Province Launches Survey on Removing Barriers for Women
Ontario is looking for input on the development of a provincial strategy to support the economic empowerment of women — so that all women and girls can achieve their full social and economic potential.
Ontario is releasing an engagement paper and an online survey to gather ideas from communities across the province. The feedback will be used to develop a Women’s Economic Empowerment Strategy, which will be launched in fall 2017.
Women and girls in Ontario are disproportionately affected by poverty, discrimination, violence, and their work is often undervalued. Ontario has taken steps to support women’s economic empowerment through working to close the gender wage gap, encouraging gender diversity on boards, providing violence against women services and supports, and increasing access to high-quality child care, but there is much more to do.
The Women’s Economic Empowerment strategy will build on these efforts in order to ensure women and girls have equal access to opportunities in education and skills development, entrepreneurship and employment as well as working and learning environments that are free from barriers and discrimination.
Empowering women and girls is part of our plan to create jobs, grow our economy and help people in their everyday lives.
Quick Facts
- People across the province will have until August 15, 2017 to provide their feedback on the engagement paper and respond to the survey.
- Ontario introduced legislation that would raise the minimum wage, mandate equal pay for part-time employees, make employee scheduling fairer and expand personal emergency leave.
- Ontario also increased the monthly income of almost 19,000 families, and launched a basic income pilot project to assess whether it will improve outcomes for people on low incomes.
- More than 42 per cent of persons in female lone-parent families in Ontario were classified as having low income in 2014.
- Women earn approximately 26 per cent less than men annually.
- In Ontario, more women hold university and college degrees than men.
- Women account for only 20.8 per cent of the S&P/TSX 60’s board seats in Canada.
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