Patricia Erika Aguilar-Zeleny: Single mothers need changes in social and urban policy
The budget cuts in social programs during the last several years have had impressive repercussions on the well-being of low-income families in general and single mothers indigenous and immigrant in particular. The outlook is depressing: deficient housing, poverty wages, expensive transportation, insufficient and inaccessible childcare, and inadequate health supports, particularly for low income mothers and children with disabilities.
To deal with the increasing problem of urban poverty, it is not enough for single mothers to get back to work. They are not only facing systemic barriers to access basic necessities as a result of the indifference of provincial and federal governments to their plea. They are also more vulnerable to stigmatization, discrimination, abuse/violence, and punitive child apprehensions. The system is failing them—health cuts, legal aid cuts, housing subsides cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts!
To end urban poverty and social exclusion, it is of utmost importance to support the growing number of Canadian single mothers. We need changes in social and urban policy if we are going to see any improvement in the key areas of childcare, subsidized housing, urban transportation, and education and training. We need changes to protect the future of Canada.
According to Statistics Canada’s 2005 Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report, in 2004, 58 percent of all women aged 15 and over were part of the paid work force, up from 42 percent in 1976. In contrast, the proportion of men who were employed fell during this period from 73 percent to 68 percent. As a result, women accounted for 47 percent of the employed work force in 2004, up from 37 percent in 1976. The report also showed that the proportion of women living with their spouse has declined in the past two decades, more women are living alone, and women make up the majority of the Canadian population with disabilities.
Likewise, women with young children are working in greater numbers than before. In 2004, 65 percent of all women with children under the age of three were employed, more than double the figure in 1976. Additionally, women are increasingly going back to work after childbearing: 70 percent of women whose youngest child was aged three to five worked for pay in 2004, up from 37 percent in 1976. Regarding single mothers, it is important to note dramatic increases in the share of female single parents’ employment in the last three decades, from 50 percent in 1976 to 69 percent in 2004.
The same report mentions that women make up a disproportionate share of the population in Canada with low incomes as measured by Statistics Canada’s low income cut-off on an after-tax basis. Most striking are the statistics for single mothers since they can be considered an important consequence of budget cuts in many social programs.
According to a 2010 study by P. Gurstein and S. Vilches in Gender, Place & Culture, the province of “British Columbia has the highest child poverty rate in Canada....One quarter of all Greater Vancouver families with children in the province live below the poverty line.” Many children are living in poverty with their mothers. Single mothers have to take care of their children most of the time, take them to school or to child care facilities if they work outside their homes; they must go to work, go shopping, maybe they too go to school.
Single mothers’ and their children’s lives depend profoundly on a sound social and urban policy that welcomes them to the city. For them is important to increase social housing programs, to have cheaper urban transportation, and to expand child-care facilities to enable them to live a life with dignity and self-respect.
Patricia Erika Aguilar-Zeleny is a single mother of five children, and a volunteer and member of the coordinating collective for Vancouver Status of Women. She holds a PhD in geography from the London School of Economics and is working on her MA in women’s studies at UBC.
Comments
11 Comments
Taxpayers R Us
May 3, 2011 at 8:59pm
Sexist BS.
Apply it evenly to both genders and maybe someone will listen.
kaur
May 4, 2011 at 6:23am
Census data has shown a significant pattern shift of single father led families. Between 2001 and 2006, lone-father families rose by 14.6 per cent, more than twice the pace of 6.3 per cent for families headed by single mothers. http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=0349c55d-...
This shift is a reflection of the changing dynamics in our social landscape and is indicative of another group that needs help under the social support umbrella. When I read Patricia Erika Aguilar’s article, and the GENDER based report she provides, it’s as if the plight of single fathers doesn’t exist. Do single fathers need changes in social and urban policy? What are the rates of poverty for single fathers? I have no idea because I rarely get this info in the media and especially in articles like this that are slanted.
Fathers are as important in the parenting process as mothers and many men want to become better fathers. Sometimes they need support too. http://www.fira.ca/news-release.php?id=59
Taxpayers R Us
May 4, 2011 at 4:14pm
@ kaur
Amid so many falsified reports and statistics feminism lost its credibility long ago and reports like this remind us that equality is the last thing these sexists want.
The growing needs of single fathers would not add pressure to the social funding in place if some of the existing allocations were stripped from groups known to fraudulently obtain funding and were then properly reallocated.
My gut tells me it would in fact ease the cost to taxpayers. A very healthy percentage of this funding could easily go back to the public purse and be better - and more legally allocated.
Femina
May 4, 2011 at 4:25pm
Single parents need more support based on a means test. That should solve Kaur and Taxpayers R Us's quibbles quickly, without upending the argument about supporting single mothers.
Taxpayers R Us
May 4, 2011 at 9:32pm
@Femina,
Why does an argument need to be made supporting one gender but not the other?
kaur
May 5, 2011 at 6:23am
@Taxpayers R Us: One of the big reasons that reports like these exist is because they’re in a sense lobbying for gov’t funding . It’s not necessarily about new money but the politics of funding allocation – that is, about how to distribute pieces of the budget pie. Essentially the author of this article is making the case for social services for women.
I do think that it’s important to make a case about where the resources should go but I don’t think it should have anything to do with gender. I also don’t discount the need for help for women.
I think the debate should be about where there’s a legitimate need for social services support, plain and simple. The difficulty here is that men don’t have an army of vocal activists fighting for them and we often get too much one-sided info. This kind of a situation is fertile ground for abuse of power.
The goal of Feminists is to get as much of the budget pie as possible because they are in a sense lobbyists for their representatives – women.
Anarchy alive
May 5, 2011 at 10:54pm
I agree. with "Apply it evenly to both genders". In order to do this we must dismantle the system of patriarchal domination which subjugates womyn under which we currently live and then work from a standpoint of equality from the ground up. Until then keep smashing white male hetero-normative privilege!!!
This is an awesome article!
kaur
May 6, 2011 at 6:35am
The observation that many Feminists don’t want equality is a valid one and very plausible because it would threaten their position of privilege and ideological domination which they currently enjoy. Consider the fact that most Universities provide Gender Studies Programs – which is code for Women’s studies, yet good luck finding courses about Men’s issues. Men’s issues are an extremely important area of study but such courses are hard to come or barely exist.
Are we still in a Patriarchal dominated system which subjugates women and requires that we keep smashing white male hetero-normative privilege? Sounds like the typical indoctrination taught in school by Feminists. Don’t even try to challenge notions like these or it will affect your grade and you will be greeted with rage. I examined in-depth previous census results on victimization and the corresponding reports that followed it in my university stats class so I am very aware of the problematic reports/statistics/info that Feminists provide and their credibility issues that Taxpayers R Us brings.
And yet, Feminist voice's still dominate and they continue to enjoy their privileged status quo?
@Anarchy Alive: This article completely ignores the needs of men. No wonder you think it’s awesome? BTW I think your name is very reflective of the way that too many Feminists currently operate.
kaur
May 6, 2011 at 2:17pm
I want to use my magic edit button and change my previous comment (I wrote it early this am) from ”˜...it will affect your grade and you will be greeted with rage’ to 'it MAY affect your grade and you MAY be greeted with rage’, I would hate to paint all instructors with the same brush but I have heard from other students and on student forums about this problem with Feminist instructors.
R U Kiddingme
May 6, 2011 at 8:24pm
The thrust of this article, which has been derailed into a debate on feminism, is that there needs to be more support for single mothers. I am ok with that but it leaves out a crucial element, which is, that people are choosing to have children without having an ample cushion of resources. I can tell you that even with a reasonable income, two parents and four grandparents around, having kids is hard, hard work with a lot of budgeting needed. I cannot imagine the difficulty of being a knocked-up teenager who makes the emotionally valid but financially absurd decision to keep the baby. I have compassion for the kids growing up in impoverished situations but the parents who have kids willy-nilly clearly did not get the right education or they would have made a better choice. (I'm not talking about rape or the condom breaking, although that's why on the 8th day God said let there also be safe, legal abortions.)
As for feminism -- blah blah! Men, are you so fussed about this? Feminism is a branch of humanism and humanism benefits all of us. You think that set gender roles aren't a good thing to study and improve where possible? You know what our gender role was, right: to die in battle? I thank every woman's study department for looking at ways to ameliorate the biological divide -- nothing should be imposed on us, all of our roles should be the ones we volunteer for!