they lack the same level of confidence of boys? Is that part of the problem?

How do we as the status of women committee get the message out that girls should have the confidence that they can do anything they choose?

We've heard from other witnesses as well. You hear stories of two people who face the same challenges in life but one is much more determined, one strives to succeed, and the other decides to drop out of high school. What is it, from your experience, from your knowledge, that you think we can do to make sure more people stay in high school and more people try to empower themselves to want to succeed?

You're going to get diversity in all areas, whether among boys or girls. Some will go on to succeed; some will do other things and so on. What can we do as the status of women committee to make sure that more girls succeed, that more girls are empowered to make that decision to want to strive to succeed in life and not drop out of school and get a minimum wage job? What is that clear, definitive message we need to give?

[Dr. Claudia Mitchell]

I think we have to empower the women around them. I think we have to give them a message. There's the idea that you can do anything, but unless we have a support system for girls, I don't think they can necessarily do anything. I would put a lot more into the social support systems in schools and in communities. School can only do so much; community organizations are very important.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

The last witness—I think she was from Actua, if I'm not mistaken—talked about three different areas. One was mentorship programs. Here I might take up Madam Bateman's time on that question as well.

She mentioned the importance of educating parents, communities, schools, and various other outreach organizations to encourage girls that they can achieve, that they can succeed. My concern is, how do you get to the girls who don't necessarily have the support of their parents, or who maybe come from different cultural backgrounds where there is some discrimination between the sexes within their own families?

Again, it's what Status of Women Canada can do to reach out to get to these young girls and deliver that message. How do we cross over to make sure that the girls are given that opportunity by parents and in schools?

[Dr. Claudia Mitchell]

Well, I think some of this is—

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Sorry.

I think there really are some barriers within some cultures—

Have I used up my seven minutes?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

I am so sorry, Ms. James, your time has expired. I indicated this to Ms. Bateman, but...

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

She would really prefer to continue.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Yes, but the time period has expired.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'm sorry. Have seven minutes gone by?

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

Oui.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Oh, my apologies.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Marie-Claude Morin]

There is no problem.

I will now give the floor to the members opposite.

Ms. Freeman, you have seven minutes.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to share my time with Ms. Ashton.

My questions will be for Jessica Danforth from the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.

You're a very impressive activist, so I'm just going to jump right in and get you to speak as much as possible about what you know is happening on the ground. Could you explain to this committee the importance of ensuring access to reproductive services in the communities that you know and work in?

[Jessica Danforth]

Yes, absolutely.

Reproductive services in the full spectrum of what we call reproductive justice are very similar to what I was talking about in terms of economic justice. We can't look at improving access for economic development for Canadian women and girls without ensuring that their reproductive health is included in this—and by that I mean even in big cities such as Toronto.

The Toronto Teen Survey was conducted in partnership with Planned Parenthood of Toronto and noted just last year that about 80% of teens in Toronto aren't even accessing sexual health services. Some of the key reasons they noted were that the services were culturally irrelevant and not peer-based, and also that they didn't speak to the realities teens were facing, particularly for aboriginal youth and youth of colour. So that's one example of how, even in a big city where you would think that there would be a lot of services, economic development, and choices, youth are not accessing those services, and that's absolutely because of the lack of peer outreach or engagement with them.

I can also speak to multiple realities that happen in rural, remote, and northern areas in Canada. Even though, for example, the legal right to abortion exists in Canada, it does not mean that it's accessible. It also does not mean that it's a reality for many Canadian women to access it even if they wanted to; if you live in a northern, rural, or remote community, you have to jump through several hoops to access what the law says is your legal right, but in reality you can't even get that right respected or actualized in your own community.

For example, communities in, let's say, northern Ontario or northern Alberta—or even on Prince Edward Island, where there are no abortion clinics available, even though it's a legally protected right—if you have to apply for a northern travel grant to travel south, if you have to front some of the money yourself, if you are a student, for example, outside of the province you're living in and you have to face reciprocal billing for provincial health care.... Those are just piecemeal some of the realities that Canadian women and girls face in regard to their full reproductive health control and access.

I also cited some of the realities in areas where so-called economic development is happening in northern communities where there is mining and gas and oil, but simultaneously there is sexual violence and extremely high rates of sexually transmitted infections, with minimal services available.