PART VII: ASSURING ACCESS FOR WOMEN TO PAID
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT LEAVE


In order to determine the kind and quality of the provisions necessary to guarantee access for women to Paid Skills Development Leave, it is necessary to look at three issues:

  1. Existing barriers to women's skill development in Canada.

  2. Measures which must be taken to overcome these current barriers.

  3. The European experience in implementing Paid Skills Development Leave. (Our research reveals certain provisions, or lack of provisions, which hinder women's access to such leave. It is essential that we benefit from this experience and ensure that our Canadian program has appropriate regulations.)

This section will deal with these three issues in a way which will provide guidelines and criteria for policy makers in developing a policy of Paid Skills Development Leave.

1. Existing Barriers to Women's Skill Development in Canada

The definitive barrier to skills development is the historical inequality of women in the education system and the Canadian workforce. The inequality is reflected in the fact that women's average wage is 60% of the average male wage.

Active measures must be undertaken to dismantle these structures in order to create an equitable order, one which includes women as full, equal partners.

The major barriers to skills development for Women are ghettoization of jobs, poverty, lack of financial resources, educational barriers, family responsibilities, interrupted working life, status as part-time employees, and lack of career path counselling.

A. Ghettoization of women's jobs. As Patricial McDermott points out in
"The New Demeaning of Work,"

It is more difficult for Women to move into new areas of employment than it is for men. This is mainly because in the Canadian labour market, occupations tend to be identified with either men or women. Not only is our labour market segmented by sex. but the range of jobs open to women is much narrower than that open to men. Male workers can move more easily into primary, secondary and service sector work, and the actual number of occupational categories open to them considerably outnumber those available to women. . .. Even the more limited range of job categories open to women tends to be primarily service work, the area that is the most severely affected by the introduction of microtechnology.

B. Poverty. Many women cannot afford education and training for skill development. In Canada, women are poor. Their average wage is $ 11,741, while men's average wage is $18, 537. 33 More than 30% of women with full-time jobs earn less than $10,000, and 36% of female-headed families are low income. 34 Women's experience as employees is that of being economically penalized by lower wages, and the wage differential is increasing, not decreasing.

Women who try to finance their own training often lack financial resources. Female students have more difficulty borrowing money from banks, married female students are usually ineligible for student assistance, 35 and may not have access to their spouse's income for study purposes. Female students are likely to receive smaller grants and bursaries; they are also less likely to obtain summer employment and they earn less money from that employment than their male counterparts. 36

For women workers who choose to study part-time in order to develop their qualifications, many will find that government policy in their province regarding grant and loan eligibility penalizes part-time students. 37


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