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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
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CONCLUSION
98. All of the government actions described in the paragraphs above and
considered on their own have serious and significant effects on the ability
of women in British Columbia to achieve full equality in the political, economic,
social, cultural, and civil fields. However, the Committee must consider
the collective or cumulative impact of these measures as well. Women
whose life opportunities are reduced by economic barriers to education (see
paragraphs 68-70) have reduced flexibility and power in the labour market
and will tend to end up in the secondary, non-unionized, minimum pay labour
sector. These same women will face reduced state protection, because
of cuts to employment standards legislation, in combating employer-imposed
conditions of work that contravene basic fairness. Should these women also
have children, their flexibility to participate fully in the paid labour
force will be reduced by cutbacks to government child care services and
state tolerance for irregular work schedules with no overtime pay.
Many women will, because of conflicts between child care responsibilities
and work place structures, be unable to participate in paid employment.
In these circumstances, some women will be forced to look to the government
for income assistance, only to find that reduced conditions of eligibility
and lowered benefit levels may in turn make this source of income unfeasible
as well. Some women and girls will be coerced into engaging in prostitution
because of the lack of any other economic options. Further structuring this
situation, will be a reduction in access to affordable and quality health
care, resulting in deterioration of the health and well-being of these women
and their children. The situation just described, in all its detail, will
only be worse for those women facing domestic abuse and for those women
who are aboriginal, of a racialized group, disabled, immigrants or refugees,
or otherwise vulnerable to additional forms of systemic discrimination.
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