Description:
This is the fifth in a series of occasional bulletins that focus on issues highlighted in the Hamilton's Social Landscape report and bring attention to more recent trends. This report shows that the since 1993, women have been responsible for 100% of the full-time, full-year job growth in Hamilton. But the gap between men and women's full-time, full-year pay is larger than it was in 1976.
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Investing in early childhood education is a key way that governments can both ease the "double burden" for women and allow even more women to join the workforce and help grow the economy. "Canada is an international laggard on child care. Our expenditures on child care as a percentage of GDP are the lowest among OECD ountries. Despite what amounts to a social revolution in the lives of women since 1970, early learning and child care services in Canada today remain an inadequate
patchwork that does not offer choice," reports the YWCA of Canada. In Hamilton, there are only enough regulated childcare spaces for 19% of children under age 6. Hamilton's waiting list for a childcare fee subsidy has doubled in two years (Chart 3), and in 2013 stands at a record level of over 1,700 families. Only Ontario's low-income families are eligible for the provincially-funded childcare fee subsidy program, but the funding barely covers half of children under six living in poverty.