Mr. Speaker, I have heard a good deal with which I can agree but I became a little confused with the amendment. I listened to it as carefully as I could. Perhaps I did not get the full sense of it but any action we might take with respect to the motion on the Order Paper today might not involve gender bias. That is how I understood it.
The member was speaking of directing our efforts toward the people who need our help most. It seems to me that when we talk about child care, apart from the children, the people who need help most are women. When we talk about single parents we know the vast majority of single parents are women. Therefore they are the ones who need support.
We think of some of the areas that the members opposite mentioned in which women are moving and making progress but in which they are still behind. An example would be in science and technology, in colleges and universities and in the workforce.
It seems to me that at the moment, although goodness knows we do need improvements in science and technology and education of all sorts, the people most in need are female students. They have moved in other areas such as the arts and the humanities but they have moved least in science and technology.
Similarly, if we look at the professional schools of all sorts, we would discover that women are still in the minority. I realize that there are other groups that need our support but women are the people who need our assistance most.
In the general area of income, we can obviously break out all sorts of groups that are in the below average income category. However here is this mammoth group which is the majority in the country, females, and the statistics all show that it is significantly behind the other large group which is males as far as income is concerned.
In my constituency, over two-thirds of women with children of school age work at the present time. They represent a low income group in my riding. I wonder if the member or the members opposite would care to comment on this point. How do we proceed on these matters without identifying women as people who are at the present time in need of support so they can move forward in these areas?