“Thank you for inspiring public action!”
— Workshop Participant
— Workshop Participant
Winnipeg —
March 22, 2007
Wolseley Family Place
Facilitators: Jennifer deGroot & Becky Thiessen
Participants: 7 women
The following ideas were generated by workshop participants as part of our gender budget consultations. Please note that this list does not represent the official position of the UN Platform for Action Committee Manitoba (UNPAC). Neither UNPAC nor all of the participants have endorsed these suggestions.
1. What are key concerns for women in your community?
- Children need
- Food
- Clothes
- Health
- Shelter
- Healthy families who have respect and are not living in poverty
- Respect and Dignity
- Childcare
- Housing
- Safe
- Affordable
- Accessible
- Close to services
- Accessible for those with disabilities
- Pensions
- Health care
- Dental care
- Eye care
- Poverty
- Young women having children without thinking of consequences
- Racism
- Education
- Immigrants
- Rights of domestic workers
- Canada relying on immigrant work rather than supporting families
- Environment
- Gardening
- Safety
- Violence against women
- Work
- Home community
- Interconnectedness of issues is not always realized
2. a) What Government programs and services have really worked to meet women’s needs and concerns? How could they be expanded upon or made better?
- North End Women’s Resource Centre
- Family Community Centre
- Daycares/ subsidized daycare (still not enough)
- Women’s Shelters (still not enough)
- Clinics (need better emergency care, wait times)
- CNIB bus pass
- People who use services should have ability to participate in decision-making at the centre
- Accountability to community for services to participants, not just to funders
2. b) What ideas do you have for programs and services that could meet women’s needs?
- Mandatory Life skills program for pre-teens
- to help reduce teen pregnancy and poverty
- Satellite resource centres in all Manitoba Housing complexes
- An in- house resource
- Could have regular services like public health nurse, nutritionist, etc.
- Services that accommodate shift workers
- Bring medical services to people’s homes — mobile van/doctor
- Require that businesses beyond a certain size have on-site daycare
- Back to non-mixed housing for older people (especially women)
- More co-ops/community housing
- Daycare co-op of “grandmas” — if a child is sick “grandma” could look after him/her” — this way working mom would not have to take time off of work
“For all to have a better future we need to
think long term and we need to start now!”
think long term and we need to start now!”
3. Women often do not have enough money to do the things they need to do and they often do not have enough time to do the things they need to do either. Where are you crunched for time? What could the government do to give you more time to do the things you need to do?
- Accommodate/value women’s unpaid work
- More options for job sharing
- More options for women to work out of home
- Higher wages
- Car pool programs/co-ops — you can register and then be matched up
- Community centres could provide this option
- All new housing should have resource centres
- Co-operatives housing and home ownership programs for low-income women
- This will reduce transiency of children
- Public Transportation
- Faster, more frequent, better connections
- More accessible — for strollers, wheelchairs, shopping carts, bicycles…
- Increase wages so that women can pay for day care
- Make human rights a law
- Keep corporations accountable
- Need transparency in government
4. What ideas do you have on how the Government could earn more money? Examples include: raising existing taxes, introducing new taxes, or stopping programs that don’t work. Use the creativity you have learned from your experience as a woman living with a tight budget.
- Raise corporate taxes
- Stronger audit process
- Develop recycling program in government (i.e. for computers)
- Less jails, more rehabilitation
- Limit on income for those at top
- Tougher penalties for white collar crime
- Better public transportation
TAKE ACTION!
- Talk to media
- Talk with people in government (elected and bureaucracy)
- Write letters
- Educate politicians
- Educate yourself
- Organize a rally, a campaign
- Find solutions
- Be creative and constructive
- Write / Sign a petition
- Boycott
- Find pressure points
- Be strategic
- Sit-ins / public demonstrations
- Street theatre
- Develop own media
- Do research / position paper on an issue
- Build coalitions of like-minded groups