RECOMMENDATIONS

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

After an overview of the university system, Canada Manpower Training Programs and the Labour Market, what emerges is a picture of inequity. It is unfortunate that data regarding women students in the community college system were unavailable, however, information from two provinces indicates that patterns of inequity would be confirmed. The inequity exists despite the fact that the proportion of women students in the post-secondary system has increased dramatically over the past twenty years, to the point where women are close to being half of the post-secondary undergraduate population and where they are half of community college students. The inequity occurs in the distribution of women throughout major fields of study, and training, with carry-over to the labour market. Access to the" education system for women exists, with much room yet for improvement, but equal access does not. Where CMTP programs are concerned, access and equality of access are both at issue.

Equal access to education, training and employment is a right, to which women are entitled. Failure to provide equal access occurs because of sex discrimination entrenched in a wide variety of beliefs, practices and procedures developed and transmitted over generations. "When discrimination is wide-spread and entrenched, it becomes a self-regenerating process capable of converting what appear to be neutral acts into further discrimination." (1) When this occurs, the only effective remedies are those which intervene in that self-regenerating process to interrupt it and dismantle it.

In the view of this author, the only effective remedy to unequal access is Equal Opportunity Legislation which would cover education, training and employment. Such legislation would need to include prescriptions for implementing equal opportunity; among others, affirmative action and contract compliance.

Affirmative action, applied to the education field would cover the hiring of both faculty and administrative staff, the distribution of student enrolment present and future, and curriculum. Contract compliance would apply to both transfer payments and wage subsidies in industrial training.

The procedures and practices involved in sex discrimination in education, training and employment are not easily dismantled. Change will only be effected through firm, committed and decisive action. Such action would be the enactment of Equal Opportunity Legislation at the federal level.

(1) United States Commission on Civil Rights, Affirmative Action in the 1980's: Dismantling the Process of Discrimination, A Statement of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, November, 1981, p. 2.