3 - TRAINING

3.1 - Overview and Objectives

The World Plan of Action clearly delineated a number of strategies for improving women's access to diverse training opportunities because of the recognition that training for a broad range of occupations has the potential for significantly improving the earning power of large numbers of women.

In this section of the Detailed Findings, trends in women's access to training during the Decade for Women are analyzed.

The research objectives for this section are to determine:

1. whether women's share of full-time training increased during the 1976-1985 time period
   
   
2. the range of training programs women entered during the 1976-1985 time period
   
   
3. whether women's opportunities for part-time training increased during the Decade
   
   
4. whether the participation of women in training increased across all age groups during the Decade
   
   
5. women's share of training spaces under the National Training Act and whether that share was equal to women's representation in the population, the workforce or unemployment.

FIGURE 8 indicates in absolute numbers and as a percent of spaces, women's representation in Institutional and Industrial Training programs funded under the National Training Act. Note that:

• Since women's labor force participation increased during the Decade at a rate higher than men's*, it would not have been surprising to find that women's participation in government and/or employer-subsidized training had increased as well. In addition, a major goal of the World Plan of Action was just such an increase. However, as this section of the report documents, women's participation in government funded training actually declined during the ten-year timeframe.
  
  For example, women's share of places in General Industrial Training declined from 28% in 1977/1978 to 24% in 1983/1984, while their share of spaces in full-time Institutional Training dropped from 32% in 1977/1978 to 27% in 1983/1984*. This low representation does not match women's share of the population (51%), women's national rate of participation in the labor force (42%), or women's rate of unemployment (45%) in 1985.
  
  
• Since the total number of women and men trainees has declined, the number of women trained under these programs has declined even more sharply than their percentage share of total places (e.g., in Industrial Training, from approximately 19,600 places in 1977/1978 to approximately 8,200 in 1983/1984; in Institutional Training, from approximately 57,300 in 1977/1978 to approximately 44,000 in 1983/1984).
  
  * Comparisons cannot be made with 1984/1985 figures the Employment and Immigration Commission Annual Statistical Bulletin for 1984/1985 has not yet been published. However, from the 1984/1985 EIC Annual Report, the following comparisons can be made:

* Statistics Canada, Women in Canada, 1985.