1. An adequate study of functional literacy and numeracy over time could not be conducted for this study because of the lack of appropriate longitudinal measures.

  2. Women's overall participation in various Community College courses increased during the Decade for women. However, they continue to be enrolled, in large part, in traditional areas.
  • Women's enrollment in Business increased from 50% in 1974/1975 to 60% in 1983/1984, with substantial growth in Management and Administration (from 44% in 1977/1978 to 50% in 1983/1984 ) and in Financial Management (from 47% in 1977/1978 to 56% in 1983/1984).

  • Women's enrollment in Natural Sciences increased from 16% in 1974/1975 to 27% in 1983/1984 but did not increase in the Applied Sciences or Engineering courses where women's participation in 1983/84 remained lower than 10%.
  1. Nationally funded training has largely ignored the needs of women:
  • Women's share of nationally funded training has been declining slowly over the past several years:

    - women's share of Institutional Training decreased from 32% in 1977/1978 to 27% in 1983/1984.

    - women's share of Industrial Training decreased from 28% in 1977/1978 to 24% in 1983/1984.

    This compares poorly with women's share of the population, (51%), workforce participation (42%) and share of unemployment (40%).

  • In addition, the decline in women's share of Industrial Training under the National Training Act together with a decline in the total number of spaces funded has resulted in a decrease of female trainees from almost 20,000 in 1977/1978 to only 8200 in 1983/1984.

  • The one small improvement in training under the National Training Act has been the increase in the amount of part-time training offered (in 1977/1978, 22% of the training spaces were part-time; in 1983/1984, 29% of these spaces were part-time). However, women may still require more part-time training opportunities. For example, 44% of women university under-graduates are now part-time students, indicating a need, at least among these women, for part-time studies.

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