Good afternoon.
Thank you for inviting us today. Today is a special day for StatsCan. It's the official 2016 census day, so I'm very happy to be here.
We're happy to have the opportunity to discuss Statistics Canada's approach to gender statistics.
I will do my presentation in English.
However, you have the text and the presentation in French, and of course I will be pleased to answer questions in French.
I'd like to start by discussing how StatsCan fits into the Government of Canada's commitments to GBA+. Statistics Canada is mandated to provide information and analysis about Canada's social and economic structure so that federal departments can develop and evaluate public policies and programs. While our agency is unique in that we do not develop public policies and programs ourselves, we do play an important supporting role.
Since 1995 federal departments have been required to incorporate GBA+ into their legislation, policies, and programs, and in 2015 the federal government committed to strengthening the implementation of GBA+ across departments. These requirements have ensured continuing demand for gender statistics at Statistics Canada, as well as statistics involving a variety of intersecting identity factors, such as economic situations and diversity characteristics. Together these data paint a picture of the social and economic situations of women, men, girls, and boys and facilitate gender-based analysis.
For many years our agency has systematically considered gender and diversity when developing data and analytical products. Today I would like to share some of the ways that we support GBA+ through the development and the accessibility of these products.
As Canada's national statistical office, Statistics Canada is responsible for the systematic and coordinated collection of data related to women and girls. Information on sex is routinely collected through the census of population program and is contained in a substantial portion of the over 300 surveys and statistical programs managed by Statistics Canada.
I've placed a few examples of these surveys on slide 3, for those who have the presentation. There's the labour force survey, and then the general social survey, so on time use, on victimization, on social identity. There's also the Canadian community health survey and the uniform crime reporting survey. These are all surveys that operate through base funding, but Statistics Canada also responds to the data needs of federal departments by conducting cost-recovery research. For example, this year Statistics Canada was commissioned to conduct a survey on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, with an expected release in the fall of this year.
As slide 4 shows, the data that we collect at Statistics Canada covers a wide spectrum of socio-economic conditions affecting women, such as representation of women in the labour force, enrollment of women in post-secondary education, women's time spent on unpaid work, women's health and well-being, and women as victims and offenders.
Importantly, many of our surveys are collected over time, allowing for measurements of gains and the persistence of challenges in the social and economic conditions of diverse groups of women, men, girls, and boys.
How we do make this data available?
I have two slides on this, slide 5 and slide 6. Ensuring that the data we collect are accessible is critical to our role as information providers. We understand that this data is used to assess the differential impact of policies, programs, and legislation on women and men, and we have taken steps to improve accessibility to the data in recent years. A broad range of gender statistics are readily available on the Statistics Canada website. The landing page to our website is organized by subject area, and under the subject “Society and Community” you will find women and gender, where there are links to the latest daily release bulletins, data tables, publications, and analytical studies.
Sex-disaggregated data tables are one of our most important sources of gender statistics. These tables include both statistics and indicators and can be found through the links on The Daily on the Statistics Canada website under “Summary Tables” or in Statistics Canada's socio-economic database, called CANSIM. After each census sex-disaggregated tables series are produced based on the analytic themes for census releases including labour, families, income, aboriginal peoples, and so on.
All these tables are prepared with policy-makers and the general research community in mind, so the tabular information is ready to use, usually broken down not only by sex, but by geography and by age. As such, they are the basis for much of the gender-based analysis being done across the Canadian federal and provincial governments.
I have so much material; you will have to stop me at one point, but we have a lot of things to say.
Sometimes government departments and researchers have specific needs not addressed in any of the available tables. In this case custom tables can also be purchased directly from Statistics Canada.
As slide 6 indicates, there are new initiatives to make things even more accessible. As of February 2012, StatsCan's key socio-economic database, CANSIM, became available free of charge. This is in addition to the increasing accessibility of a range of public-use microdata files through the data liberation initiative, along with the more detailed micro files available to researchers, including from the Statistics Canada Federal Research Data Centre, open to federal employees, and in research data centres located in universities across Canada.
So far I've mainly spoken about the data products we make available to our users, but StatsCan also provides a wide range of analytical products, mindful of the federal government's need for analysis that is relevant to policy, program, and legislative development. Doing a quick search on The Daily, I found a number of recent articles taking a gender-based approach to analysis, covering topics such as gender differences in financial literacy, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, in health and in employment, among others. Several studies on diverse groups of women also came up, including articles on senior women, aboriginal women, and women belonging to a visible minority group.
On slide 8 you will see a number of titles pulled from this search. Notably in 2015-16 we released seven chapters of the 7th Edition of “Women in Canada”. This statistical compendium is a collaboration with Status of Women Canada that has been produced roughly every five years since 1985. The information presented in this publication helps fulfill the Government of Canada's commitment to encourage GBA+ by painting a comprehensive gender-based portrait of the Canadian population, including sections on family and living arrangements, health, education, paid and unpaid work, and crime.
Here are a couple of highlights from recent chapters showing how this publication not only looks at gender differences in the population, but also intersecting factors, like education and diversity characteristics.
On slide 9, immigrant women of core working age are more likely to have university degrees than non-immigrant women, but they are also more likely to be unemployed than non-immigrant women and take longer to integrate into the labour force than immigrant men. On slide 10, aboriginal women are less likely than the non-aboriginal population to have obtained a university degree and less likely to be employed, but among degree holders, aboriginal women are slightly more likely than non-aboriginal women to be employed. In this type of analysis we're looking at gender, but also multiple intersecting factors that we think provide key information to our stakeholders in other departments.
As slide 11 shows, we know that our data and analytical products are reaching federal departments. Recently I attended a GBA+ champion event hosted by Status of Women and have put out a call for examples of how Statistics Canada data has helped the department to support GBA+. I have a number of examples. I'll skip through those, but my colleague from Finance has given a number of examples already.
We also play a role on the international scene. You can see that on slide 12.
I'll jump right to the concluding remarks.
Stats Canada is, first and foremost, a provider of information. Through our many statistical programs and surveys we are able to provide sex disaggregated data on a broad range of social and economic topics through data tables, microdata files, and analytical products. Our products are always developed keeping data users in mind, routinely considering gender and various intersecting identity factors. In recent years we have taken steps to make our data even more easily accessible to users and have contributed to a number of analytical products to help facilitate GBA+ in the development of policies and programs and legislation, and we will continue to engage with other departments.
Thank you.