8 Things to Know about Women & the Economy
Ellie Langford Parks
1. Women represent a growing economic force as business owners & employees.
Four out of 5 businesses in Canada are started by women.
More than 821,000 women entrepreneurs (3 times the 1985 total) now contribute more than $18 billion to the economy annually.
In 1999, 55% of women aged 15 and over had jobs (1976: 42%), making up 45.7% of Canada’s total workforce.
Women-owned and women-led businesses now surpass Canada’s top 100 companies in job creation: 1.7 million jobs to 1.5 million.
2. Women are increasingly prominent in management & in the professions. Women currently account for almost half the total workforce engaged as managers, doctors, dentists, and business and financial professionals. In 2002-03, nearly 11,000 women were full-time faculty members of Canadian universities, a rise of 50% over the 1990-91 academic year. In 2001, women accounted for 30% of full-time academic university instructors and 56.4% of total university enrollment.
3. Women do most of the “invisible” work in the home that, while unpaid, is vital to our economy & quality of life. Women do two-thirds of the 2.5 billion hours of unpaid work performed in Canada annually. The value of household work performed annually in Canada ranged from $210.8 billion to $318.8 billion in 1992, or 30.6%-46.6% of the Gross Domestic Product.
4. Women predominate in nonprofit & voluntary organizations: the foundation of our communities. Nonprofit and voluntary organizations employed 2 million Canadians in 2003, and logged 2 billion volunteer hours. 50-75% of nonprofit sector employees are women. 54% of all volunteers (80-90% in some sectors) are women.
5. Women are over-represented in non-standard (ie part-time, occasional, seasonal) & minimum wage employment. Women form 70% of the part-time workforce in Canada. Women and youth account for 83% of Canada’s minimum wage workers. Annual salaries have remained stagnant in much of the voluntary sector since 1990: as low as $20,000 for daycare services and civic and social organizations; and $27,000 for mental health/substance abuse services and social advocacy organizations. 6. Despite their increasing role in the paid workforce, women’s wages & share of the national wealth remain well behind that of men. Women employed full-time earn on average 73% of what men with full-time jobs earn (1997). Women in Canada enjoy 63% of the disposable income that men do (2001). |
Photo Credit: WordWorks |
7. Women make up a disproportionate share of Canada’s poor. Nearly one in five Canadian women live in poverty (2.8 million or 19%, compared to 16% of men). That statistic includes one in four immigrant women (27%), and possibly two in five Aboriginal women (43%). In 1994, women made up over half (54%) of adults living in families that draw social assistance. The average income of female lone-parent families is $34,357 (43% of the average income of 2-parent families and 71% of male lone-parent families). 56% of lone-parent families headed by women had incomes below the low income cut-offs, as did 49% of senior women who lived alone.
8. Women remain very under-represented in our law-making and judicial institutions.
References
- Women Entrepreneurs: Resources & Links Women Entrepreneurs - General (Royal Bank of Canada, 2005)
- Women in Canada 2000 - Highlights (Statistics Canada, 2000)
- The Daily, 24 Febuary 2005 - Study: The rising profile of women academics (Statistics Canada, 2005)
- Canadian Social Trends (Statistics Canada, 1996)
- Value of Household Work in Canada (Statistics Canada, 1994)
- Hill, Michael H. et al., Cornerstones of Community: Highlights of the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations - 2003 revised (Statistics Canada, 2005), pp. 9-10
- Louise Mailloux, Heather Horak and Colette Godin, Motivation at the Margins: Gender Issues in the Canadian Voluntary Sector (Statistics Canada, for the Voluntary Sector Initiative Secretariat. March 31, 2002)
- Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Statistics Canada, 2000), p. 103
- Marika Morris and Tahira Gonsalves, “Women & Poverty Fact Sheet: Third Edition, 2005” (Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, 2005), pp. 2-3
- Louise Mailloux, et al., Motivation at the Margins, op. cit
- The Daily, 23 March 1998 - Earnings of Men and Women, Statistics Canada
- “Canada’s Response to the UN Questionnaire to Governments on Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the Outcome of the Twenty-Third Special Session of the General Assembly (2000)”
- Women in Canada 2000, op.cit., pp. 137, 259
- Morris and Gonsalves, op. cit., pp. 2-3
- Katherine Scott, “Women and the CHST: A Profile of Women Receiving Social Assistance in 1994” (Canadian Council on Social Development and the Centre for International Statistics, March 1998), p. 17
- Glen Drover, Women's Income and Poverty in Canada Revisited (Canadian Association of Social Workers, 2004), p. 6
- Women in Canada 2000 - Highlights, op.cit
- Women and Men in Canada: A Statistical Glance - 2003 Edition
(Status of Women Canada, 2003)
This article was originally written for the Women in CED special issue of
Making Waves: Canada's CED Magazine. Ellie Langford Parks is BC/Yukon
Regional Co-ordinator for the Canadian Community Economic Development (CED)
Network.
Contact her at eparks@telus.net
