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March 8, 2011 - No. 34 Celebrate the Centenary of International Women's Day! Our Security Lies in the Fight for the Rights of All!   Celebrate the Centenary of
International Women's Day! For Your Information Celebrate the Centenary of International Women's Day! Our Security Lies in the Fight for the Rights of All!On the occasion of International Women's Day, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) sends militant revolutionary greetings to all the women in its ranks and in the Canadian workers' movement and from all walks of life, as well as women all over the world fighting to provide a way forward for themselves, their families and peoples. We hail the struggles of women everywhere for their political, economic, cultural and social rights, and against imperialist war.
Across Canada, women's opposition to the neoliberal
anti-social offensive is part and parcel of the
working class movement which is developing its own
independent politics so as to resolve the crisis in a manner which
favours the interests of the people, not the rich. As the producers of
the wealth society depends on
for its living and those who
bring into being and raise the next
generation of society, women stake their claim
on the wealth they produce and demand it be
used to fund the social programs which are required to provide the
rights of all with a guarantee. This includes the right to health care,
the care and security for seniors, childcare, education and recreation
for children and youth, and all the things human beings require to
flourish. The militant participation of women in the Hamilton Day of Action on January 29 was decisive in the success of that exhilarating day. So too the participation of women will be key in the successful mobilization for the April 9 Toronto Day of Action to oppose the wrecking and privatization of public services, and in the May First Rally and Demonstration on Parliament Hill called by USW Local 1005, to demand that governments uphold public right, not monopoly right. Participation in these events will be another step to resoundingly provide the question of "Who Decides?" with the answer "We Decide!"   This is all the more necessary as the
Harper government and its parade of anti-women Ministers of the Status
of Women, and governments at all levels continue to dismantle
arrangements
that provide even a minimum of security for women. The Harper
government will not fund
investigations into the disappearance and murder of thousands of women,
the majority of whom are Aboriginal. It has also recently decided to
once again allow Canadian Border Security agents to enter women's
shelters to
issue deportation orders. It has cut
social programs such as childcare, programs for new immigrants and
abandoned more than two-thirds of the working population to poverty in
their old age. It is a clear message from the powers that be: women are
fair game and they, along with their fellow workers, youth, retirees,
national
minorities, First Nations and
everyone else are to fend for themselves. This is unacceptable. Meanwhile, as the U.S. imperialists, NATO, Canada and others threaten a "humanitarian" invasion of Libya as a prelude to even greater disasters for the peoples of the region, women are also in the van of the anti-war movement. More than ever, an anti-war government is required. Such a government will not only refuse to participate in crimes against the peace and humanity but it will be a factor for peace in the world by actively defending the sovereignty of all nations and opposing the use of force to settle conflicts between and within nations. On this International Women's Day, women need a
sovereign Canada with a
self-reliant economy that guarantees the rights and security of all.
They need a Workers' Opposition to
demand that governments uphold public right, not monopoly
right. They need an anti-war government which is a factor for peace.
All out to support the fighting women to realize their demands! All Out to Celebrate the Centenary of
International Women's Day!     Militant participation of women in the Hamilton Day of Action, January 29, 2011. Women Reject the Direction the
Charest Government Is Taking Quebec Stop Paying the Rich!
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The Shelter/Sanctuary/Status campaign has called a rally on International Women's Day outside of the Toronto offices of the Immigration and Refugee Board. The demonstration is to demand the immediate withdrawal of a national policy issued by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) ordering its officers to wait outside or raid women's shelters to detain and deport women survivors of violence.
On Friday, February 11 a number of women from anti-violence and immigration/refugee services groups were called to a meeting with CBSA representatives from the GTA region. At the meeting the CBSA announced that they had revoked a policy that had been agreed to by their local representatives in October 2010 and reasserted their intention to enforce deportation orders and arrests against women and their children who are trying to escape abuse and assault. The CBSA has now issued a national directive spelling out the conditions under which its officers are to enter women's shelters to apprehend people under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Immigration Enforcement has also been given instructions to follow women survivors of violence on their way to and from spaces where they may seek support.
The Shelter /Sanctuary/ Status campaign and services for immigrants and refugees are demanding that the CBSA honour their 2010 agreement and stay out of women's anti-violence spaces, including shelters. An activist who participated in the meeting with CBSA stated that "Women's right to protection from violence under international, national and provincial agreements and legislation cannot be denied to undocumented women and women with precarious status in Canada. Without guarantees of access to shelter, services and support without fear of arrest, undocumented women and their children can be trapped by abusers in their homes and at work, afraid to stay and afraid to leave. This puts yet another lie to Canada's claims to be a progressive voice on issues of violence against women."
On February 16, the Shelter/Sanctuary/Status campaign stated, "This policy is a major reversal of the victories won by grassroots organizing and must be opposed. Over the last two years, migrant women and anti-racist organizers with the Shelter/Sanctuary/Status Campaign, through rallies, protests, press conferences, delegations and actions, forced the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre to pass a policy in October 2010 that it would not enter, or wait outside any space serving survivors of violence to arrest undocumented women. The policy also stated that immigration enforcement would not call these spaces to verify the identity of women in these spaces."
The campaign points out that, "This new policy forces survivors of abuse and violence to live with the added fear of deportation. Immigration Enforcement is sending a clear message to women survivors of violence that for undocumented women, no space is safe from the violence of deportation."
CBSA Out of Women's Shelters!
Marches Across Canada Demand Action on
Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women
Marches across Canada on February 14 commemorated the more than 3,000 women who have been murdered or gone missing since the 1970s. More than 2,000 people participated in the action in Vancouver to demand justice and mark the 20th anniversary of the march. Events were also held in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, London, Ottawa and Montreal to remember and honour the women and to smash the silence surrounding their disappearances and murders.
Vancouver, February 14, 2011
Toronto held its sixth annual march on this occasion and over 300 aboriginal people, organizations and their allies gathered for the February 14 National Day of Action on Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women. The rally and march, which began at the Toronto Police headquarters at College and Bay and continued to the Coroner's office, was organized by No More Silence, part of a network of activists, academics, researchers, agencies and communities to stop the murders and disappearances of indigenous women. Speakers attributed the murders and disappearances to the history of residential schools, the expropriation of their lands, and the genocidal policies of the government. They vowed to continue fighting to defend themselves, taking as a concrete example the recent stand of the Six Nations near Caledonia, Ontario who stood up to the land developers and the Ontario Provincial Police.
(Photos: Media Coop, TML Daily)
For Your Information
Some Facts on Women in the Workplace
In December 2010 Statistics Canada issued two papers as part of Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report, "Paid Work" and "Economic Well-being." Facts and figures in these reports provide a picture of the current situation of women in Canada and give the lie to the Harper Government's rhetoric that women in Canada have attained "equality."
- In 2009, 58.3 per cent or 8.1 million women in Canada were employed. This compares to 41.9 per cent in 1976 and is more than double the 3.62 million women working at that time. In 1976 women represented 37.1 per cent of all those employed; in 2009 this had increased to 47.9 per cent.
- The percentage of women employed includes women aged 15 to 65. In 2009, just over 77 per cent of women aged 25 to 54 were employed, while between 83 and 84 per cent of men in that age group were employed.
- The percentage of women employed peaked in 2008 at 59.3 per cent, dropping a full percentage point during the latest economic crisis. At the same time women were less severely affected than men, as the percentage of men employed dropped 2.9 per cent to 65.2 per cent in 2009. During the previous two recessions in the early 1980s and ‘90s the percentage of women employed also fell less steeply than that of men.
- During the latest economic crisis, women in nearly all age groups were affected, but women aged 15 to 24 were particularly hard hit, as their employment rate fell 3.2 per cent.
In a comparison of the effect of the deepening of the economic crisis on the rate of employment among men and women of all age groups, only among women aged 55 to 64 did the current deepening of the crisis result in an increased rate of employment -- up from 51.9 per cent in 2008 to 53.1 per cent in 2009.
- The employment rate of women with children has generally been increasing over the past three decades. In 2009, 72.9 per cent of women with children under 16 living at home (as compared to 80.4 per cent of those without children) were part of the paid workforce. This is a sharp increase from 39.1 per cent in 1976.
- Female lone parents are less likely to be employed than mothers in two-parent families. In 2009, 68.9 per cent of female lone parents with children less than age 16 living at home were employed, compared with 73.8 per cent of their counterparts in two-parent families. This represents a major shift from the late 1970s, when female lone parents were more likely to be employed. However from 1995-2008 the proportion of employed lone mothers increased by 20 per cent.
Part-Time Work
- About 73 per cent of employed women worked full-time in 2009, but women were more likely than men to work part-time and nearly 7 out of 10 part-time workers in 2009 (2.2 million) were women. This proportion has changed little over the past three decades. The number of women working fewer than 30 hours per week at their main job has risen slightly from 23.6 per cent in 1976 to 26.9 per cent in 2009. This contrasts with men, whose part-time rate in 2009 was 11.9 per cent, up from 5.6 per cent in 1976.
- In 2009, 54.8 per cent of women, aged 15-24, worked part-time, compared to 38.7 per cent of men in the same age group.
- About 20 per cent of women in the core age group (25 to 54 years) and 28.3 per cent of women aged 55 to 64 worked part-time in 2009. By contrast, the rates of men in part-time work in these age groups were 5.8 and 5.1 per cent respectively.
- In 2009, nearly one in five female part-time workers said they worked part-time because of personal or family responsibilities. Of these 13.4 per cent said they did not work full-time because they were caring for children. In sharp contrast, only 2.3 per cent of male part-time workers cited this as a reason they did not work full-time.
- 25.9 per cent of female part-time employees in 2009 reported wanting full-time employment, but finding only part-time work.
- Women make up a growing share of workers holding more than one job. By 2009, about 56 per cent of multiple job holders were women. The percentage of women holding more than one job continues to grow, while the percentage of men remains relatively constant. In 1987, 4.0 per cent of employed women held multiple jobs; 6.2 per cent of employed women did by 2009; while among men, the percentage working at more than one job over this same period rose only from 4.2 to 4.4 per cent.
- During economic crises, people in greater numbers turn to self-employment and a growing number of women are self-employed. In 2009, nearly 1 million women, 11.9 per cent of all those with jobs, were self-employed, up from 8.6 per cent in 1976. Women accounted for 35.5 per cent of all self-employed workers in 2009, up from 30.7 per cent in 1991 and 26.3 per cent in 1976.
Rate of Unionization
- The percentage of women in unionized jobs has risen substantially since 1976, while it has fallen among men. In 1976, 22.3 per cent of women were in unionized jobs; by 2009, this had increased to 32.6 per cent. Men's unionization has decreased, from 39 per cent in 1976 to 30.3 per cent in 2009. As a result, unionization rates were slightly higher among women than men in 2009.
The rate of unionization is higher among older workers of both genders. For example, while 15.4 per cent of employed women aged 15-24 held unionized jobs, more than 35 per cent of women in the older age groups were in unionized jobs.
Women Continue to Work in "Traditional" Occupations
- The majority of employed women continue to work in the occupations where they have been traditionally concentrated. In 2009, 67 per cent of all employed women worked in teaching, nursing and related health occupations, clerical or other administrative positions, or sales and service occupations.
Conversely, women still make up the overwhelming majority of those working in these occupations. In 2009, 87.1 per cent of nurses and health-related therapists, 75.5 per cent of clerks and other administrators, 65.9 per cent of teachers and 56.9 per cent of sales and service personnel were women.
Relatively few women are employed in most goods-producing occupations, as has traditionally been the case. In 2009, 30.1 per cent of workers in manufacturing were women, as were 19.5 per cent of those in primary industries and just 6.4 per cent of those in transportation, trades, and construction work. The representation of women in manufacturing has fallen (in 1987, 5.8 per cent of women and 9.1 per cent of men were employed in the manufacturing sector; these figures are now 2.9 and 6.3 per cent respectively). In transportation, trades and construction-related occupations, women's representation has increased slightly since the late 1980s, while in primary industries, the percentage of women employed was about the same in 2009 as in 1987.
It is these sectors of the economy, where the workers are for the most part men, that were hardest hit by the current economic slowdown. Women, by contrast, are employed in greater numbers than men in the service sectors such as health care and social assistance, educational services and finance, insurance, real estate and leasing, where employment continued to grow, reducing the impact of the downturn on women.
Unemployment
- 2009 saw the greatest decrease in the number of jobs in the current economic crisis. In that year, the number of unemployed women rose to 608,000, compared to 487,000 in 2008 and 476,000 in 2007. The female unemployment rate jumped to 7.0 per cent in 2009, the highest since 2003.
- Of unemployed women in 2009, 45.6 per cent lost their job or were laid off, 23.7 per cent of unemployed women were labour force re-entrants who had not worked in the past year, and another 9.7 per cent were job market entrants -- they had never been employed.
- The number of women receiving Employment Insurance (EI) income benefits increased in 2009 to a monthly average of about 483,000 recipients, up from about 392,000 per month in 2008. The number of people who received EI benefits as part of work-sharing arrangements increased dramatically from 4,755 in 2008 to 48,343 in 2009. Of these 14,349 were women.
Rate of Employment Lower for Aboriginal Women and Women Not Born in Canada
- In 2009, 51.0 per cent of women born outside of Canada were employed, compared with 60.6 per cent of women born in Canada. Women who immigrated to the country within the previous five years had the lowest rate of employment at 49.1 per cent. The labour market downturn had a greater impact on unemployment rates for immigrant women than for Canadian-born women. In 2009, the female immigrant unemployment rate reached 9.6 per cent, up from 7.4 per cent in 2008: the rate for women born in Canada was 6.3 per cent in 2009, up from 5.2 per cent in 2008.
- In 2009, 53.7 per cent of the female Aboriginal population was employed, compared to 60.6 per cent of their male counterparts. In 2009, Aboriginal women's rate of employment fell 1.1 per cent from 54.8 per cent the year before; the rate for Aboriginal men saw a steeper decline, from 66.1 per cent to 60.6 per cent over the same period. The female Aboriginal unemployment rate in 2009, 12.7 per cent, was nearly twice that of non-Aboriginal women at 6.9 per cent.
Women Continue to Earn Less
- Wages, salaries and net income from self-employment make up the lion's share of income for most Canadian families and individuals younger than 65. In 2008, about 70 per cent of women's income came from employment (65.1 per cent from wages and salaries and less than 4.7 per cent from self-employment); about 17 per cent came from government --- including 3.3 per cent from Old Age Security, 4.0 per cent from Canada/Quebec Pension Plan benefits and 3.0 per cent from child tax benefits; 4.3 per cent came from investment income; and 6.3 per cent came from private retirement income.
- Canadian women earned an average total income of $30,100 in 2008, up 13 per cent from $26,300 in 2000. While 13 per cent growth was greater than the 7 per cent growth for men over this period, men continued to have higher average incomes. The average total income for men in 2008 was $47,000. Women's average income was about 65 per cent of men's.
One reason for this is that women are less likely to work full-time than are men. However, when full-time, full-year incomes for women and men are compared, women's earnings remain at about 71 per cent of men's, a ratio that has fluctuated between 70 per cent and 72 per cent since 1999.
- In 2008, average annual earnings for women aged 16 to 24 who were working full-time, full-year were $23,100. Earnings were highest, $52,800, for women aged 45 to 54. Women working full-year, full-time aged 55 and older had average annual earnings of $42,500.
By comparison, women working full-time in occupations unique to the primary industries earned an average of $23,400, those in sales and service occupations averaged $28,400, and those in clerical occupations, $40,000.
- Women's average total income was lower than men's in every province, but in two provinces the gap was more pronounced. In Alberta, women's total incomes were 55 per cent of men's in 2008 ($34,000 for women and $61,700 for men); in Newfoundland and Labrador, women's incomes were 57 per cent of men's. The gap was smallest in Prince Edward Island and Quebec; 78 per cent and 72 per cent of men's incomes respectively.
- In every age group women's average total income was lower than men's, but the gap was smallest in the youngest age range,16 to 19, who had incomes of about 90 per cent of men in the same age group. The gap was largest for those aged 55 to 64, where women's average total income was 55 per cent of men's -- $29,400 compared to $53,400. For the other age groups, the ratio of women's incomes to men's ranged from 75 per cent for those aged 20 to 24 and those aged 65 years and older to 61 per cent for those aged 35 to 44.
- female lone-parent families had incomes that were 53 per cent of those of male lone-parent families in 1998; by 2008 this figure was 70 per cent.
- In 2008, 10 per cent of women and 9 per cent of men lived in low income. Low income has been more prevalent in female-headed lone-parent families. For example, in 2008, about 18 per cent of individuals living in lone-parent families were classified as low income. When the family was headed by a female, the incidence of low income was 21 per cent, compared to 7 per cent of male-headed lone-parent families.
The difference is even more pronounced in an examination of median net worth (value of assets less debts). The median net worth for lone-parent-mother families was $17,000; for lone-parent-father families, it was $80,000.
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca