Under-educated women, therefore, are triply disadvantaged with respect to entry into those non-traditional occupations for which demand is growing. First, as functionally illiterate persons, they lack the basic skills to understand the technical and scientific aspects of the jobs. Second, as women, they have been conditioned by the educational system to avoid traditionally male occupations. Third, they have often been discouraged from obtaining the scientific and mathematics education which is necessary for their entry into training programs for these occupations.

If the economic position of under-educated women is to improve, they must have access to a greater variety of occupational opportunities. To accomplish this, they need opportunities to be retrained for entry into non-traditional occupations for which there is growing demand. Prior to occupational retraining, women need to become functionally literate and to learn basic mathematics and science. Then they can be trained for the acquisition of job-specific skills for non-traditional occupations.

Women need to be informed about non-traditional jobs and about where such jobs can be found. They also need opportunities to increase their confidence in their ability to do these jobs. They need financial and childcare support services until they can enter the labour force. To accomplish this, the providers of educational programs need to offer appropriate support services.

Any National Training Program offered by the federal government should address the skill training needs of under-educated women. However, the existing National Training Program has been designed to meet the skilled labour needs of Canadian industries at the lowest cost.

The major purpose of the federal government's National Training Program is, in the words of a ministerial press release of January 6, 1982, "to overcome skill shortages, accelerate economic growth and development, and facilitate industrial adjustment."¹³ In a background report on the National Training Program prepared for CCLOW, Heather Henderson (1982) shows that the National Training Program focuses primarily on meeting the skills needs of industry, and ignores, or rather neglects, the needs of the unemployed, women, and minority groups.

The approach of the new program seems to be very employer-oriented: it is designed to provide trained workers to meet the employment needs of industry - instead of addressing the employment/unemployment needs of the 1980's it addresses the problems of industrial employers and attempts to meet their skill requirements. ¹⁴

The list of occupations in which the federal government foresees the greatest skill shortages are mainly technical occupations. Included in this list are technicians, electricians, machinists, tool and die makers, and workers in computer science. Clearly, the National Training Program is directed largely at skill shortages in those industrial occupations to which women have traditionally had least access. Notably missing from the government's list of occupations with critical skills shortage, are the (traditionally female) nursing and rehabilitation occupations, which are also in high demand.

¹³ A quoted in Heather Henderson, The National Training. Act: A Background Paper. Toronto, Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women, 1982, p.l.

¹⁴Ibid.,p.19.

¹⁵Heather Henderson. The National Training Act: Its Impact on Women. Toronto. Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women. 1984. p.36.