I intend to make some brief opening remarks on the issue of the economic well-being of girls and women, particularly pertaining to my work as representative for children and youth.
In that role, I advocate and support children and youth up to the age of 19 in the province of British Columbia. In particular, I work with vulnerable populations of young people, such as children and youth in government care due to child welfare concerns. I work with young people with special and developmental needs, and also complex mental health needs.
I also work closely with aboriginal girls and women. I highlight that because these are populations of young girls and young women who have particular vulnerabilities, such as living outside the parental home and being highly susceptible to economic disadvantage, from having been raised in poverty or transitioning into adulthood in poverty.
I want to talk about some of the factors that I see in their lives that present some long-term challenges to their social and economic mobility and to their safety. I will touch on a few, and then of course be available to answer any questions, should you have any.
I have a few general statistics about that population. British Columbia had a child and youth population of about 900,000 in 2011, or about 20% of the province's total population. Of this child and youth population, about 13,000 to 15,000 of those young people live out of the parental home. Some of them are in state care. Some of them are living independently before the age of maturity. More than half of the children in care are aboriginal children in British Columbia, which is disproportionate compared to their percentage of the overall population.
As for the children who are aging out of the case system, young women in particular, about 4,000 children in the past three years were discharged from care. Every month in British Columbia, about 57 young people are discharged from care because they turn 19. Many of them are aboriginal youth, in particular young women. We have a very strong interest in their doing well when the state is the parent and being as successful as they would be if they were raised in a parental home.
As to some of the vulnerabilities of the population of young women we're talking about, poor and low educational attainment is a significant and ongoing concern. We see from our detailed studies of the educational outcomes of vulnerable children, such as aboriginal children, children in care, and young people living out of parental home, that they are not developing the same level of achievement in the public school system. They are not achieving grade four, grade seven, or high school with their peers. For example, aboriginal students generally perform 15% to 18% lower on the standardized foundational skills assessment in British Columbia. Grade four is the first level. In grade seven, their performance goes down. The performance in the high school mandatory examinations declines.
Although British Columbia has better aboriginal outcomes than many other provinces, we're still looking at only about 42% of the aboriginal girls in care who are graduating. That's a significant lag compared to, say, 83% of the girls who are not in state care.
Another broad factor that makes these young women and girls more vulnerable in terms of their economic and social mobility is the ongoing issue of poverty. British Columbia has the highest incidence of child poverty based on any measure, whether it be the market basket measure or other measures adopted by Statistics Canada.
There are about 100,000 children living in low-income homes in British Columbia. In particular, I focus again on the aboriginal population. By the most recent available data in B.C., 58% of lone-parent families headed by an aboriginal woman had an annual income of less than $20,000, and only 7% had an annual income of $50,000 or above. We see the grinding impacts of parental poverty on children and their lack of social inclusion, lack of support and progress with respect to school achievement, and also issues around their health and well-being.
Another area I will comment on is issues pertaining to violence, which affect the social and economic mobility of girls and women.
With regard to girls and women's exposure to domestic violence, I know that in a previous incarnation this committee did an extremely valuable report on aboriginal family violence that pointed out some concerns. Certainly in my role as a representative for children and youth, children who witness family violence are harmed by it as if they experienced it themselves, which places them at risk. It certainly doesn't mean that there is a one-to-one relationship between that and poverty and a poor outcome, but active measures to support their resilience and well-being to prevent violence, and the duty to support victims of violence, are very significant issues in our social service system. We see significant frailties there for aboriginal girls and women in particular.
Whether they're off reserve or on reserve, the system of support is not as strong. The criminal justice system is not necessarily as responsive. The social services and supports to girls and women are not adequate, and as a result they can experience significant disadvantage. In fact all girls and women exposed to domestic violence experience certain disadvantages, but I would point out aboriginal girls and women particularly.
In terms of other forms of violence and exploitation, certainly in my work as representative I'm very aware of the impact of sexualized violence and sexual exploitation of girls and women. In my role, I receive reports of children known to the Ministry of Children and Family Development in British Columbia where there is an allegation of a sexual assault. As a matter of course I receive these reports and investigate them, and periodically I do investigative or aggregate reports on them.
If I could give you a snapshot of the last fiscal year, I've received reports of 62 sexual assaults regarding youth. About 15% of all the reports that I receive are sexual assaults on girls. Of these, 90% were assaults on females—some were assaults on males, but 90% were on females—and 66% of them were aboriginal girls. Aboriginal girls and women are three or more times likely to be the victim of violence from a partner, and sexualized violence in particular.
This continues to be an area requiring deeper examination in terms the core relation between the harm inflicted and later well-being. Understanding the social and economic issues behind someone's vulnerability to violence and having coordinated responses and supports to boost their resilience are very significant.
The final point I will draw to your attention as we look at things like health, well-being, economics, and the social mobility of girls and women are some concerns that I see in my office around access to mental health support. Where there are girls and women who have experienced trauma through adverse childhood experiences, whether that's abuse, deep poverty and social exclusion or the presence of an underlying mental disorder apart from trauma-related disorders, the ability to access and receive adequate early mental health supports and general health supports is a significant factor.
It's not uncommon for me in my advocacy role to work with girls and women who do not have family physicians, do not have referrals to mental health supports and services, and who are therefore not participating fully in their community or developing fully as children should.
If we want to improve the economic prospects for Canadian girls and women, while the prospects are generally very good across the society, I think we need to pay particular attention to some deeply vulnerable groups of girls and women. We need to use the evidence we know is available to develop and innovate with more effective approaches in our social policy and community development approaches so that we can adequately engage and support girls and women so that they will have better outcomes.
I haven't spoken a lot about this, but I'd certainly be happy to do so in response to any questions.
Here I would note that we have the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.The processes pursuant to that convention have made some significant findings about Canada's progress in supporting vulnerable populations of women and girls, such as aboriginal girls and women.
We also have the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Mechanisms under that convention have also made some pointed references about Canada's ability to plan and respond to some of the deep inequalities for women and girls.
It's really my pleasure to be here. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to address this committee on such an important topic.
My name is Jennifer Flanagan. I'm president and CEO of Actua. Actua is a national charitable organization that represents a network of 33 organizations located at universities and colleges across Canada. Together with our members, we're engaging 225,000 youth, ages six to 16, in 500 communities covering every province and territory. We engage them in interactive, hands-on science, engineering, and technology experiences, and that's what my comments will address as well. These include school workshops, year-round clubs, summer camps, and other community outreach initiatives.
Over the past two decades of offering programs, we've developed and refined a program delivery model that engages youth at an early age, before they make decisions about careers and futures and what is possible for them. From our years of formal research, we know that our programs are successful in influencing the attitudes and behaviours of youth toward future studies and careers in science, engineering, and technology. More broadly, and I think more importantly, we're playing a critical role in improving science and technology literacy among Canadian youth, which we know is key to full participation of the next generation of Canadians in all economic sectors.
Women, as we know, are still vastly under-represented in science, engineering, and technology. While there has been progress in some fields of science, such as health and medicine, women remain under-represented in many others, such as engineering, computer science, physics, and math. This is particularly evident in management roles in these sectors, which are traditionally higher paying and thus more important for improving the economic prospects of girls and women. This under-representation of women is also very evident in the trades.
With the considerable employment opportunities these fields will represent in the coming years, this under-representation is a significant issue for the future economic prosperity of girls. In addition, our country simply will not reach its full innovation potential without women equally represented at the table in these fields. To improve the economic success of girls, we must engage them and show them that there is a place for them in these critical fields. Strategies are needed now to narrow the gender gap in these areas. This will not only ensure economic independence among women and improve their economic prosperity but will also contribute to the development of a larger and more diverse workforce.
Actua's national girls program was developed in 1999 in response to a noted pattern of decline in the participation of girls in our camps across the country. We were also witnessing negative changes in girls' attitudes, confidence, and interest when they were transitioning from our junior programs, which engage them at around the grade four level, to our middle school programs, which engage them at around grades six and seven. This was particularly evident when working with more at-risk groups of girls.
Feedback from parents across the country also indicated that stereotypes were still preventing them from encouraging their daughters to consider futures in science, engineering, and technology.
Based on those observations, our experience, and our ongoing research into the lives and realities of girls, we developed an all-girls program model that provided girls with a safe, non-judgmental, and fun environment in which to explore, create, and interact with role models. Our programs, which include all-girl clubs and camps, are designed for girls to acquire critical life and employability skills, such as team-building, collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, financial literacy, and technical proficiency. I should also mention that we are focused within our girls program on engaging girls who have other economic and social challenges, particularly aboriginal girls. We have a significant focus on aboriginal youth across the country.
Our national girls program is designed, first and foremost, to increase the girls' self-confidence and self-efficacy, as we know that these are the most important predeterminants of future success. It also provides an early, positive experience at a university or college campus, which again is another key experience that will increase the likelihood of their considering post-secondary study in the future.
One of the most important findings from our early research was that although girls in our programs were increasing their knowledge and skill and interest in science and technology, we weren't changing their future intentions with regard to studying science and technology or considering them as future career options. The lack of female role models meant that although girls were interested in science, they were still not imagining themselves in these fields in the future.
We started a national girls mentorship program in response to that research finding in 2003. Girls in our programs now regularly interact with positive female role models with whom they can relate. We want the girls leaving our programs to know that their perspectives matter and that there's a place for them in science, engineering, and technology.
We also focus heavily on reinforcing among parents and caregivers the importance of encouraging girls to study math and science, and to view these as subjects that can open doors to many exciting career and life experiences, not just those in pure science.
The fulfilment of these objectives prepares young girls for the full exploration of their academic and professional potential as leaders in science, technology, and engineering studies and careers. This results in a significant contribution toward the empowerment of girls to achieve their full economic and financial independence.
Early engagement is absolutely key to this work. A lot of efforts to promote post-secondary studies and careers are focused on high school aged youth. Research has demonstrated, and we certainly find from personal experience, that this is too late for most girls. In fact research shows that girls decide very, very early on what they believe they can or can't do when they get older. They need to have experiences very early, in elementary school or before, that change these perceptions.
Based on our experience, our research, and the success we've had in engaging thousands of girls over the past two decades, we would make the following key recommendations to the committee.
First, we need to invest in science, technology, engineering, and math outreach programming designed to develop science literacy; and we need to engage, inspire, and influence girls to participate in these important fields of study. Specifically, support should be directed to programs that engage girls at an early age, before life-changing decisions regarding education and careers are made. These types of programs are playing a significant role in building resiliency and economic independence among girls and young women. This will also result in a significant overall contribution to economic prosperity and a much-needed boost to diversity and the job force.
Second, we need to provide financial support for mentorship programs designed to introduce young girls to inspirational women scientists and engineers who can share their stories and dispel the still existing stereotypes about what careers are the future for women in Canada.
Finally, we need to advocate for and support those who educate girls—the parents, caregivers, schools, community organizations, and the private sector—about the importance of supporting girls through informal education opportunities at an early age.
In summary, I hope that my remarks have underscored the importance of engaging girls in positive experiences that will allow them to imagine bright futures for themselves. Investments in these areas will narrow the gender gap, increase our labour force and, most importantly, achieve the committee's overall objective of improving the economic futures of girls and women.
Thank you.
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Thank you, and thank you very much for accommodating my change in schedule. It was very important.
I'm going to read my remarks in order to stay within the 10 minutes.
I would like to congratulate the committee for taking on this very important issue of studying the economic prospects for Canadian girls, and I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.
I have had the opportunity to read at least some of the evidence that has been presented already. In the interests of time, I will try to not simply repeat what has already been presented. Having said that, I also want to note that what I have read or that particularly has been most impressive are the presentations on aboriginal girls in Canada in relation to poverty.
I appear before you today as an academic researcher working in the area of girlhood studies as an academic discipline. In 2008, I co-founded with two colleagues an international peer review journal called Girlhood Studies, which, as far as I know, is the only academic journal that specifically focuses on girls, and not just as part of the category of children, or youth, or women.
As part of our journal’s mandate of working with girls, for girls, and about girls, we've embarked upon a set of international consultations across a variety of social and economic contexts: Nordic girlhood and the changing contexts for girls as the social welfare state changes; girlhood in Russia and the new market economies; and comparative work between Australia and Canada on girlhood. We will be highlighting this comparative work at McGill, at a McGill-based conference on girlhood, between October 10 and 12, which will coincide with the first International Day of the Girl Child.
I also appear before you as someone who works in what might be described as the global milieu of girlhood, having served three years on Plan International’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign and having conducted numerous studies on girls’ education in South Africa, The Gambia, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Swaziland, and recently having conducted an evaluation for the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, UNGEI.
What I would like to do now is put forward four broad areas about which I would like to offer some recommendations that come out of my work in these various contexts.
The first recommendation I have for the committee is in the context of the emerging research agenda of the Status of Women and other organizations of Canada, and that is in relation to the critical area of the direct participation of girls and young women in research. The early 1990s may have been the heyday for Canada and support for girls. CIDA offered impressive support for girl child programming, and Canada was well known for several key studies. One was the “A Capella” study on adolescent girls, organized by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, and the other was the Status of Women conference “We're Here, Listen to Us!”. What was exciting about this work were the groundbreaking innovations in terms of the engagement of real girls and what they had to say.
My own research around the globe suggests that now more than ever we need broad consultations with girls across this country, and we need funding for new scholars coming along to take on this work in participatory ways. I would like to go so far as to suggest that this committee—your committee—consider making recommendations to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to establish as a priority area work on the economic prospects of girls and young women.
As you might know, they already have several priority areas. One is aboriginal research. Another is on the digital economies. Neither of these rules out participatory work with girls and young women, but in the absence of naming girlhood as priority area, it is likely to fall through the cracks. What we have learned in the international arena with UN Women, with UNGEI, and with other organizations is that the issues have to be named as priorities in order to get on and stay on the agenda, so I've put forward this as a first recommendation.
My second recommendation pertains to the situation of studies of girlhood in the context of work with boys and young men. This is a tricky area in the global north, where girls are typically seen to be outperforming boys in many areas of schooling and of employment.
However, as the already presented previous evidence suggests, the situation for aboriginal girls does not fit this analysis. I believe the Girls Action Foundation also highlighted the new studies on school dropouts in Quebec and suggested that the work is far more complex. I would like to recommend to the committee that every effort be made to not pit the situation of girls and the situation of boys against each other when it comes to funding.
There is ample evidence to suggest that boys and men have to be allies in work with girls and women, especially in such areas as gender violence, and that Canada is in a key position to take leadership in the area of moving forward in ways that make gender studies—boys’ perspectives, girls’ perspectives, and gender relations—prominent. We need support for both boys and girls, and we need new scholarship and new policy guidelines in this area. This has been a feminist dilemma for some time. Plan International's Because I am a Girl campaign last year actually focused on the place of boys in addressing the situation of girls. This was groundbreaking work, but it cannot stop there. This doesn’t mean that we stop focusing on girls, but that we need to look to models and designs that are separate but inclusive if we are to understand economic prosperity.
My third recommendation pertains to girls, sexuality, and risk in relation to STIs and especially HIV and AIDS. This is an area that is central to my own research with aboriginal youth, both boys and girls, in the Canadian context. I know we will be hearing more about this from Jessica Danforth. It was very important when we were studying aboriginal youth leadership, particularly in relation to colonization. It is also an important part of my work in South Africa. There the rates of infection are very high, and girls and young women are up to three times more likely than boys and young men to be HIV positive.
This work links to gender violence, low self-esteem in negotiating sex in the first place, and certainly the ability to negotiate the use of condoms. I know there are many initiatives in Canada that look at girls and leadership, but I would like to recommend that we need more focus on looking at sexuality and how it links to economic prosperity, and how it links to leadership in a more direct way.
Finally I want to say something about addressing the enormous challenges of drawing together the research and programming related to girls in Canada and internationally. What is probably obvious through this consultation is that there is a great deal of work going on in the area of girlhood, but it is very hit and miss in terms of being coordinated or available through some type of clearing house. Part of that circumstance is related to the vast range of issues, and the fact that the study of girls’ lives cuts across so many different sectors that do not speak to each other—health, technology, education, social services, labour, aboriginal studies, immigrant studies, and so on. I would like to us to consider that if there is one country that could take leadership in an information age in this area of coordinating work related to girlhood, it is Canada.
What would a girl-focused agency look like? Could it be housed within Status of Women? How could it advance the kind of participatory roles I have spoken about, and how could it involve girls and young women in advisory ways? How could such a body also integrate some aspect of “what about the boys”? The complexity of studying the economic prospects for girls demands this type of attention, and it would be an important move on the part of such bodies as Status of Women Canada to establish some type of directorate on girls that speaks to the situation for girls in Canada but that is also linked to Canadian initiatives in the world through CIDA, IDRC, and other institutions.
These are my four recommendations. I thank you for your attention. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody. I apologize for the awkwardness of the teleconference and not having the video facility.
My name is Jessica Danforth, formerly Jessica Yee, and I am the executive director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network. I'm also the chair of the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV/AIDS in Canada, and the co-chair for the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus for the North America region at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Today I will primarily be speaking about my work at the Native Youth Sexual Health Network in the executive director capacity.
The Native Youth Sexual Health Network is an organization that is by and for indigenous youth. It works within the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice throughout the United States and Canada. I'm calling today from our U.S. office here on the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin. We are a completely peer-based, national organization of indigenous youth who are under the age of 30. We work in alliance with elders and communities, as well as other peoples of colour.
Some remarks we often get at our organization are: how can we be completely peer-based, how can we be North-America wide, and how can we really be by and for young people under the age of 30? We've learned at our organization over the last five years that to speak about peer-based work and actualize peer leadership means that we have to live it, and not just in a single or token role. This is something that has to be structured overall.
We're also proud to say that we're an organization that strongly supports the self-identification of women themselves. That includes two-spirited, lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, intersexioned and intersexed, queer, questioning, and other gender non-conforming women. I think it should be explicitly understood that to gender-police or press by definition what constitutes a woman in this study specifically, without including and centring the experiences of those afore-mentioned identities, will result in a severe erasure of some of the most economically oppressed women in Canada.
Classism and poverty for us are certainly tenets of the realities we face—and by “we” I'm talking about the realities of indigenous but also racialized, LGBT, and other communities of colour in Canada. As I've heard and read in the documents from the committee, the numbers and statistics are just that: numbers and statistics. You may have heard of the stark realities of violence against aboriginal women, and about the stark realities of suicide, poverty, and single-parent families of indigenous women. But it has to be understood that what is happening is in fact the systemic and structural oppression of women, both economically and socially, and that the Government of Canada itself continues to orchestrate this large and root factor at the root of what I'm calling economic injustice.
I think it's critical that we not just talk about statistics and numbers, but that we talk about achieving economic justice. This is a term I've learned working here in the United States part time, and from our neighbours and allies to the south of us. Economic justice is what we need to be centring on, in talking about the success of Canadian women and girls. Economic justice asks us to be critical in challenging and changing the systems that actually create poverty and economic injustice in our communities. Through our work at the Native Youth Sexual Health Network I want to give some examples of how we see economic injustice and economic justice working. I would like them to be included in the study you're looking at.
If we're going to talk about achieving economic justice, it first has to be actualized without the fear of economic or legal penalty. For example, if in the study we're going to talk about establishing or protecting the legal rights of poor and working-class people, we have to encourage and facilitate self-advocacy for that. We have to advocate for radical, compassionate changes in the systems we're talking about, such as housing and shelter, the workplace, courts, prisons, welfare and other public benefits, citizenship and immigration, health care, and other social services. We have to understand the interconnections between different oppressions that perpetuate economic injustice and work on multiple levels to eradicate them. We also have to work on effecting these changes through grassroots organizing, public education, advocacy, community-based research, legal action, leadership development, and coalition-building. This specifically is a tenet of economic justice, as it's understood.
One key area of our work where we see this lack of acknowledgement of economic injustice and the reality that indigenous women are facing is environmental and reproductive injustice.
In numerous places in Canada where there is resource extraction—mining, gas, oil, drilling—particularly in rural and remote and northern areas in the provinces or territories, we see so-called economic prospects and development that at the same time result in numerous and drastic changes for indigenous women and girls on a community level. While we see, for example, in northern Alberta, the tar sands and different mining, gas, and oil resource extractions, what's not understood is the escalating high rates of sexual violence; HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, including syphilis; as well as suicides, different mental health issues, depression, and the list goes on.
While one thing is called economic development, another thing can be called economic injustice. The simultaneous realities are not being understood.
I want to quote from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in which Canada said it endorsed, very, very recently, the tenet of “free prior and informed consent”. If economic justice were achieved in Canada for self-identified women and girls, then it must be achieved with free prior and informed consent. It cannot be achieved with simple consultation, or saying that we talked to certain groups of women or one token person or representative and say we have permission from them to achieve justice for them or to try to eradicate their oppression. Free prior and informed consent, as it's understood in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, is something that requires Canada itself not just to consult but also to get prior, understood, and informed consent—in multiple languages, cultures, and communities—to actually do something and to do it differently.
I want to close by leaving everybody with a promising practice that we would like to see continue. We received partial funding from the Status of Women for a national partnership project we had with the Girls Action Foundation entitled indigenous young women: speaking our truths, building our strengths. This was a name that was given by our peer advisory group made up of 10 indigenous young women across Canada, which is directly coordinated by the Native Youth Sexual Health Network.
It is led entirely by self-identified indigenous young women, and it includes things like a national gathering, the first of its kind, by and for indigenous young women explicitly. It also includes resource development in terms of [Inaudible--Editor]-making and toolkit creations for self esteem. It is something we would like to see continue, but again it is proving to be harder and harder to fund something that is entirely peer-led and doesn't require somebody to prove themselves otherwise.
In closing I want to say that we cannot talk about creating new funding opportunities or throwing money at different issues that continue to silo or isolate the multi-identities and multi-communities and multi-issues that people are coming from.
In the circumstances of environmental injustice and reproductive injustice that I have cited, in cases where it's called economic development but results in multiple oppressions in terms of environmental injustices toward indigenous communities specifically where resource extraction is happening, we can't talk about these without the free prior and informed consent of communities. It is very clear that what's called economic development does not have free prior and informed consent, which is an internationally upheld human right for women and girls.
Thank you.
Reproductive services in the full spectrum of what we call reproductive justice are very similar to what I was talking about in terms of economic justice. We can't look at improving access for economic development for Canadian women and girls without ensuring that their reproductive health is included in this—and by that I mean even in big cities such as Toronto.
The Toronto Teen Survey was conducted in partnership with Planned Parenthood of Toronto and noted just last year that about 80% of teens in Toronto aren't even accessing sexual health services. Some of the key reasons they noted were that the services were culturally irrelevant and not peer-based, and also that they didn't speak to the realities teens were facing, particularly for aboriginal youth and youth of colour. So that's one example of how, even in a big city where you would think that there would be a lot of services, economic development, and choices, youth are not accessing those services, and that's absolutely because of the lack of peer outreach or engagement with them.
I can also speak to multiple realities that happen in rural, remote, and northern areas in Canada. Even though, for example, the legal right to abortion exists in Canada, it does not mean that it's accessible. It also does not mean that it's a reality for many Canadian women to access it even if they wanted to; if you live in a northern, rural, or remote community, you have to jump through several hoops to access what the law says is your legal right, but in reality you can't even get that right respected or actualized in your own community.
For example, communities in, let's say, northern Ontario or northern Alberta—or even on Prince Edward Island, where there are no abortion clinics available, even though it's a legally protected right—if you have to apply for a northern travel grant to travel south, if you have to front some of the money yourself, if you are a student, for example, outside of the province you're living in and you have to face reciprocal billing for provincial health care.... Those are just piecemeal some of the realities that Canadian women and girls face in regard to their full reproductive health control and access.
I also cited some of the realities in areas where so-called economic development is happening in northern communities where there is mining and gas and oil, but simultaneously there is sexual violence and extremely high rates of sexually transmitted infections, with minimal services available.