PART IV: THE CONSTITUENCY OF THE CCLOW

This Brief is presented, in the interests of all Canadian women, by the Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women, the national organization concerned with the development and promotion of learning opportunities for women. The health and well-being of the nation rests in the full and creative utilization of its human resources. To the extent that women are undereducated and underemployed, Canada suffers a severe loss of human capital. The country needs the energy and ability of women; the community cannot afford to have women either dead-ended in the labour market or unemployed.

CCLOW's constituency is made up of women working for pay, unskilled women, homemakers, native women, immigrant women, women from racial minorities, professional women, and the unemployed. Working class women, especially those from disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and regional groups, face double jeopardy. "They are the most likely to be forced to work because of economic necessity and the least likely to have obtained the skills, training and education to qualify them for anything but the most menial and poorly paid jobs."16 Unskilled women and women in small or declining industries are facing the greatest danger of unemployment and, as the European experience shows, they are the least likely groups to benefit from unrealistic retraining programs.17

Among the members of our constituency with the greatest need are native women. For example, the present unemployment rate for native women in Winnipeg is 40%. 18

Our constituency also includes women who aspire to higher education. There are, currently, considerable difficulties standing in the way of their gaining access to such education while they are employed. Elimination of such difficulties would help to improve the status and condition of all Canadian women.

We especially include homemakers among our constituency for the purposes of this Brief on Skills Development Leave. As does the Bremen, West Germany, Educational Leave Law, we claim homemakers as quasi-employees because of their economic dependence.19 We define a homemaker as a person who has not worked in the labour force for a number of years but has, during those years, worked in the home providing unpaid services for family members. Homemakers have a particular claim on Skills Development provisions, first because of their service to the community as a whole, and second because of the discrimination they experience from institutions which have failed to make necessary provisions for their reintegration into the skilled labor force and the ranks of the employed.