Four National Women's Groups: CCLOW · CFWEC · CRIAW · NOIVMWC

In education, prior learning assessment and recognition of foreign credentials are key to implementation of this principle.
Right to Safety: Violence - including sexual harassment - is unacceptable.

The National Women's Reference Group on Labour Market Issues also has developed a set of principles, based on similar concepts. Their list includes: access, equity, integration of training and community economic development, recognition of skills (portability/transferability), right to basic education and training, quality and accountability.

Models of training for women which have been proven to be accessible, accountable and effective and which recognize the needs of diverse groups of women include the following:

• Basic Skills Training, including:

  literacy, numeracy, communication, instruction in French or English as a second language, orientation to computer, orientation to employment, communications, life skills, upgrading to high school completion.

  
  
  
• Bridging Training, including:

  a focus on overcoming/compensating for systemic barriers to labour market participation, ensuring basic skills are in place, on-the-job training in particular job sectors (for example, Women's introduction to Trades Technology).

  
  
  
• Community Economic Development Training, including:

  community-based inventories of capacity and/or needs, leadership skills, working with volunteers, self-employment, project feasibility, project management, financial management, product and service development/invention.

  
  
  
• Positive Measures Training, including:

  gender sensitivity training, diversity training, remedial training in areas such as sexual harassment, training programs designed to overcome barriers to career advancement for specific groups.

Training programs which enhance women's capacity to carry out unpaid as well as paid work responsibilities are few and far between, which is unfortunate. In this regard community-based economic development training, which enhances a wide range of skills leading not only to paid employment, but also to self-employment, active citizenship and community development work, are a notable exception.

Of the 2,000 people who have participated in N.B. Works in the past two years, only 89 have found full-time full year jobs.

In Canada in 1991, 1 in 5 Canadians were engaged in some form of training. Women were more likely to participate than men except at the lowest income levels.