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THE FEMINIST DOZEN Thirteen Essential Provincial Election Issues for Women Voters Return to Main Menu 1. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN The issues for women: Violence against women doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it exists because women’s inequality exists.  Women’s economic security and respect of their Human Rights are essential and intertwined components in the struggle to end violence against women.  In BC, however, we have seen women forced further into poverty over the last few years, and becoming more and more disenfranchised from their Human Rights. Although the BC Liberals have made a point to put $12.5 million back into anti-violence services in the weeks leading up to the election, this does not make up the $18 million that they have already cut.  Funding for Women’s Centres and Sexual Assault Centres have not been restored.  As well, the BC Liberals have made deep slashes into income assistance, legal aid for family law, childcare, and other resources – cuts which have had a disproportionate impact on women, and which have dramatically reduced the options women have when trying to escape abusive situations.  The BC Liberals have also all but eliminated women’s access to redress through Human Rights mechanisms, by ending legal aid for poverty law, eradicating the BC Human Rights Commission, and eliminating funding to Women’s Centres in March 2004. What women need from an elected government: Any government that claims to care for women’s safety and security of person will ensure that women’s equality rights are respected, first and foremost, and will work to end women’s economic inequality.  2. WOMEN’S POVERTY The issues for women: In BC, one third of income assistance recipients are one-parent families, and of those 88.5% are led by mothers.  The BC Liberal cuts to the Ministry of Human Resources in 2002 of $581 million.  This has resulted in a deep impact on women and their families with benefits like the Family Maintenance Allowance and the Earnings Exemption being completely cut.  The Liberal government’s move to push women off welfare and into work has not moved women out of poverty.  Though the BC Liberals point to “exit polling” to show that many welfare recipients have left the system, these polls actually reveal that no one knows what has happened to the majority of these individuals.  Additionally, of the public sector jobs cut by the BC Liberals, 75% were those held by women.  Many “new” jobs over the past several years have been part-time, temporary, or contractual jobs, which ghettoize women in an insecure labour market and increase their risk of poverty.  Further cuts, such as those ending low income women’s ability to access a lawyer when dealing with family court issues, increasing fees for government services, etc., have only served to push women further into poverty as they attempt to stretch their limited incomes to cover these costs.  With the ever-increasing gap between low wages and rent and the lack of pay equity legislation in this province, even women working full time experience extreme difficulties providing for themselves and their families. What women need from an elected government: A truly healthy economic climate must be one that ensures women have equal access to a affordable education, a living wage, and full-time, secure employment.  3. LEGAL AID and ADVOCACY The issues for women: While the BC Liberals recently announced pre-election funding of 4.6 million going into legal services, this figure actually represents less than 12% of what they have already cut since taking office.   In January 2002, the BC Liberal Government cut funding to the Legal Services Society by almost 40% and ordered that LSS concentrate on criminal law, while cutting family law, poverty law, and immigration law services.  Legal aid for family law is now only available to those who can document that they fear for their own or their children’s safety.  Those who seek redress when their rights are breached by government agencies and services can no longer access legal assistance at all.  These budget cuts have affected access to Legal Services and Community Law offices across the province, and have particularly impacted isolated and rural communities.  Additionally, one third of the provinces courthouses have also been shut down, limiting access to justice even more. With the May 2001 elimination of the Ministry of Women’s Equality, one half of the province’s citizens lost a crucial platform for advocacy.  The replacement, a junior Minister of State, has a very different mandate than the old Ministry, which was “dedicated to advancing equality for women.”  Additionally, the elimination of all core funding to all Women’s Centers in the province and the closing of some is a huge step back in advocacy for women. What women need from an elected government: A person’s ability to pay should not impact the level of justice they have access to.   Legal aid must be fully funded, the Ministry of Women’s Equality must be restored, and funding to organizations that provide advocacy to women, such as Women’s Centres, must be restored. 4. CHILD CARE The issues for women: The 1984 Royal Commission on Equality of Employment noted that “child care is the ramp that provides equal access to the work force for mothers.”  Child care is also a major source of employment for women.  For mothers, lack of affordable child care may mean having to be out of the work force for several years, or part-time participation only.  This results in a reduction of lifetime earnings, lost opportunities for career advancement and smaller pension benefits than would have been the case otherwise.  For providers of child care, the reduction in government financial support means job insecurity and deteriorating working conditions The BC Liberals have drastically cut the budget to the daycare system by $24 million and raised income thresholds for daycare subsidies.  With the majority of this province’s mothers with young children being in the paid labour force and relying on child care, these cuts hurt women and their families the most.  Single parents are now considered ‘employable’ after their youngest child reaches the age of three.  This in combination with BC’s failure to provide high quality licensed daycare facilities and universal daycare has resulted in many mothers lacking healthy alternatives to care for their own children. What women need from an elected government: Women need access to safe, affordable, and accessible child care.  Subsidies for child care must meet the real cost of caring for our children – our most vulnerable citizens – and must ensure that child care providers receive a living wage for their work.  5. HEALTH CARE The issues for women: Changes in government health care policies include an increase in the premiums that must be paid to the Medical Services Plan (MSP) in order to access provincial health services, a reduction in the kinds of services that are covered under MSP, restrictions on eligibility for the Pharmacare program, restrictions on eligibility for home care, the closure of many residential or long term care facilities – the majority of whose residents are elderly women – the closure of thousands of hospital beds, and the loss of “good” women’s jobs in the health care sector. Health care restructuring has injured women - as workers, as patients, and as unpaid caregivers.  Reduced services associated with the centralization of health care hits rural areas especially hard, with especially serious consequences for Aboriginal women.  Violence, particularly spousal violence and sexual assault, remains common.  Yet the Attorney General has retreated from a zero tolerance policy and encouraged Crown Prosecutors to divert domestic violence cases away from the courts.  Liberal cuts to community-based victims’ services, legal aid, and Women’s Centres further threaten women’s safety. What women need from an elected government: Women need a more complete approach to health care, one that takes into account women’s vulnerability to violence, understands the unique difficulties facing rural women and their families, does not demand women pick up the work of providing health care to their families for free, and one which restores access to the services that have been denied to women and their families in recent years.  6. HUMAN RIGHTS The issues for women: Among the first actions taken by the new BC Liberal Government in 2001 were to abolish the Ministry of Women’s Equality and to repeal Pay Equity legislation from the BC Human Rights Code.  In October 2002, they also abolished the BC Human Rights Commission, the result of which is that no independent body exists with a mandate to protect BC’s citizens from discrimination.  The current Human Rights Tribunal does not have the same proactive mandate.  As outlined elsewhere in this document, the BC Liberals have also altered many other key pieces of legislation and policy, and have cut programs and services, without regard for the disproportionate impact those cuts may have upon women, Aboriginal people, and marginalized groups in BC.  In 2002, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women took the unprecedented step of singling out the BC Government for special criticism, the first time in history a Canadian province has been singled out by the U.N.  The Committee recommended that the BC Government analyse the negative impact on women of its recent legal and other measures and amend the measures, as necessary. What women need from an elected government: Without respect of our most basic Human Rights, women in BC can never hope to attain full equality.  BC’s women need a government that will not only restore the Human Rights protections that women spent decades fighting for, but will also work to improve the status of women as full and equal citizens of the province.  7. PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS The issues for women: Since 2001, the Liberal government has cut more than 20,000 public sector jobs.  Women employed 71% of these jobs, which nearly represents one in five employed women in the province.  Women were also holding a disproportionate number of the jobs that were eliminated—75%.  The passing of Bill 29 in January 2002 resulted in the lay off of thousands of support staff and the contracting out of these services.  Wages have almost been cut in half, now the lowest in Canada.  85% of the support staff workers are female and mostly women of colour.  This takes us back more than thirty years in pay equity gains. Although private sector employers prefer to believe that public sector workers are ‘overpaid,’ in fact research demonstrates the opposite.  Women, relative to men doing comparable work, are underpaid in the private sector, where they are far less likely to be unionized or benefit from pay equity policies.  The elimination of thousands of secure and well-paying public sector jobs undermines the move toward gender parity. What women need from an elected government: Public sector posts are central to female employment not only in terms of the numbers employed, but because, until now, they were more likely than other female jobs to be secure, well paying, and unionized.  Rather than relying almost exclusively on the private sector to create employment for women, an elected government will ensure that women’s equality rights are balanced with private sector interests through public sector jobs.  8. EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS The issues for women: The Liberal government’s changes to employment standards legislation gave ‘flexibility’ to employers and weakened safeguards for work.  These changes disproportionately affect women, who make up to most of part-time and minimum wage workers in British Columbia.  Changes to enforcement will be felt most strongly by the most vulnerable workers, those in contingent employment – part-time, seasonal, temporary, and contract workers – who are largely female. The Liberal government has introduced child labour legislation that allows children under the age of fifteen can work for up to four hours on a school day and twenty hours per week.  As well, the implementation of the new ‘training wage’ of $6 an hour for the first 500 hours of paid work has significantly decreased the wages of many women, causing a significant impact on women who have never entered the workforce.  In addition, workers – including those who have been sexually harassed on the job – are now left to fend for themselves, supplied with ‘self-help kits’ that are available only in English.  Women’s vulnerability to violence and abuse in the workplace is greater than it’s been in many years.  What women need from an elected government: Employment Standards legislation must be restored to pre-2001 standards, in order to ensure that women’s basic rights are not being violated.  Women also need access to redress that includes direct, personal assistance.    9. PAY EQUITY The issues for women: Pay equity legislation – which is based on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value - exists at the federal level and in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and the Yukon.  Just prior to the last provincial election the NDP government passed legislation to further pay equity measures by adding a pay equity provision to the Human Rights Code.  The Liberals did not take long to repeal the amendment to the Human Rights Code.  A task force to study the issue of pay equity in the private sector documented the gender wage gap but recommended against action.  Nor has legislation been forthcoming. Although the Pay Equity Policy Framework, with its provision for 1% for funding equity, remains on the books, the Liberal government has abandoned proactive measures to end pay discrimination. What women need from an elected government: Women require an immediate reinstatement of hard-won pay equity legislation. 10. WOMEN’S UNPAID LABOUR The issues for women: BC Liberal cuts to programs and services have done nothing to decrease the amount of work that still needs to be done.  In private homes, women are performing an increased amount of unpaid elder care, child care, and health care duties.  In communities, the majority of volunteers picking up the work once done by health care, social service, and other community organizations are women.  Women are being forced to carry the brunt of the provincial cutbacks to programs and services.  Even worse, an expectation exists by government that women will do this work for free. According to U.N. population statistics, women perform over two-thirds of the world’s paid and unpaid work, earn 10% of its income, and own 1% of it’s wealth.  While it’s easy to think of women’s unpaid labour burden as a primarily “third world” phenomenon, the reality is that BC’s women are also facing an increased and unfair share of the burden that was once paid for by our tax dollars.  This burden is increasing women’s risk of health complications, decreasing their access to income as well as their participation in economic life, and putting them at further risk of violence. What women need from an elected government: A provincial government cannot expect women to pick up the slack for programs and services that government no longer feels like funding.  Any changes in program and service funding and delivery must include steps to ensure that the burden of change does not fall onto the backs of women. 11. ABORIGINAL WOMEN The issues for women: Aboriginal women disproportionately live in poverty, with incomes considerably lower than Aboriginal men and non-Aboriginal women. The average annual income of Aboriginal women is $13,300, compared to $18,200 for aboriginal men and $19,350 for non-aboriginal women. In British Columbia, Aboriginal and women and girls are disadvantaged in many intersecting ways that militate against their full development and their equal exercise and enjoyment of their rights. Although jurisdiction over “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” is formally assigned to the federal government within the Canadian constitutional division of powers, federal legislation allows for substantial provincial control of Aboriginal peoples. Discrimination, poverty, and a lack of provincial interest in the legal status and conditions of Aboriginal women and girls and their communities have all combined to put Aboriginal women and girls at a much greater risk of violence and abuse than any other group of women in British Columbia.  This increased risk has led to the disappearance and deaths of many Aboriginal women.  What women need from an elected government: First Nations women can no longer be continually denied assistance, and cannot afford to keep receiving piece-meal services because of the lack of clarity and the competing interests of federal, provincial and territorial governments regarding their constitutional, moral and financial responsibilities for providing social programs and services to Aboriginal peoples.  A provincial government will step up to the plate and ensure that Aboriginal women are consulted and given primary consideration when any legislative, policy, or program change is made or altered.  12. WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES The issues for women: People with disabilities who depend on income assistance have not been spared the Liberal rod.  The previous designations Disability I and Disability II under the Disability Benefits Program Act have been replaced with new classifications:  Persons with Persistent and Multiple Barriers to employment (PPMB) and Persons With Disabilities (PWD).  In each case, people with disabilities collecting income assistance benefits had to re-qualify for assistance.  The requirements are difficult to meet, and the emphasis is also changed from disability to employability.  Those people with disabilities who cannot quality for PPMB can apply for PWD status.  This involves completing a complicated and confusing 23 page reassessment, filled in by the applicant, his/her doctor and another assessor (such as a physical therapist or a psychologist) that focuses on the ability to accomplish tasks required for daily living but with no accounting for the time taken to accomplish these tasks.  This process has created severe stress among those who must reapply and hardship for those disqualified and shifted to the lower benefit levels that do not recognize additional costs of disabilities.  It also strikes at many women who have a higher incidence of so-called ‘invisible’ disabilities such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, arthritis and depression.  What women need from an elected government: Women with disabilities require a simpler process to access disability benefits, one that respects the limitations of their disabilities.  Women with disabilities need better access to resources, health benefits, and nutritional supplements, and there must be an end to narrow definitions of “disability” that discriminate against women’s real health problems.  13. IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE WOMEN The issues for women: The changes to British Columbia’s social programs and legal protections outlined below also have a particular discriminatory impact on immigrant and refugee women because of their positions in British Columbia society.  Women and girls who belong to racialized groups, whether or not they are immigrants or refugees, also experience the consequences of British Columbia’s changes to social protections from within a specific social, political and legal context.   Changes to legal aid, employment standards and protection from domestic violence have a harsh and disproportionate impact on women and girls who are immigrants, refugees and/or members of racialized groups. Immigrant women are at a particular risk of isolation, which furthers their vulnerability to violence and abuse in the work force.  This may be exacerbated by their dependent status on their family members, particularly if they are being sponsored by a spouse – women whose abusive partner is also their sponsor can no longer access legal aid for help with their pursuing their landed status.  Additionally, immigrant and refugee women tend to be forced into greater poverty due to workforce discrimination and ghettoization. What women need from an elected government: In determining any legislative, policy, or program change, a BC government must ensure consideration is made of the social, political and legal context of women and girls of colour, and women and girls of colour who are also immigrant and refugees.   An elected government must also make sure that women who are at risk of violence and abuse have access to direct service in languages other than English, have access to appropriate and specialized services when necessary, and have increased opportunities for immigrant and refugee women to escape ghettoized employment.  Sources British Columbia Moves Backwards on Women’s Equality Submission of the B.C. CEDAW Group to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on the occasion of the Committee’s review of Canada’s 5th Report January 23, 2003 Losing Ground: the Effects of Government Cutbacks on Women in British Columbia, 2001 - 2005 A Report by: Gillian Creese, Professor, Anthropology & Sociology, University of British Columbia, and Veronica Strong-Boag, Professor, Educational Studies & Women Studies, University of British Columbia March 8, 2005 Return to Main Menu

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