:
Madam Chair, I'm very honoured to be speaking to such an important committee. My specialization is care work for seniors, both in its paid and unpaid forms, and that's what I'll focus my comments on today.
The conversation about unpaid work is current and it's critical. What it isn't, however, is new. The quintessential Canadian book on gender and unpaid work, The Double Ghetto, was written nearly 40 years ago. It used Statistics Canada data to look at women's and men's segregated work inside and outside the home. A recent second printing highlights some of the gains women have made in educational attainment and labour force position. However, it scathingly reveals the persistent segregation all these years later, particularly when we consider care work.
The debate is increasingly showing up in popular media. For instance, following on the heels of Anne-Marie Slaughter's Atlantic Monthly piece, Melinda Gates used her 2016 annual letter to focus on unpaid work. She wrote:
Unpaid work is what it says it is: It’s work, not play, and you don’t get any money for doing it.... You can think of unpaid work as falling into three main categories: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children and the elderly. Who packs your lunch? Who fishes the sweaty socks out of your gym bag? Who hassles the nursing home to make sure your grandparents are getting what they need?
Child care is most often the focus of debates about unpaid work, while care for seniors is less visible. Care work for seniors in both its paid and unpaid forms can involve help with body care, dining assistance, and organizing, such as with medical appointments and finances, providing transport, and assisting with the home, such as cleaning and maintenance.
Importantly, family care work and private companion care provided in communal and publicly funded dwellings like nursing homes are less often discussed. My comments will highlight paid and unpaid care work and note when it is publicly funded or privately paid.
Care work is gendered, with women generally providing greater quantities and performing tasks that are more time-consuming and less flexible than care work than men provide. For instance, women provide more housekeeping, meal preparation, and personal as well as medical care. Men provide more transport and home maintenance such as snow shovelling.
According to a Statistics Canada, in 2012 there were 5.4 million Canadians who provided care work to a senior with a chronic health condition, a disability, or a problem related to aging.
The location where care work is provided is also an important consideration. More than two-thirds provided care work to a senior living in a private household. An additional 16% provided that care work to a senior who lived in a private household with them. Another 14% provided care work to a senior who was living in a care facility.
It is most often daughters and spouses who provide this work to women who live in residential settings. The 2016 census data show that about 70% of those who live in nursing homes as well as seniors residences are women.
Many Canadians are also providing substantial amounts of care work in terms of time. More than half of family or friends who lived with a senior provided more than 10 hours per week of care. Nearly one-quarter are doing more than 10 hours of care per week for a senior living in a nursing home where publicly paid care is available and provided.
We also cannot ignore the impact of providing care work. Strain on family relationships was reported by just over one-third of those helping seniors living in a care facility and about one-third of those who shared a home with a senior needing care. This compared with about one-fifth of those who provided care work to seniors living in a separate household and about one-quarter of those who help seniors living in supportive housing.
Women also experience greater negative impacts resulting from their care work, affecting areas as wide-ranging as their finances, their health, and their social lives.
The care needs of people with dementia are particularly important to consider. There are more than half a million people currently living with dementia in Canada, with estimates that this figure will nearly double by 2031. The unpaid care required to aid people living with dementia is an estimated 19.2 million hours per year. That's unpaid care, and a conservative replacement cost of this is $1.2 billion. Experts warn that care work time is also expected to double in accordance with the numbers of those living with the condition. A very large proportion of the costs of unpaid dementia care work is borne by families because the public system only covers a fraction of the total cost of dementia.
More attention is required to attend to the diverse needs of diverse women. For instance, due to cultural challenges, most immigrant families provide care work in private homes, even when dementia is a factor, and they don't, therefore, place families in nursing homes. More attention is also required to look at unmet needs. Families are dispersed geographically. In addition, the family unit has changed over time, with fewer children available to provide care work.
According to Statistics Canada, nearly half a million Canadians required care for chronic health conditions but did not receive it. One-quarter of those with unmet needs were over the age of 65.
Paid care work is also a key consideration. It is a feminized occupation. Overall, 80% of the paid care workforce is composed of women, and women make up over 85% of paid care workers in nursing homes. There is a large proportion of women from diverse racialized and immigrant populations who provide care work to seniors in communal settings. Immigrant and racialized women are often streamed into this care work, especially when other women are unwilling to do the work.
Care work is also among the riskiest of workplaces. Our research shows that care workers in Canada are frequently exposed to high rates of illness, injury, and violence. Conditions in Canada are far worse than in the Nordic countries, for instance. About two-thirds of the nursing and residential workforce is unionized across Canada, but it ranges from a low of 40% in Newfoundland and Labrador to a high of 65.9% in British Columbia. Despite this, most of the work remains low paid, part-time, and lacking in benefits.
There is an insufficient amount of publicly funded care available in home care and residential settings. Our research in nursing homes shows that increasing numbers of families are paying out of pocket to hire private companions to provide one-on-one care in nursing homes. This is largely due to insufficient staffing levels afforded by publicly funded care. Importantly, this care work is precarious, often paid under the table, and lacking in employment standards.
As the care often completely overlaps with the roles of the care aides who are on staff, it is also risky for the residents, the paid staff, and families. Most facilities lack even basic rules about care work that is paid privately, including about basic but important issues such as ID badges, duties to report to staff, or compliance with vaccination or infection control procedures. This private payment also creates a huge economic burden on families.
To conclude, paid and unpaid care work is one of the most important issues affecting the everyday lives of women across this country. While many seniors require care work, an increasing number have needs that are unmet. Paid and unpaid care work comes with risks. Families and friends are bearing an increasing financial and physical burden to provide care. There is an insufficient amount of publicly available care, and this mostly affects seniors who are women. Families are paying privately to compensate for insufficient levels of publicly funded care in nursing homes.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to raise these points with you today.
:
Our final story comes from a wonderfully insightful client, who I have named Flora. She is a reluctant caregiver, and we've had many conversations about the lack of options available to her. Through her frustration, she compares the current condition of caregiving in Canada to the generation of lost young men who served in World War I. Intending no disrespect to their service or sacrifices, she talks passionately about the generation of middle-age women who currently are lost to caregiving.
In that discussion, we drew contrasts between the two groups. Soldiers had volunteered or were conscripted, confident that they would receive the tools and skills they needed to be successful. They received a paycheque. It was an indicator of the value of their time and effort and a means of support for their otherwise lost income. They were trained in boot camp on what to expect in the field and how to protect themselves and each other. They were given guns, protective equipment, maps, and rations, and they were shown how to use them. The enemy was defined and could be identified by its uniform. They were taught how the enemy thinks and acts and how to stay a step ahead of it. They were given a platoon leader who would provide guidance and leadership, helping to keep them safe and battle ready. In an office far away, there was a strategist working on a plan of how to defeat the enemy and get the soldiers safely home. When that soldier returned, there were plans and programs and services in place to help him move back into his productive civilian life.
By contrast, the average caregiver is more often a conscript than a volunteer for the position and lacks the confidence in what she is undertaking. She receives no paycheque to indicate the value of her time or her lost income. She is not trained for the role, but there are both societal and self-imposed assumptions that she should know or will somehow learn how to do the job. Although reminded often by many well-intended people to take care of herself, she is not versed in the personal dangers of caregiving.
Although the enemy is a medical condition, there's often scant information offered to help her understand the characteristics of the illness or what to anticipate. Sometimes there's a secondary enemy disguised as an overburdened health care system, uncooperative family members, or a care recipient who is resistant to services. There's no leader to help her along the way. There are no strategists with an eye to the overall plan and big picture, and when her loved one dies, when she is physically, mentally, and financially broken, there are no services. There is no GI bill to offer transition back to her life, and no glory to come home to, only the sorrow of grief.
I wanted to say that, to stay within the time limits, I will not read the entire four-page brief I submitted. I will skip some paragraphs of the brief to stay within my seven minutes.
That was a comment for the interpreters.
On behalf of Afeas, the Association féminine d'éducation et d'action sociale, I want to thank the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for inviting us to participate in the hearings related to its study on the economic security of women in Canada.
First, I will give you a brief overview of Afeas, and then I will talk about the two main areas that the government should focus on when implementing solutions to prevent Canadian women from being at an economic disadvantage their entire lives.
Afeas is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1966. It represents 8,034 Quebec women who work as volunteers in 225 local groups in 11 regions of Quebec.
Since its inception, Afeas has been striving toward gender equality in every sphere of society. That is the organization's main goal, and as a result, it works on various issues affecting women in Quebec and Canada such as: gender equality, including women's ability to access democratic institutions at all levels; the financial security of women throughout their career and after they retire through the recognition of the unpaid work women do within the family as mothers and caregivers; access to education and training, pay equity, non-traditional jobs, and measures to support a work-school-life balance; access to safe living environments and measures to address violence against women and girls.
Afeas believes that both the paid and unpaid work of Canadian women must be taken into account in order to ensure their economic security.
Since its inception in 1966, Afeas has been considering what impact the lack of recognition for women's work has on our society. In 1968, Afeas presented the information it collected on homemakers to the Bird Commission.
One of its first campaigns sought recognition for the contributions women make to family businesses run by their husbands. In 1974, Afeas succeeded.
Other campaigns followed, and progress was made toward improving the living conditions of women in Quebec and Canada.
Some 35 years later, on April 1, 2001, Afeas created Invisible Work Day. As part of this annual campaign, which is held the first Tuesday in April, Afeas educates the public and decision-makers about the social and economic value of invisible work. Afeas believes that, if the contributions that women make within the family and community—which are essential to our society—were recognized, then social and financial measures could be implemented that would prevent women from living in poverty.
On April 1, 2010, at the request of Afeas, MP Nicole Demers moved the motion to make the first Tuesday in April National Unpaid Work Day. Although this motion was adopted, no action has yet been taken to implement it.
Here are a few recommendations concerning unpaid or invisible work.
First, the Government of Canada should make the first Tuesday in April National Unpaid Work Day, add it to the calendar of national days and acknowledge it every year.
Second, Statistics Canada should assess and calculate the value of unpaid work in Canada to show how important it is to the gross domestic product using the 2015 General Social Survey on Time Use. This calculation has not been done for 25 years, since 1992.
We also recommend that Statistics Canada make sure that the question regarding household activities is included in the 2021 long-form census, so that the people responding to it would be aware of how much of that type of work they do every day.
In addition, we recommend that the federal government ensure that all laws, policies and programs undergo gender-based analysis in order to determine how they will affect women, particularly their economic security.
Moreover, we recommend that the Government of Canada adopt a policy on work-life-school balance that applies to all spheres of society, including public institutions and private businesses under federal jurisdiction.
Next, we recommend that the Government of Canada work with the provinces and territories to create a family insurance plan that would cover mothers or fathers when a child is born or adopted, as well as caregivers when they have to take time off work to care for a loved one who is sick, has a disability, or is losing his or her autonomy.
We also recommend that the federal government work with the provinces and territories to create a national child care program to give women access to affordable child care and allow them to return to the labour market, if they so desire.
When it comes to the last two measures, every province and territory must have the option of opting out of this program, under the appropriate agreements, as was the case in Quebec when the Quebec parental insurance plan was implemented in 2006. Similarly, since Quebec has its own child care program, it does not need a national program.
We also recommend that the Canadian government provide retirement benefit credits equivalent to 60% of the average industrial wage for the period an individual spent caring for a young child or a loved one, if that person does not have any employment income.
Finally, we recommend that the federal government turn non-refundable tax credits for stay-at-home mothers and caregivers into refundable tax credits.
I would now like to talk about paid work.
There was a major influx of Canadian women into the labour force in the late 1960s. At that time, employers considered these women's contributions to the family as complementary to those of their husbands and, therefore, paid them less.
Still today, women generally continue to earn less than men, even for the same work. This lack of pay equity affects many women and has an impact on their economic security throughout their lives. They are negatively affected when they claim benefits, such as maternity, parental or retirement benefits.
In its brief, Afeas gives you a few recommendations on paid work.
:
I'm considering a lot of things in talking about this.
One of the first things that we need to understand is that the nursing home today is not the nursing home of 15 years ago, which provided an awful lot of social care, and was there for the frail elderly, mostly people who were quite old and needed some medical support. The nursing home of today is really an alternate for hospital care, so you have people going there who would have been in hospital 15 years ago. We find an increasing medical complexity, people going into nursing homes at the very end of their lives. That's in Canada. That's not necessarily the case in the Nordic countries or the rest of Europe where nursing homes are there to do more social care.
When I talk about the care gap, I'm talking about the gap between the care we are able to provide with public funding and how it's filled. It's filled with families in nursing homes, with student work, with the work of volunteers, or we're expecting the paid staff to volunteer their own time so they're working overtime. Also, families are hiring privately paid companions. They're paying out-of-pocket to have private care in publicly funded nursing homes. These care workers are doing work that's identical to that of the paid staff, so it's creating tons and tons of risks for the staff, for residents, and for families.
Families are also finding that they are under incredible pressure and burden. Maybe mom has become a bit aggressive with her dementia and the nursing home is saying they can't keep their mom there unless they pay to have someone to watch her around the clock.
Families are facing these sorts of burdens and it's an increasing and incredibly difficult challenge and it creates difficulties all the way round.
If we think about the role of the federal government, the Romanow commission talked about home care, and they didn't talk about nursing homes at all. Nursing homes are practically invisible. These are extended health services, so as you know, the federal government sends money to the provinces and they don't necessarily look at how much the provinces are funding nursing home care.
If the federal government wants to make a big impact, they should be thinking not only about home care, but also about nursing home care. While it is true that people want to remain at home, that's if they have a good home to remain in, and that's if they have sufficient supports to keep them in that home—community supports like Meals on Wheels and transportation, and help with their housing. Some people have no choice but to get round-the-clock nursing care, and they really do need nursing homes. I think by not concentrating on this need, we're neglecting the over 200,000 people who are using these services every year. By understaffing in this area, we're also putting great risks and burdens on the women who mostly provide this work.
:
Good morning, everyone.
First, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you today about this very important issue.
As a woman in Canada who has been very fortunate to seek and enjoy a stable and enriching career in the service of others, I am passionate about my new path that speaks to the successful engagement of girls and women in STEM, the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
For the past 17 years, I've had the opportunity to encourage girls and young women to challenge themselves in the FIRST Robotics family of programs. FIRST is an acronym that stands for, for inspiration and recognition of science and technology, a family of programs that is a catalyst for learning for students from grades 1 to 12. It's run nationally through school- and community-based teams. There are four FEWO committee members who have a total of 11 teams dispersed among their ridings. Five provinces currently have FIRST high school level teams.
The founding mentor of Canada's longest-standing, nationally and internationally most successful girls' team in FIRST, I am a proud supporter of this initiative. Now as chair of the board of FIRST Robotics Canada, and the first woman, I may add, internationally to be in such a role, I am in a national position to impact the ability of girls to chase their dreams in STEM.
What's the issue? Here are some of the statistics. Growing numbers of girls successfully pursue post-secondary education in STEM fields. They're very high achievers in university, college, and industry training programs. We tell them that they can do anything and that they know they can. They believe us. When they enter the world of work, though, something causes them to question their choice. Women retreat from these fields as they pursue their careers.
Why is there this attrition? They're unsupported by male colleagues. They're frustrated by gender biases, conscious and unconscious, in hiring and promotion practices. They're faced with stigmas related to women in STEM, which is perceived often as being unfeminine. They lack supportive networks. They don't have role models or associations. There is inequity in pay, as reported by Statistics Canada, across all STEM fields. In fact, in Canada, women make 72¢ on the dollar of a same job.
We do not see women in leadership—there are 12% of women employed in engineering—or colleagues achieving to their full potential. They're frustrated. They're very high-achieving women, of whom 64% report that they are under more scrutiny than their male colleagues, especially when they're applying for a promotion.
The U.S.-based, data-driven and research-driven NCWIT, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, says that women don't need to be fixed; men need to become their allies and advocates.
We often hear about the leaky pipeline. Little girls engage in STEM wholeheartedly. I have witnessed this. As they progress along the pipeline, though, they question their ability and lose confidence. Ultimately, without supportive peers and adults, they decide to leave STEM fields. The statistics are clear: those who continue are in a minority in post-secondary programs.
Further attrition occurs in the workplace for all of the reasons above. This is a travesty for Canada. It's proven that diversity brings richness of thought, enhanced innovation, stronger teams, and has a profound impact on our GDP.
What's the impact of FIRST Robotics Canada? Our recent strategic plan, EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, is there to support girls or alumnae of the program, but we're in a catch-22. Here we are supporting girls, but we're not serving these extraordinary young women who will be Canada's STEM leaders if we don't focus on the workplaces they will enter.
The creation of the Girls in STEM Executive Advisory Council this year is a results-driven, strategy-based group with three aspirational goals: to support young women in FIRST programs; to change the culture of the workplaces into which they will enter; and to investigate the impact of men and dads on the attitudes of their daughters.
FIRST's strategy is this, to meet goal one. Last weekend we had our first girls in FIRST weekend. Sixty-five girls from 25 teams across the province and 35 adults came together for two days. The focus was on the development of personal life skills: to be resilient, confident, courageous, brave, embrace failure as a learning opportunity, and to flee from perfectionism—so often part of being a woman—to enable success in the STEM world.
On the agenda, we had presentations and panel discussions from role models and industry leaders. If you see her, you can be her. Challenges of the glass obstacle course were discussed. There were workshops to discuss issues, build skills, dream about the future, to network, and to assertively suggest how they would like to proceed. The goal is not to fix the girls, but to augment their skills. Conceived of and executed by adults created the head of the comet, but the girls themselves have taken on the tail. The next steps are emerging.
To meet goal two, the girls in STEM executive advisory board are seeking systemic change in workplaces where women traditionally retreat. We are building presentations to build awareness and to call out gender biases and to grow the movement of men as allies and advocates and champions, to clearly state that equity, diversity, and inclusion aren't just good for women, but they're good for society and the economy as well. It is an economic imperative.
We need to challenge the media, to change that image of scientists as being men in white lab coats.
We intend to call attention to the status quo where 22% of employees in STEM are women, and this has only grown 2% in the past 30 years. We know this will cause discomfort, but we're okay with that.
To meet goal three, there are workshops for men in the lives of girls, to make them aware of their impact and provide strategies to support their girls and their daughters.
These are aspirational goals of FIRST Robotics Canada to move the needle on the current generation of young women by helping them and by challenging systemic attitudes. If we don't, all the good work encouraging girls in STEM is for naught.
What's the national picture? We need women in STEM and for them to stay in STEM. We need to close the gender gap. It isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. That is echoed around the world. We need to achieve systemic support for solutions, to demand change. This will be challenging, but together we can all make it happen. We need national strategies to reverse the trend. It is not just good for society, but for Canada's innovation strategy, the national economy, our place in the world, and it's good for 50% of the population.
I have some recommendations. Challenge the status quo by holding CEOs and boards accountable for their demographics and hold organizations accountable for systemic change. Withhold funding and other resources, as Minister 's proposal for university funding states. Bring together organizations that support women in STEM. Build networks. Impose quotas to achieve balance. That's demonstrated by Sweden's voluntary quota project. They can be very effective in boosting diversity and improving systemic change. Engage men in the conversation so that they can become advocates. Empower women, and engage men. There should be support from the federal government to encourage the development of organizations such as Australia's Athena SWAN, the U.K.'s Athena SWAN, and the U.S.-based NCWIT, all of which support women in STEM fields. At present, Canada lags behind in this work, and we need to change that.
:
Good morning, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to present.
I was raised on a farm in Manitoba, took my degree in agriculture and management in agriculture at the University of Manitoba, and have worked in the ag industry for all of my career.
In 2000, I started my own company and worked with agriculture communications and marketing, specializing in ag conferences.
In 2014, I gathered a group of women leaders from across Canada in the agricultural industry. I brought them together to discuss the opportunities and challenges that women face in the agricultural industry, and the skills and tools that would be needed to hone their leadership skills.
It became very apparent through this group of women leaders that there was a strong need for women at every age and every stage of their careers, in every agricultural sector and food sector to hear and learn from the experiences of successful women, to network with women who share a common passion for agriculture and food, and to grow life and career skills to prepare them for the best possible futures. It was an opportunity for women to invest in themselves and benefit their families, their businesses, their communities, and the industry overall.
With this as our guiding principle, we created the first Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference in April 2014, and we attracted over 400 women from over six provinces, representing over 130 organizations. It was a huge risk for me, personally, one that was not very profitable but most rewarding.
The program emphasizes what I call the key leadership skills and development opportunities that women need in today's society: communication, including mentorship, coaching, and networking; financial management and independence; health, both physical and mental; balancing life strategies and career planning, and setting goals in all of these areas.
Speakers were chosen on the basis of their expertise and their experience. They were selected not only from the agricultural industry but from the industry overall.
Over the last year, due to demand, we've enhanced the program of agricultural workshops by including networking, succession planning, coaching, financial management, and risk management.
The time has never been better, I think, for women in agriculture. Women are changing our industry every day, on the farm, through associations, in our universities, and in the board rooms of corporate agribusiness across North America.
To accomplish this change, women need strong networks and solid skills to build confidence, as Dorothy mentioned, to be motivated and inspired, and to increase the recognition of women in the industry through articles, print ads, and their actual day-to-day work. They need real-life, real-world examples of what's possible. That's where Advancing Women takes the lead.
Our audience today represents every industry sector, 4-H, university students, farmers, and entrepreneurs.
Since 2014, we've held six conferences in Alberta and Ontario. Over 3,000 women—that's an average of 500 women per conference—have attended from across Canada, representing over 350 organizations in Canada. This initiative is clearly filling a great need as represented not only by the number of women who attend but also the importance of the support that we receive from private industry sponsorship. This includes farm organizations, financial institutions, agribusiness, and a wide range of private ag and food stakeholders from across Canada.
Many organizations participate not only through sponsorship but by registering many of their staff and customers to attend AWC. They use it as a supplement to their internal training programs and marketing programs.
Our main goal for Advancing Women was learning, and bringing an exceptional speaker program to our audience. To date, we've been true to our commitment, and according to our audiences we have exceeded these expectations.
Our second goal was to make the conference as affordable as possible for all women in the industry. We are not only grateful to our private industry sponsors, who have helped accomplish this, but also to the Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan governments, which have classified AWC as a training program and allow for reimbursement, in part, of registration fees and expenses incurred by producer farmers and processors.
Our third goal is to assist in building a stronger ag community and industry overall for the future. To do this, we sponsor young women from universities and colleges who are studying agriculture, 4-H members, and any of those who apply in the community, by covering their registration and hotel accommodation. This is done by myself personally and by industry stakeholders who are interested in doing so. To date, we have sponsored over 50 students from across Canada.
AWC is recognized in supporting, celebrating, and recognizing the contribution that women make in the industry. Women participants leave more confident, enthused, and motivated, and are more apt, therefore, to be advocates in the industry and involved in industry associations and boards.
We have supported many women networks in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. We have also provided a network for women who, for example, are widows raising families and want to keep the farm for their children growing up. We've built a network of over 25 farmers across the Canada-U.S. border, so that they have this network of support.
We've been asked to bring the conference to the United States and Africa. We have also been approached by other industries in the insurance, energy, food, restaurant, and hotel associations. We also support women in youth groups, to get involved not only with 4-H but with others.
Our overall goal is to have women involved in agriculture and food to benefit from AWC, not only from the speakers but from each other. We are considered today to be the largest leadership conference for women in agriculture, where women in agriculture can join a community of their peers to listen, learn, network, and grow.
We have more than 2,800 followers on Twitter, more than 860 connections on Facebook, and more than 9,000 connections on LinkedIn. Our YouTube station, which we created last year, has been gathering thousands of people to view our videos of speakers from the conference.
I thank you very much.
:
Thank you so much for being with us today.
I echo that thankfulness to you, Ms. Meck, for offering an agricultural perspective. I'm from Lethbridge, Alberta, so agriculture is big for us, in both ag production and science and tech. I have a keen desire to understand this industry, as well as a desire to see more women in this field. All of that is to say that I have just a few reflections to start with.
Ms. Byers, one of the things you talked about is the difference in income with regard to women. I certainly would agree with you. Women do not make as much as men do, but I want to clarify something, because we have new data from Stats Canada. What that data shows is that the hourly wage of a full-time woman worker is 88% that of men, rather than 72¢ per dollar, which is what I think you said. StatsCan also shows, when comparing women and men with the same demographic, work, and workplace characteristics, that it's actually 92% of what men earn. We are seeing an increase. We're seeing a good trajectory. I'm not saying that we don't have a way to go—we certainly do—but I think where we're making gains, it's worth acknowledging and celebrating those gains.
Perhaps on that note, too, I'll highlight this. Interestingly enough, in terms of the points in history where we've seen the greatest gains made, when we look back to 1976 and move all the way to 2016, the greatest gains were made between 1988 and 1994, when Brian Mulroney was in place, and then from 2004 to 2008, when Stephen Harper was in place. I think there's something to be said there, and that is, the economic platforms that were put in place during those times were based on balanced budgets and economic responsibility with regard to fiscal management. I do think that plays a role here, because there is a larger picture to be considered. We want to enter into specific industries and see women championed, of course, but I think we also have to care for the entire economy as a whole. There is much to be said for that as well in making sure that we thrive as a country, both locally within our national economy and also on the international stage.
That's my bigger picture for context, but it leads me to this question. Iris, you talked about 4-H. Within my riding, I've seen the impact 4-H has had. I also was raised on a small farm in a rural area and was quite engaged in the different community initiatives, so I've seen the way 4-H impacts a young person's professional development, their confidence, skills, and abilities, and even their decision-making as they go forward into the workforce or to university or college.
I'm wondering if you can comment on the different benefits you've seen from that, specifically in the context of this study, which is women and girls and the decisions they're making with regard to university and college education, I guess, as well as the professional fields that they choose to go into.
To go back to me again, I would like to say that while my colleague may look fondly back on the previous governments, I for one don't want to go back to a time when I had to have a male colleague ask the head office for permission for me to attend a meeting with him, or go back to 1993, when women with disabilities couldn't vote. I think it's important for all of us to recognize where we are but to be looking forward in trying to make the changes we can make going forward.
Dorothy, you brought up the blind applications, but our government actually is doing that as a pilot to see if and how that changes this. We can talk about merit-based all we want, but as I've heard quite often from colleagues in business, if it came down to a man or a woman, they would hire the man, because a young woman is going to have children. There's a natural bias against hiring women.
One of the things I've heard a lot is that young girls are taught not to take risks. You mentioned the science class, where the boys have their faces in the test tubes and the girls are taking notes. I wonder how important you see risk-taking at a young age so that later on in life, whether in business or politics or science or engineering, a woman will take that leap of faith to apply for that job, or in agriculture a woman will say “yes” and get out there and do it.
How important is it that young girls are not protected, are not taught to not take those risks or leaps of faith? I'd like both of you to answer that. Is there anything we can do to help instill that in young women?
:
I took a leap of faith starting FIRST Robotics in an all-girls school. I call them my “Thelma and Louise” moments.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Ms. Dorothy Byers: But we land, you know. We're not quite sure where we're going to land, or how we're going to do it, but I believe that as women, as role models, we help young girls understand that risk-taking is good. Girls in particular, little ones, have such curiosity about the world. They are fearless. We need to sustain that desire to test and to push and to challenge, to not be afraid of failure, and to understand that failure is the biggest teacher and the greatest teacher. It gives you an opportunity to understand how you could change things to make them better.
That flies in the face of perfectionism in girls. As a society, we need to do everything we possibly can to help girls, at the youngest ages and all the way through, appreciate that they don't have to be perfect. They have to be brave. They have to be courageous. They have to know how to get around the glass obstacle course that they will face. I love the sticky floor, but the glass obstacle course also means that they will hit things that they don't know how to get over and around, or even see, but they will, because they have the resilience and they have the skills and they're not afraid of failing. They'll put their names forward.
So Pam, I believe the more we can do for young women to give them opportunities the better, where they are not afraid to fail, where they know there's a network, where they know there are supports for them, and where they know they're empowered and men are engaged to be able to support them as they try their wings.