Women's Poverty is an Equality Violation
| Author | Gwen Brodsky & Shelagh Day |
| Pages | 319-344 |
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Women’s Poverty is an Equality Violation
Gwen Brodsky & Shelagh Day
A. INTRODUCTION
Poverty is an urgent equality issue for women al l over the world. Since
the Depression of the s, Canada has had a histor y of good social pro-
grammes, and those progra mmes have been a central eg alitarian force in
women’s lives. Public health care, childcare, aordable public education,
unemployment insurance, and social assistance have all provided ways
of ameliorating women’s inequa lity, shii ng some of the burden of u n-
paid caregivi ng to the state, and making available more opportunities for
women to engage in paid work, education, and community life. Income
security programs l ike employment i nsurance and social assistance have
also soened women’s dependence on men, ensuring that women have in-
dependent income at crucial times in their lives.
But this has changed in Canada. For some time now we have been ex-
periencing restructuring “Canad ian-style,” including a race to the bottom
among provincial governments to eliminate the entitlement to social assis-
tance, narrow eligibilit y rules, and reduce welfare benets. In recent years,
successive governments have hacked away at the social safet y net. Cuts to
social programmes have hurt women.
e picture of women’s poverty and overall economic inequality is
shocking in a country as wealthy as Canada. Women have moved into the
paid labour force in e ver-increasing numbers over the last two deca des,
but they do not enjoy equality there: not in earnings, in access to nontra-
ditional jobs and mana gerial positions, or in benets. e gap between
men’s and women’s full-time, full-year wages is due in part to occupational
segregation in the workforce, which remains entrenched, and to the lower
pay accorded to traditionally female jobs. Although the wage gap has de-
creased in recent years, with women who are employed on a full-time, f ull-
year ba sis now ea rning about percent of comparable men, pa rt of the
narrowing of thi s gap is due to a decline in men’s earnings, rather tha n to
an increase in women’s.
Women’s annual average income from all sources is about percent
of men’s. is signica nt dierence in income is partly attributable to the
wage gap, but also pa rtly attributable to t he fact that women work fewer
hours than men in the paid labour force because they can not obtain full-
time work and because they carry more responsibility for unpaid caregiv-
ing duties. In , percent of women, compared to percent of men,
held non-standard jobs — that is, they were self-employed, had multiple
jobs, or jobs that were temporary or part-time. ese jobs are unlikely to be
unionized and unli kely to provide pensions or benets.
Some groups of women in Canada are more marginalized than others in
the labour force. Aboriginal women are heavily concentrated in low-paying
sales, ser vice, and clerical jobs. ey also have h igher unemployment rates
and lower earnings levels than other women. Women of col our ha ve hi gher
education levels than other women, but not better jobs and better earnings.
Instead, they too have higher unemployment rates and lower earnings than
other women and than their male counterparts. Immig rant women also
generally earn less than other women and in itially accept employment for
which they are overqualied. ey are more likely than other women to be
employed in manufacturing work. Women with disabilities earn less than
their male counterparts and less than other women in most age groups.
Even though women’s earnings are substantially lower than men’s,
women play a signicant role in keeping their families out of poverty
through their earnings. Without women’s earn ings, poverty rates would
rise dram atically and the nu mber of poor famil ies would more than triple.
In addition to diminished rewards for their labour, women do not enjoy an
equal share of wealth, including property, savings, and other resources.
e extreme manifestation of women’s economic inequality is women’s
disproportionate poverty. More women than men are poor. Between
and , the poverty rate for women uctuated between . percent and
. percent, always higher than the rate of poverty for men.
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