Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2014

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, to all of you, for being here today to inform our study.

Ms. Beckton, I'm wondering if you could talk to us a little more about your partnership with Equal Voice. We know a bit about the work they do in encouraging women to run for office. I am wondering about your connection with Equal Voice.

[Clare Beckton]

Obviously, the centre is interested in women in political leadership—what we define as public leadership—which is both corporate and government writ large.

With regard to our work with Equal Voice, this is funded by a foundation. We are creating a portal of research that looks at women in politics in Canada. When that portal is launched, which should be next month, that will make that research readily accessible. You'll be able to look at the barriers, the challenges, that women face in seeking political office.

Then, our plan is to seek some funding to have some of that material taken from the academic articles and put into work that's accessible for candidates seeking office that will help them. We think that's necessary. Often there is the research, but it's not readily accessible to people who need it.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Can you give us a sneak preview as to what some of the barriers might be?

[Clare Beckton]

We know that one of the barriers is getting nominated in the first place. I've spoken to a number of candidates in recent times who ran into challenges in the nomination process. Women often hesitate, unless they're asked to jump into the ring. They don't necessarily have the same number of Rolodexes that a lot of male candidates have in order to seek funding, which is important. I'm sure many of you have faced those similar challenges.

There are also the challenges that women face with regard to how they self-promote, because of the existing cultural norms about what's appropriate for women and how they should behave. That still exists.

The final one, of course, is that we all know that sometimes the media will focus on issues relating to women and whether they're apart from their family or otherwise. They ask questions which they would never ask of men.

There are a lot of different challenges.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

They still do ask those questions.

[Clare Beckton]

When Lisa MacLeod, for example, had a baby, there were questions raised about how she was going to have a baby and still be going back and forth....

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Absolutely.

There's been a lot of talk at this committee in our study about networking, and I like the way you put it—Rolodexes.

[Clare Beckton]

The old-fashioned statement. We don't use it anymore.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

We know what you mean, and it's actually a good way to put it. We can all picture what that looks like, and we know that we need long lists of contacts in order to be able to fundraise and win those nominations.

You mentioned self-promoting, and when you were speaking earlier, you talked about critical thinking. When we spoke offline, you and I discussed different styles of communicating. Is that what you were referring to by “critical thinking”? You pointed out that sometimes—and please correct me if I'm not paraphrasing accurately—a women's focus is a little more scattered, which said in a more positive way, I think, means we multi-task.

Do you think this is necessarily a bad thing, and how can our different styles be accommodated?

[Clare Beckton]

Right, and I'm not sure I would use the term “scattered”. I think that women tend to look more broadly when you have an issue. For example, in the corporate world, when a woman comes into a boardroom full of men to talk about a project and some concerns with that project, she might talk about the broad concerns. The men are focused on the deadline and wanting to get it out, and so they may not hear her concerns because of where she's focused.

There has been a great deal of work done by Barbara Annis & Associates. She's written a number of books on gender intelligence and on how men and women's brains work differently. In that, the evidence shows that men and women often do approach things differently, and that's important. It shows up in some of the leadership studies that have been done, for example, in Women Matter 3, a report done by McKinsey & Company. It's a report that I recommend because it looks at what kinds of leadership attributes women tend to exercise more frequently than men and vice versa, and how that plays into the kind of leadership that is needed in Canada today when you have to deal with the multiplicity of complex issues.

What it does support is that you need gender-inclusive leadership because of the way men and women approach issues differently.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Speaking of those leadership traits, are those the kinds of topics we might see on the agenda at that one-week intensive leadership seminar you referred to?

[Clare Beckton]

We will have a piece in there on gender intelligence—and of course, anyone that has a spouse knows how useful gender intelligence can be.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Gender intelligence.

What other kinds of topics are discussed in the one-week seminar that specifically would benefit women?

[Clare Beckton]

One is how women can navigate the system. For example, one of the challenges that women face in leadership is not having sponsors, whereas the men are often sponsored and that's how they advance in organizations. Women have not been able to get sponsors or they haven't been sponsored. There's also the question of how women can access mentors, for example, and how to look at who has influence in an organization, how to get involved in the kind of work that will bring them to the attention where they then can be considered for a promotion, for example. These are some of the things covered in the seminar. But we also look at visioning, the inner journey involved, as well as the regular leadership things. Networking and how important it is is another one.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much, it is greatly appreciated.

Mr. Casey, you have seven minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Beckton, Ms. Cornish, and Chief Kennedy, I wasn't here for your opening statements. I was a last-minute replacement for Dr. Duncan, but as is her way, she made copious notes of your presentation and of her advice to me. If my question seems a little bit awkward or misinformed, it's probably because I'm not reading it correctly, but I'll do my best.

Professor Lahey, I did hear your presentation and I'd like to start with you.

I was interested in your comments on income splitting, a matter that has received some attention and debate, I would say, in the public, but probably more prominently within the Conservative caucus. You touched on it in your opening statement. Could you expand a little bit and explain, if I understand it correctly, your view that the proposal for income splitting would have a negative effect on the prosperity of Canadian women?

[Prof. Kathleen A. Lahey]

Yes, it will have a negative effect in a number of ways.

First of all, the $2.7 billion federal cost for it will probably be accompanied by something like a $1.7 billion cost provincially and territorially, wherever other governments enact income splitting along with the federal government's program. So we're talking about $4.4 billion out of Canada's economy each year, as a minimum, that will be paid basically to reward women who put more of their efforts into unpaid work.

For women who need to have a minimum economic capacity of their own, that is, the ability to go into the labour market and earn money in some way, should life make it necessary for them to support themselves—and I think that's probably 100% of all women at some point in their lives—this means that women are essentially being bribed in a way to participate in a program that is not in their best interests.

In addition to that, people might say, “Well, women will get the benefits of income splitting too”, but there are two reasons that is not the case.

First of all, even the highest income women in this country will receive only a small proportion of those benefits compared to the men. I've done some simulation analysis using SPSD/M software produced by Statistics Canada to get these figures. Although 25% of all women in couples will get some benefit from income splitting into their own hands, they will only get 16% of the dollars. So 84% of the total $4.4 billion is going to go directly into men's hands.

The second effect that is negative for women is that there's a great deal of social research demonstrating that if a government has a choice between putting social benefits into the hands of the male in a couple or the female in a couple, or shared control over the fund, it will normally benefit the family as a whole more to give women at least half of the control over the money, if not all of it, because they tend to spend the money on things like the needs of children, the needs of the family, and so on. But if you put these tax benefits, such a huge amount of money, into the hands of men, because they will be the ones receiving sole control over the tax refunds from income splitting, then it creates a situation in which men will feel a sense of greater entitlement to decide how that money will be used, and it won't necessarily be used to meet the needs of all of the members of the household equally.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Both in your opening remarks and in the answer you just gave, you referenced unpaid work. The result of these meetings will be a summary of the evidence and some recommendations for government. What recommendations would you urge upon us with respect to unpaid work?

[Prof. Kathleen A. Lahey]

I would recommend that this committee look for political strategies that would increase the sharing of unpaid work. Human beings have to perform a certain amount of unpaid work every day in order to support themselves and their households. But it has been very clearly demonstrated that when policies are used to incentivize sharing of unpaid work instead of incentivizing the allocation of unpaid work to the lower income person in the household, who is almost always a woman, men's work lives do indeed become easier. They get to spend more time on unpaid work, which tends to be more freely governable time on their own. It also gives women more free time in which to consider increasing their participation in paid work. So sharing of unpaid work, to the point where it gets to the 50-50 point, is absolutely crucial to being able to move forward.

There are proven strategies for doing this. For example, in some of the Scandinavian countries, when a child is born the father's entitlement to paid leave is sometimes tied to his income-earning capacity, which actually gives him more of a realistic economic reward for withdrawing from paid work for short periods of time to take care of children. In some countries, women's access to additional parental leave is contingent on men taking their share, because many men don't want to take their share as they know that it may withdraw them from paid work and endanger their prospects of advancement and promotion.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Ms. Cornish, I have a similar question for you on a different topic, and that is recommendations you would urge upon us. I understand that one of the topics you touched on in your remarks was pay equity. What recommendations would you suggest we make to government with respect to pay equity?

[Mary Cornish]

I have set them out under 10 different steps in the actual brief, but the first one is that there needs to be an overall national plan for closing the gender pay gap.

On page 6 of the brief I talk about how the federal government and other governments have system-wide and national strategies they develop for key matters, particularly those that cross governmental, municipal, provincial, and national boundaries. I used it as an example to get people thinking. There is a federal sustainable development strategy, which is something that crosses municipal borders—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

You have a wealth of information. Unfortunately, this is all the time we have for this question, but thank you for referring to your brief, which is very informative and will help the member

to give more details.

Ms. O'Neill Gordon, you have five minutes.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to welcome all of you here with us this afternoon. You certainly have thrown out a lot of information to all of us that will be of great benefit to us in this study.

My first comment is for Clare Beckton. I just want to say that I wish to reiterate your message about women not just jumping in for the nomination. What I see first-hand is that a lot of them certainly have the ability, but what they are lacking is confidence in themselves.

I'm wondering what steps you take with your centre to build up their confidence, or are there other major steps I don't see as clearly that are also stopping them from jumping in?

[Clare Beckton]

I think one thing is generally women wait to be asked. This was found in the United States as well. I'm part of the Harvard Women's Leadership Board, and we looked at some of the work that's being done to encourage women to run in the United States. They did have an ask campaign to have women asked.

I think the question of self confidence is something we do. I do workshops often with women around owning your success, and part of it is helping them understand how to be able to speak in those environments, and be able to step to the plate, and take the kind of risks that are needed in a political career.

I think women also are very conscious as you all are, the many women around this table, of the challenges facing politicians, and the kind of things you have to deal with in your ridings and your constituencies, and that can be very difficult for women particularly with families.

We do, and we have been as I say, doing some of this research, but I also personally do a lot of workshops around helping women to be able to have that confidence to be able to speak up and engage, whether it's in politics or in leadership capacities in other organizations.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Do you feel we're making progress in this area?