The woefully inadequate policy responses to the family responsibilities of women, for example, is just one demonstration of the lack of will among elected officials and employers to address in a comprehensive, concerted way the systemic barriers to women's participation in training and in the labour force. It attests, moreover, to a lack of conviction that what is good for women makes economic sense. Yet, the Harvey and Blakely study commissioned by the federal government in 1991 concluded that the Canadian economy would be most competitive internationally and that Canada's Gross Domestic Product would rise significantly in future decades if women participated in the labour force on a equal basis with men in a similar range of occupations.

The fact is, women are a "designated group" in the LFDS much as they have been for the past 20 years in employment training policy. While the participation of women in the labour force has increased over that time, occupational diversification has occurred at a snail's pace and the feminization of poverty has become a pressing issue.

Perhaps we should be rethinking our methods of advocating for this radical change. One way is by demanding a more fundamental consideration of women at the early stages of social and economic policy development. As the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does in law, structures for economic development and training policy (such as the LFDS) should recognize the fundamental equality of men and women and the need for special measures to secure that equality.

Under that umbrella commitment, national and provincial training policies would be required to recognize and address, in very specific ways and in conjunction with economic development policy, the systemic barriers to women's economic equality. Equality initiatives with measurable goals specific to women could be tied to training funding and integrated into overall economic and training strategies. Through such measures governments could ensure that women are equal beneficiaries of job development and training initiatives.

To accomplish all this requires more than mandating relevant social and economic policy units to ensure that their policies and programs contribute in fundamental ways to the social and economic equality of women. It means demanding that these units be equipped with the experts to do so. It means demanding that the analysis of women's economic and labour force status become a central part of the policy creation process. It means demanding that governments become more accountable for these commitments through better data collection and public reporting. It means advocating that such a serious and coordinated effort should translate into better services and better results for women.

It means affirming, finally, that women's equality and training policy do, in fact, go together.

Elspeth Tulloch developed her thoughts on the LFDS while doing research for Action éducation femmes and the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women.