Government budgets can either promote women’s equality or exacerbate women’s inequality...

“Taxation is the price we pay for living in a civilized society”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Women’s Budgetary Priorities

Juggling women’s roles and responsibilities

We’ve heard Manitoba women identify a number of key budgetary priorities. Lack of affordable, quality housing has been identified as a top concern in each of our workshops. The need for affordable and accessible childcare follows closely behind. This page provides background information on these and other budgetary issues affecting women.


«To read more specifically about women in Manitoba’s
budget priorities, read our executive summary.

Housing

Manitoba women are unanimous in naming the lack of safe, quality, affordable housing as a key concern. Government budgets can increase women’s equality by making support for the creation and maintenance of subsidized housing a budget priority. Why is housing so important to women?

housing
  1. Women make up the majority of the poor. Immigrant women, Aboriginal women, women living with disabilities, senior women, and single mothers are disproportionately represented among the female poor.
  2. There is a shortage of quality subsidized housing in Canada, especially rental housing.
  3. The social assistance housing allowance is inadequate to meet housing needs. Women raising young children — especially lone parents — are most at risk.
  4. Women earn less than men. Minimum wage (women make up 2/3 of minimum wage earners) is too low to provide for basic needs such as housing.
  5. Women have particular needs for safe and stable housing, for example, in leaving abusive relationships, in providing healthy space for their children, and in avoiding situations of violence.
  6. The public housing market does not meet the need for truly affordable housing.
  7. Women live longer than men. Senior women have particular housing needs and less money to deal with these needs.
  8. Women experience a higher disability rate than men. Women living with disabilities have particular needs for supportive housing. Disability benefits are inadequate to meet housing needs.
  9. Women are the majority of single parents and thus have increased responsibilities to provide for their children’s basic needs such as housing.
  10. Women balance triple duties of paid work, unpaid work, and community work. Safe, affordable, quality housing is critical in supporting women in this work.

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Child Care

mother with child graphic

Our society depends on new life. Women’s work of reproduction and the critical role this work plays in our society’s well-being and very sustenance has been, and in many cases remains, assumed. Government budgets in Canada have not yet made childcare a priority. The lack of a comprehensive early childhood education and child care program in Canada is felt most deeply by women. Quality, universal, affordable, developmental child care is a critical piece in ensuring women’s equality, economic and other. Child care is not a replacement for parenting; rather, it is a support for all families — whether parents work outside the home, or not. Early learning and child care includes everything from full-day, five days/week child care to parent-child drop-in programs, play groups, music and movement programs, etc. — programs which benefit all families.

The lack of a comprehensive child care system combined with women’s low pay and a maternity leave system from which large numbers of women are excluded — only 61% of new mothers were eligible for benefits in 2001 — leaves the most vulnerable mothers left to fend for themselves.

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Winnipeg bus

Public Transportation

There are many reasons why public transportation is an important budget priority for women. Women live longer than men and rely on public transportation in their senior years. Women still assume primary responsibility for raising children and public transportation is important in getting families where they need to go. Because women tend to have less access to financial resources, affordable and quality transportation is key to their full participation in society. This need is accentuated for women living with disabilities.

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Taxation

Taxes can either be used to redistribute wealth, or to increase existing income gaps such as the gap between men and women’s earnings. Government budgets across Canada in the past decade have focused on reducing debts and deficits at the expense of social programs. Tax cuts for the rich and growing disparity for the rest have been the name of the game. Women, who make up the majority of the poor, have been most negatively affected.

dollar and graph chart

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Employment, Work, and Income

Women all over Manitoba have raised budgetary concerns related to employment, work, and income. Lack of well-paying employment options is of particular concern for rural women, immigrant women and women living with disabilities. Budgets, and government policy in general, can work to improve women’s employment. For example, governments can legislate pay equity — in both the public and private sectors. Governments can also create jobs in rural communities rather than centralizing services in large urban centres. Governments can provide employment supports for employees with disabilities and the employers who hire them. Governments can also reward businesses that pay a living wage and good benefits and hire a diverse workforce. Finally, governments can streamline recognition of foreign credentials so that new Canadians can participate fully in the paid labour force. When people’s earnings increase, so does government revenue through income tax. These are all budget issues.

Government budgets can also support women outside of the paid labour force. Social assistance rates can be set so women, particulary mothers, are not scrambling to survive. Similarly, old age and disability pensions should meet women’s needs.

Women consistently experience a discrepancy between what they do in a day and how much money they have. Budgets can recognize women’s unpaid work through refundable tax credits and income supports.

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Minimum Wage

Although not specificially a budget issue, minimum wage does impact the budget in a number of ways. When people earn more money they pay more taxes, providing increased revenue for government. A minimum wage that is a living wage will also reduce women’s dependance on social services.

Minimum wage is a gender issue. Because women make up 2/3 of minimum wage workers, a low minimum wage affects them more than it does men. Low minimum wages impact whole families because poor mothers have poor children. The minimum wage earnings of a single mother with two children working full-time are less than half of Statistics Canada Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) — Canada’s unofficial poverty line. In other words, a single mother of two must work at least 80 hours per week every single week of the year in order to reach the poverty line. A minimum wage increase of 25 cents gives this woman an extra $10/week.

balance scales

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Health Care

Women across Manitoba have named access to universal, quality health care as a key budget priority. Women in rural Manitoba have particular concerns such as having to travel long distances for appointments and lack of adequate services in their communities. Health care is important to women because of their reproductive role, because we live longer than men, and because we experience a higher disability rate than men. As well, many women find quality, well-paying jobs in health-related fields. Budget cuts to health care, which have taken place across Canada, have resulted in women’s lost jobs, an increase of stress in women’s workplaces, and an increase in women’s unpaid work as women pick up the slack for services no longer provided by the public sector.

doctor and patient

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