Good morning. I'm Karen Campbell from the Canadian Women's Foundation, Canada's public foundation for gender justice and equality. I'm joining today from London, Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Attawandaron, Anishinabe, Lunaapéewak and Haudenosaunee peoples.
Thank you for the invitation to speak on the pressing issue of women's economic empowerment. Women, particularly Black, racialized, migrant and low-income women, bore the brunt of economic losses in the pandemic. An uncertain recovery has ushered in neither stability nor security. Those who experienced the most marginalization are feeling cost-of-living pressures disproportionately.
For close to 30 years we have funded organizations serving women and gender-diverse people in the community economic development sector. We have invested more than $17 million in programs supporting them to pursue careers in the lucrative trades and tech industries, to explore self-employment and to join the social finance ecosystem.
Despite significant gains in women's educational attainment, many of the barriers to entry and advancement that we saw in the 1990s remain. Representation is still woefully inadequate in the tech and trade sectors. The gender pay gap persists; workplace violence and sexual harassment occur at alarming rates; not enough workplaces have embraced flexible work schedules to accommodate caregiving needs; and sexist workplace cultures persist, hindering women's economic empowerment.
At the foundation we know that funding community-based, labour market-access programs is vitally important. However, it is only a partial solution when the work environment's diverse women and gender-diverse workers enter, and it is set up to exclude them. Transformative culture shifts in male-dominated sectors and policies that support system changes are needed to achieve women's economic empowerment.
In recent years, we've seen an exciting example of this kind of transformative change. For a decade, we funded an organization called Women Unlimited, which partnered with Nova Scotia Community College to provide preapprenticeship training and wraparound supports to women entering the skilled trades. In 2021 that program was formally integrated into the college system, and a wraparound support fund for women was established to enable their full participation in their educational program. The integration of Women Unlimited into the college system demonstrates the school's commitment to providing the gender-specific supports that students need when training for and entering a male-dominated field.
At the foundation we have taken on a range of strategic partnerships that build momentum for transformative change. For example, in 2018 we partnered with YWCA Canada, Catalyst Canada and Plan International Canada on a project called “In Good Company”, through which we work with a small, motivated group of businesses in the skilled trades and tech sectors to enhance their diversity, equity and inclusion practices with a view to modelling what it takes to build more inclusive and welcoming workplaces for diverse women and gender-diverse people.
Over the decades, we have seen that women and gender-diverse people often turn to self-employment because of the barriers and forms of discrimination they encounter in the labour market. Many of these entrepreneurs are motivated by social justice goals, and they are not interested in replicating the barriers and challenges that have impeded their economic empowerment.
Last year we welcomed funding through the Government of Canada's women entrepreneurship strategy, which has enabled us to support Black, indigenous and racialized women and gender-diverse entrepreneurs, to build businesses grounded in feminist business practices that foster inclusive workplaces and to build equitable local economies. Continued federal investment in the women entrepreneurship strategy holds considerable transformative potential.
Since 2019 we have also invested in 90 diverse social-purpose enterprises led by women and gender-diverse people through our investment readiness program, which is funded by Employment and Social Development Canada. Through this program, we are supporting innovative entrepreneurs to join the social innovation ecosystem. Strengthening these organizations ensures that they can thrive and keep making a positive impact in communities all over the country. This highly effective program is coming to an end in March 2024. We hope to see it renewed and extended to match the full 10 years of the social finance fund.
That being said, the economic empowerment of women and gender-diverse people requires more than the kinds of investments that the Canadian Women's Foundation can make, even though it is Canada's largest foundation focused on gender equity.
Systems change, such as the development of national, affordable child care, closing the gender pay gap through effective pay equity policies, and creating affordable housing targeted to women and their families, is essential. These strategies, along with ensuring that workplaces are violence- and harassment-free, are crucial to setting a stage on which programs and individual efforts can achieve individual empowerment.
Thank you.