Category Archives: Status of Women

The United Nations defines violence against women as “Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

Violence against women is rooted in unequal power relationships between men and women in society. In a broader context, structural relationships of inequalities in politics, religion, media and discriminatory cultural norms perpetuate violence against girls and women.

“Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence – yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned.”

Aboriginal women are highly overrepresented in street-level sex work among women. This is due to the ongoing impacts of colonization and racism which has resulted in high rates of poverty, a lack of education and employment opportunities, substance misuse, and family breakdown. Often Aboriginal women are left with few options other than street-level sex work in order to meet their needs.

Enacted in December, 2014, The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) makes it a crime to

• purchase sex
• communicate for the purpose of purchasing sex
• habitually keep the company of or benefit materially from a sex worker, unless you are in a legitimate family or business relationship, provided you can prove that you are not forcing or encouraging the sex worker to sell sex; you are not involved together in a commercial sex enterprise; and you are not providing alcohol or drugs
• sex workers are prohibited from working or communicating near schools, playgrounds, day-care centres
• it is illegal to advertise sex services provided by anyone but the sex worker, and his/her advertising must not explicitly offer sex for sale.

In a special ceremony on Musqueam traditional territory Monday, two new BC Cancer Agency vans, designed to bring state-of-the art digital breast cancer screening to remote and aboriginal communities in B.C., were blessed and cleansed with cedar boughs, drumming and song.

It is extremely rare that a sacred spiritual ceremony would be performed with cameras in attendance, explained elder Thelma Stogan. “We don’t do it for show,” she said.

Thelma and her brother Arthur Stogan, traditional knowledge keepers of the Musqueam band, performed the ritual. Knowing how many lives cancer touches, and how many aboriginal communities around B.C. are in need, said Thelma, they wanted to do the blessing, even if it meant bending the rules of tradition just a little.

Indu Brar is the first woman appointed as general manager of the 108-year-old Fairmont Empress Hotel, which is undergoing a major renovation slated to be completed in spring 2017.

Brar started her new job two weeks ago, moving from the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver where she served as general manager for 2½ years and oversaw its renovation.

Men outnumber women in senior management positions in the hotel sector, Powell said. “It’s not 50-50, but there are a lot more (women) than there used to be.”

Brar jumped at the chance to manage the historic Empress, calling it “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Very little funding is given to anti-violence organizations to accrue and analyse our statistics about violence against women. This results in minimal statistical information coming from feminist non-governmental agencies and often means finding recent statistical data is difficult.  We know from our ongoing work that the following statistics still hold.

Poverty is still very much a women’s issue. While there have been improvements in the past decade or so, women are still more likely than men to be living with a low income. But statistics on low income do not tell the full story of women’s poverty.

Women are also affected by poverty in different ways, depending upon their age, race, ethnicity, linguistic background, ability, sexual orientation, citizenship, etc. Statistics provide some important indications of women’s poverty in Canada, but experiences of poverty are much more complex than the picture created by numbers alone.

This chapter of Women in Canada introduces the socio-demographic and ethno-cultural characteristics of women and girls, many of which will be explored in greater detail in other chapters of this publication. Understanding the current trends related to an aging, and an increasingly diverse, female population can help inform policy and planning. Topics examined in this chapter include the distribution of the female population by age group across the provinces and territories and the share with an Aboriginal identity. In addition, aspects of diversity within the female population, including immigrant status and visible minority status, will be presented as well as residential mobility, language-related characteristics and religious affiliation and religiosity. Where appropriate, trends over time will be analyzed and comparisons will be drawn with the male population in order to highlight existing similarities and differences.

Women and girls comprise just over half of Canada’s population. In 2010, 17.2 million females accounted for 50.4% of the total population, continuing a slim female majority that has held for over three decades (Table 1). In the data recorded from 1921 to 1971, the percentage of males was slightly higher than that of females. In 1921, 48.5% of the population was female, rising to 49.8% in 1971. Over the past century, gains in life expectancy have benefited women more than men. Lower mortality rates for females throughout most of the life course contributed to a slightly higher share of females than males in the population. According to the medium-growth scenario of the most recent population projections, the female majority would continue for the next 50 years