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

We acknowledge that reducing the deficit is one of the important challenges facing the Federal Government. However, we disagree strongly that cutting social expenditures will be either an effective or a fair method of doing this. We would suggest that the government look at measures to reduce interest rates, increase tax revenues from the wealthy and corporations and reduce Canada's dependence on foreign capital.

3. Absence of gender analysis

Social and economic programs have different impacts for women than for men. Changes to social assistance provisions, for example, will have a disproportionate impact on women since they constitute the majority of poor people in Canada. Nor are women a monolithic group - different economic realities face women in rural or remote communities, visible minority, immigrant women, Aboriginal women, and women with disabilities.

A clearly articulated gender analysis, which recognizes women's reality, and the additional problems, challenges and opportunities of each group of women, must be central to the redesign of any aspect of the social security system. For example, the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Program in Atlantic Canada does not take account of women's specific role in the fishery, although research shows that women's earnings from fish processing are significantly lower than men's, and that there are far more employment opportunities for men than for women outside of fish processing.

4. Where are the jobs?

No economic analysis we are aware of predicts an explosion of new, well-paying jobs in countries like Canada. In fact, quite the opposite has been happening. Jobs have been disappearing from the Canadian economy. Women are concentrated in occupations (e.g. clerical work) and industries (e.g. textiles) that are particularly vulnerable to global competition. Although women held 29% of all manufacturing jobs in 1990, 36% of jobs lost in manufacturing that year were women's jobs. Immigrant women are among the hardest hit.

And what about the quality of the jobs? The Green Paper assumes that any job is preferable to no job. The experience of Canadian women is that being part of the paid labour force is far from being a guaranteed route out of poverty. In fact, labour force poverty among women has grown by about 160% since 1971, despite the fact that women's participation in the paid labour force has steadily increased over that period.

This situation will likely worsen with the impact of globalization, which tends to create two kinds of jobs, high-paying jobs requiring high levels of formal education, and - the majority - low-skill, low-pay jobs, where women will tend to be found because of systemic barriers preventing their access to the better jobs.

If the proposals in the Green Paper are to have any meaning, then the Federal Government must take clear and decisive action to generate new jobs. And not just any jobs, but ones with decent pay and adequate protection. Canada needs a national employment strategy that supports the essential roles of all three sectors: public, private, and not-for-profit.