People with disabilities have been marginalized from participation in other equity groups.

Institutional Inequality Women and people with disabilities are treated equally by the CLFDB in one respect: they are each given only one seat (along with the other two equity groups). Both have women representatives on the Board while the other two groups have selected men. A misleading notion is that the equity groups have a block of four votes, which presumes that all issues are supported or opposed by each of the four representatives. It is true that the equity groups often support each other due to a specific strategy of solidarity, but this does not preclude dissention or disagreement.

Most equity group members have been frustrated by the division among them at the level of federal policy advising. Although the CLFDB did not provide sufficient funding for any of the equity groups, there is a clear disparity between the ability of the groups to represent their specific issues among competing interests. The organized network of women's groups advocating training and employment for women across Canada has enabled the women's representative to become an effective voice of this large constituency. Women were clearly the best equipped to respond to the immediate need for representation; although they worked very hard and very quickly to bring the appropriate organizations together, they had the advantage of existing groups who were dealing with women's training and employment on a daily basis.

The constituency group for people with disabilities was not as easily formed. While fourteen national organizations were called together to select a single representative for the CLFDB, they were not training or employment organizations. Only one was an organization of workers with disabilities and another a coalition of employment equity advocates. Like the women's organizations, these groups also formed a "Reference Group" to provide their representative with connection to and feedback from the community of people with disabilities.

Over half of the members of this group are women but only one sits as a representative of a women's organization (DisAbled Women's Network). One of the first strategic collaborations between the reference groups for women and for people with disabilities was the use and development of a resource kit for educating constituencies about training issues and the CLFDB. The kit was created by the Women's Reference Group (WRG) and then adopted and expanded by the Reference Group of People with Disabilities (RGPD). This action set up many of the principles of both groups as shared points of solidarity (1).

The RGPD gave direction to its five member Priorities Committee to focus on the impact of changes to the UI programs and EIC funded services, access to training and vocational rehabilitation, the special problems of disadvantaged members of the disabled community and accommodation within training and employment. Issues such as technical aids and support services, which are not addressed by the women's groups or by the mainstream training advocates, were presented as high priorities. However, vocational rehabilitation and access to training were not on the CLFDB agenda. In fact, almost none of the disability-related issues were part of the planned topics for the CLFDB to discuss.