Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color In U.S. Jails : NPR

2016/08/20 Leave a comment

In Canada, 15 percent of those admitted to provincial/territorial prisons are women. For Indigenous peoples, the number is 20 percent for federal admissions, 24 percent for provincial/territorial admissions (Indigenous females accounted for a higher proportion of female admissions to provincial/territorial sentenced custody (36%) than did Aboriginal males (25%):

To be sure, the jail population is mostly male. Women represent 15 percent of the jail population in smaller counties, and slightly less in larger counties. But according to the study, the overall population of women in jails has ballooned since the 1970s, from just under 8,000 to nearly 110,000 nationwide in 2014, with low-income women of color disproportionately represented — 64 percent of women in jails across the country are women of color.

And while local jail populations are among the fastest growing correctional populations for both men and women, the U.S. Department of Justice reports that from 2000 to 2010, the female jail population grew at a faster rate than the male population.

….Swavola said existing research does not clearly explain the fast growth of the women’s population in small-county jails, but she pointed out that smaller counties can have fewer resources for social services, mental health resources and employment opportunities. “In those communities, they rely on incarceration to deal with people with mental and behavioral challenges,” says Swavola.

Laurie Garduque, director of Justice Reform for the MacArthur Foundation, which funded the study, says in many places around the country, jails have essentially become warehouses for the poor. Like men, most women in jail ended up there for nonviolent offenses. The study found that in Davidson County, Tennessee, for example, 77 percent of women were booked into jail on misdemeanor charges. The most common charge was failure to appear after receiving a citation.

“Much of the problems that bring women into the criminal justice system…tend to be low-level offenses or nuisance behavior that do not pose a risk to public safety,” says Garduque.

In their analysis, the researchers also found that 32 percent of women in U.S. jails suffer from serious mental illness, including major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Garduque says the trauma of being in jail can make it harder to cope with existing mental health problems. She says police officers, corrections officers and other employees in the criminal justice system need better training on how to interact with people with mental illnesses, and that this new research shows that mental health programs need to be more accessible outside of jail.

“Our aim here is not to improve mental health programs in jails,” says Garduque. “Our aim is to provide those resources on the community-based level to prevent women from penetrating the system.”

What’s more, many women enter the jail system having already experienced significant trauma. “There is a history of physical and domestic abuse for a lot of our moms,” says Samuel Luddington, deputy director of programs at Children of Inmates in Miami, which helps incarcerated parents stay connected with their children. Luddington says the current system wasn’t set up to provide that sort of care.

As for life after jail, re-entry programs that are developed with gender in mind are among the most effective, says Swavola, the co-author of study. For instance, Connecticut tried out a pilot probation program along those lines from 2007 to 2010. The project was based on the Women Offender Case Management Model developed by National Institute of Corrections. It was designed to take into account risk factors that girls and women tend to face at higher rates, such as domestic violence and mental illness. and partner abuse. It also encouraged women to have a voice in their own case management.

A review of women on probation who participated in the Connecticut program found those women were about 11 percent less likely to be arrested again after one year compared to women who did not participate in the program.

Source: Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color In U.S. Jails : Code Switch : NPR

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Ontario considering further changes to how gender is displayed on government documents

2016/08/16 Leave a comment

These consultations should not only be with Ontario stakeholders but the federal government also needs to be involved given the implications across a series of programs (see earlier New gender-neutral Ontario health cards make it harder to get a passport illustrating the need):

Ontario is considering more changes to the collection and display of gender information on government documents, not long after announcing gender-neutral driver’s licences and health cards.

Public consultations launched earlier this month look at how gender information is treated on government forms and identification documents, including birth and marriage certificates.

A preamble to an online survey says “people with transgender and non-binary gender identity may face barriers and other negative outcomes when trying to access services” so the government wants to ensure its policies are inclusive.

Ontario has already announced that starting in early 2017, drivers will be able to select an X instead of an M for male or F for female on their licences.

People can also now obtain health cards without sex information displayed on the front of the card.

“There’s more work to be done on this, so we’re reaching out to Ontarians to make sure we develop good policy that the government can use to make appropriate decisions about when and how to collect, retain, use and display information about persons sex and gender,” Christine Burke, a spokeswoman for the government and consumer services minister, said in a statement.

Trans advocate Susan Gapka would like to see sex and gender not displayed on birth certificates. The type of changes the government is contemplating are relatively easy and low-cost to achieve, but mean so much to the community, she said.

“I was born again, so to speak, 20 years ago,” Gapka said. “Now I have to renew my health card and having the correct or the accurate way that I feel best describes me, as female, is really, really important to me. In fact, I had to change laws. We had to change laws and change society’s opinions so I could have that.”

The consultation survey says the government is proposing to collect gender information as the default and sex information only if needed. For example, sex is necessary for the Ontario Health Insurance Program, it says.

Greater use of X as a gender identifier is also possible on other identification, such as photo ID cards for people who do not have driver’s licences. And, the consultation document says, the government wants to see a consistent process for people who identify as trans or non-binary — defined as people who don’t identify exclusively as male or female.

Source: Ontario considering further changes to how gender is displayed on government documents | National Post

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Muslim Women in the U.K. Are The Most Economically Disadvantaged | TIME

2016/08/13 Leave a comment

Not surprising given patterns of UK immigration. Comparable numbers in Canada: the unemployment rate of Muslim women is 10 percent higher than Christian women, the participation rate 8 percent lower:

A new report has found that Muslim women are the most economically disadvantaged group in Britain, blighted by the highest level of unemployment compared to other religious and ethnic groups in the country.

Muslims, who make up 4.8% of the population of England and Wales, are more than two times likely to be unemployed compared to the general population. Women make up 65% of economic inactive Muslims are women, compared to 59% across all religions, says the report released by the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, a cross-party group of British lawmakers.

The report also found that traditional family practices affected Muslim women’s job prospects; 44% of all economically inactive Muslim women were not in work because they were looking after the home, compared to a national average of 16%.

The report says Muslim women looking for work or in employment also face a “triple penalty” of being a woman, part of an ethnic minority and being Muslim. It said Muslim women suffered the “impact of Islamophobia” on women’s job prospects, facing discrimination due to their beliefs, culture or clothing.

“We heard evidence that stereotypical views of Muslim women can act as a barrier to work,” the Committee Chair and Conservative Member of Parliament Maria Miller said in a statement. “The data suggests that in communities these patterns are shifting across generations but we remain concerned that this shift is happening too slowly and that not all Muslim women are being treated equally.”

The committee called on the government to roll out a plan to tackle these inequalities by the end of 2016. They also called for “name-blind recruitment” for all employers, following studies that suggest people with white-sounding names are more likely to get interviews.

Source: Muslim Women in the U.K. Are The Most Economically Disadvantaged | TIME

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Feds prefer proactive take on pay equity: document

2016/08/11 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see where the Government takes this in its report back to the Pay Equity Committee October 7:

The federal government would prefer a proactive approach to ensuring that men and women get equal pay for work of equal value, a newly released memo suggests, but officials expressed some caution over how much it could accomplish.

“The proactive approach is generally considered to be more effective at addressing systemic wage discrimination,” said a backgrounder on pay equity legislation provided to Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk on Feb. 1.

“It is less adversarial than a complaints-based approach, with the focus being on assisting employers to comply with the law rather than placing the burden on a complainant to build a case of discrimination,” said the memo from the deputy minister.

The Canadian Press obtained the document through access-to-information legislation.

The document was prepared ahead of an NDP motion that called on the House of Commons to strike a special committee on pay equity to come up with a plan to adopt a proactive pay equity regime, rather than leaving individual women who believe they are being treated unfairly to file complaints.

The motion passed with support from the Liberals and the committee released its report in June.

The report recommended doing away with the controversial Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act brought in by the previous Conservative government.

It also called on the government draft proactive pay equity legislation within 18 months — with the NDP asking for it by the end of this year.

It also urged the government to accept the overall direction — and majority of recommendations — from the 2004 report of the federal Pay Equity Task Force.

Neither Mihychuk nor anyone from the Department of Employment and Social Development was available Monday for an interview.

In an emailed statement, departmental spokesman Josh Bueckert pointed to what the minister said during her May 3 appearance before the committee: “Our government’s goal is to stop this discrimination related to the undervaluation of work traditionally performed by women.”

As for how it plans to do that, the statement said the government will table a comprehensive response to the committee report by Oct. 7.

The briefing note mentions that employers can be taken to task by the Canadian Human Rights Commission without employees or their unions having to file a complaint.

“If an inspector has reasonable grounds to believe that there is gender-based wage discrimination in an establishment, he or she may notify the commission, which can then initiate an investigation. However, there are no known cases of this occurring,” it said.

Barbara Byers, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, said that should not deter the government from taking a proactive approach.

“Human rights commissions don’t necessarily go out and look for that work, because they’ve got other things they are dealing with as well and they are already understaffed for that,” said Byers.

“If complaint-based was going to work, then quite frankly it would have worked by now,” she said.

New Democrat MP Sheila Malcolmson, who put forward the motion on pay equity, said she hopes the Liberals follow through quickly.

“This is a policy that they can bring in which actually puts some action to their words on gender equality,” said Malcolmson, the status of women critic for her party.

“If they don’t leave a legislative record like this, they will have failed in their commitment around this being the gender parity Parliament,” she said.

Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, who sat on the special committee, supports proactive legislation.

“Where there was the most success in getting equitable pay, it was legislated,” she said.

Source: Feds prefer proactive take on pay equity: doc

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Women, Multiculturalism And Identity Politics – Eurasia Review

2016/08/11 Leave a comment

Interesting commentary on the intersection between religious/cultural traditions and women’s rights from the perspective of Indian sociologist Adfar Shah:

Although in some cases, state bodies make efforts to consult with the community in question but too often these overtures have a token quality to them and do not help to build lasting political trust. A minority community’s confidence in state-led reforms of their cultural arrangements is diminished still further when racism is pervasive in the broader social, economic, and political institutions. However, all the multicultural traditions are not beset to such complexities as the state and society has gradually absorbed the art of accommodation for all though not without exceptions and aberrations. Multiculturalism today is a reality in almost every nation however simultaneously it is equally true that most of the traditional cultures have historically oppressed women. Therefore, governments bear the burden of formulating policies that protect women’s rights within a multicultural framework.

There has to be a rethink on overall gender justice perspectives and policies at place though in the contemporary era there is a democratic tradition and a general commitment to protect the individual’s civil and political rights everywhere. Not just this but the followers of multiculturalism ideology should pursue feminist and gender-based alignments within cultural practices so that the society can realize the constitutional goals of universal equality, gender equality and justice. Women though many a time are victims of the personal laws but are always motivated by vested interests to follow community codes rather than work for their own emancipation and that is why we are still yet to have a common women’s movement.

Even history is testimony to the fact that women are not just victims in times of riots but also assist their men to perpetuate violence on other women or groups (Surat Riots). The case of ‘saying no to the second marriage’ does not apply only to Muslim women but any women on the globe have the inherent tendency for this choice. Personal laws/moral brigade/community laws must be paid attention unless and until they don’t compromise an individual’s basic human rights and women have to realise that acting as an agency of patriarchy and exercise power on other women is not their actual power but the biggest impediment to a united and successful women’s movement. Let us at least not justify rapes by people merely as political conspiracies (Azam Khan’s recent comments on rape comment) mistakes or link even molestations with dress code of women or favour community policing or so called moral brigades by linking to religions. Yesterday only in the Muslim dominated Kashmir valley, posters from some militant organisation were discovered giving an open threat to Kashmiri Pandits (Kashmiri non-Muslims) to leave the valley or be ready to die.

Source: Women, Multiculturalism And Identity Politics — A Perspective – Eurasia Review

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New gender-neutral Ontario health cards make it harder to get a passport

2016/08/06 Leave a comment

Inexcusable lack of communication and due diligence by the Ontario government. While I know that OHIP cards are not intended for identification purposes, the reality suggests otherwise.

Systems are linked and it is the responsibility of officials to make the necessary checks:

Ontario’s decision to issue gender-neutral health cards is making it more difficult for some of the province’s residents to get a passport, since the federal government wasn’t consulted on the switch.

….The province announced in June that it will start issuing health cards that no longer display information about a person’s gender on the front of the card.

Changes made to be fair and equitable, province says

Beginning in early 2017, drivers will also have the option on their licences to select X, instead of an M for male or F for female.

The province’s Liberal government said it is making the changes “to ensure the fair, ethical and equitable treatment of people with trans and non-binary gender identity.”

Bestard maintains this is a positive step for non-binary people, and one that she has absolutely no problem with. “I do understand the nuances of the LGBTQ community, and the challenges they face,” she said.

The issue, she says, is the headache that has been created by the two levels of government not working together.

“The lack of communication is quite surprising,” she said.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Lindsay Wemp told CBC News that “IRCC was not consulted as part of this initiative from the government of Ontario.”

Christine Burke, spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, says ServiceOntario has been working with the federal government to address this situation.

“No consultations took place with the federal government prior to the change, as we were unaware that the photo health card was being used and accepted as an identity document by Passport Canada,” she said in an email.

Kwok Wong, spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, told CBC News that the ability to just mark an X for gender on an Ontario licence complies with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards for machine-readable official travel documents.

“In various other countries, X is used in place of M or F when gender is not specified,” he said in an email.

“Ministry of Transportation officials discussed this proposal with the federal government counterparts including Passport Canada and Canada Border Service Agency.”

It appears that a licence marked with an X would not be able to be used to obtain a passport, as proof of gender is still one of the requirements.

Source: New gender-neutral Ontario health cards make it harder to get a passport – Hamilton – CBC News

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Women in politics: Why Ottawa isn’t quite as equal as we think it is

2016/08/02 Leave a comment

GiC Baseline 2016.010Good story from the past.

Clearly, current government is determined to do better with GiC and other appointments (see my earlier baseline analysis Governor in Council Appointments – 2016 Baseline):

One day when Penny Collenette was director of appointments for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, her executive assistant slunk into her office clutching a list. “You’re not going to like this,” she said. Collenette looked at it: 18 people recommended for an advisory group on a sensitive public policy issue. All of them were men.

Before the Liberal government was elected in 1993, they made a campaign promise to appoint more women. When they took office, Collenette asked to see the numbers: of about 3,000 people appointed by governor-in-council — deputy ministers, heads of agencies, Crown corporations, ambassadors, judges, returning officers and commission members — women made up between 26 and 29 per cent. Over the first year or so, Collenette kept an eye on that number like it was a stock ticker. With each list of proposed names, the proportion of women nudged upward, bit by bit.

She knew what this list of 18 men was going to do to the progress they’d made. She had a good relationship with the minister in question — even years later, she won’t say which one — so she called him up to say his department needed to do better. He whined a little, but three weeks later produced a new list: nearly half were women, and a few were Indigenous women, too. By the time Collenette left in 1997, the proportion of women in those posts had reached 39 per cent. “In a way, I suppose it was just naïveté,” she says. “We said we were going to do it, so I thought I guess we’d better do it. And of course, personally I wanted to.”

Two decades on, lagging progress — the ranks of women in top government positions is now lower than when Collenette left — has spurred a raft of highly visible attempts to rebalance the scales in Canadian politics and public service. The blunt, by-the-numbers approach of affirmative action is an imperfect and sometimes controversial way to move the ball forward, but­­ — particularly in politics — it may be the only way to upend the entrenched systems that favour men and overlook women. “That we’re still so far behind on this one suggests there are still some really pernicious ideas about women in politics,” says Melanee Thomas, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. A large and growing number of countries employ gender quotas in politics, and many have seen dramatic improvements in representation as a result. Canada is well behind, and the country’s ranking on gender equity has been slipping for years. The major roadblock is also where the clearest solution lies: with political parties and nominations. “If parties demanded that this would be different, it would be different,” Thomas says.

Source: Women in politics: Why Ottawa isn’t quite as equal as we think it is

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Saatchi chairman on leave after declaring debate on gender bias ‘over’

2016/08/02 Leave a comment

Clear statement:

Publicis Groupe SA put the chairman of its Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency on leave after he was quoted dismissing the debate on gender bias as “over.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider published Friday, Saatchi & Saatchi Executive Chairman Kevin Roberts said he doesn’t spend “any time” on gender issues at his agency, saying the issue is “way worse” in sectors such as financial services, where there are “problems left, right, and centre.”

“It is for the gravity of these statements that Kevin Roberts has been asked to take a leave of absence from Publicis Groupe effective immediately,” Publicis Chief Executive Officer Maurice Lévy said Saturday in a statement. “It will ultimately be the Publicis Groupe Supervisory Board’s duty to further evaluate his standing.”

Roberts’s remarks don’t uphold the no-tolerance policy toward behaviour or commentary in the “spirit of Publicis Groupe and its celebration of difference,” according to the statement. “Promoting gender equality starts at the top, and the Groupe will not tolerate anyone speaking for our organization who does not value the importance of inclusion,” Publicis said in the statement, which also was released internally to employees.

Publicis is a multinational advertising and public relations firm based in Paris. It has owned Saatchi & Saatchi since 2000.

Roberts, 66, didn’t respond to an email sent to his work address. Prior to becoming chairman, Roberts served as CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi from 1997 until 2014. A citizen of New Zealand, he was born in the north of England, according to his biography on Saatchi & Saatchi’s website.

Roberts’ views “are not mine, and nor are they the position of the agency,” Robert Senior, worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, said in a statement. He said he was proud that 65 per cent of the agency’s staff was female, including women in senior leadership roles across the business.

Levy, who is 74 years old, added: “Diversity & inclusion are business imperatives on which Publicis Groupe will not negotiate. While fostering a work environment that is inclusive of all talent is a collective responsibility, it is leadership’s job to nurture the career aspirations and goals of all our talent.”

Source: Saatchi chairman on leave after declaring debate on gender bias ‘over’ | Toronto Star

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It’s 2016, but women – even in elite professions – still earn less

2016/08/01 Leave a comment

Having data helps sharpen the conversation:

In the legal field, a 2016 survey of compensation paid to in-house counsel found that female lawyers who work as corporate counsel earn 15 per cent less than their male in-house counterparts.

“This wage gap cannot be fully explained away by the assertion that ’men have been in the workplace longer,’ as men have fewer average years as both legal counsel and senior counsel and [yet] still earn a higher base salary,” according to a report by the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association and The Counsel Network, a national legal recruitment firm. “For in-house counsel, the gender wage gap is real and it is not shrinking… In all sectors, except government, where woman have wage parity, men earn a higher salary than women.”

(The average annual salary for all in-house counsel surveyed is $165,000.)

A 2015 survey conducted by Chartered Professional Accountants Canada uncovered similar results: “At the total level, female members have a median total compensation of $99,000 versus $120,000 among their male counterparts.”

Some – but not all – of this is explained by the preponderance of men in more highly paid executive roles, said the CPA, which also provided a compensation breakdown by role and gender, based on 2014 pay stubs.

Examples: median annual compensation for male accountants in chief financial officer roles was $180,000, compared with $140,000 for females; $125,00 for male treasurers, compared with $98,000 for females; $133,000 for male professors, compared with $109,000 for females; $250,000 for male partners in accounting practices compared with $190,000 for females.

“It’s a fairly recent thing that we have looked at the data and gone on the record with it. That’s obviously good, because just recognizing that there is a problem can lead to change,” Robin Taub, volunteer chair of the CPA Canada’s women’s leadership council, said in an interview.

The most recent in-house counsel compensation survey – the fourth such survey conducted since 2009 – “was shocking” in that the gender pay gap has not narrowed “and it’s 2016,” said Dal Bhathal, Toronto-based managing partner of The Counsel Network.

This time, however, perhaps because it is 2016, “I can tell you that, absolutely, in the in-house counsel community, it has definitely received attention,” Ms. Bhathal said.

At a time when the federal government has its first-ever gender-balanced cabinet and securities regulators now require publicly traded companies to disclose the percentage of women on their boards of directors and in executive positions, the issue of gender equity is not only on the corporate radar, it’s on the agenda.

Source: It’s 2016, but women – even in elite professions – still earn less – The Globe and Mail

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Study finds widening gender gap in wages among post-secondary graduates

2016/07/27 Leave a comment

Interesting study, with appropriately nuanced conclusions:

Eight years after graduating with university bachelor degrees in 2005, males were earning $27,300 more on average than females who graduated at the same time with the same degrees, says a comprehensive new study.

Among college graduates, the wage gender gap was almost as large — $23,600 — and even larger in percentage terms, according to the analysis done by the Education Policy Research Initiative (EPRI), a national research organization based at the University of Ottawa.

The study also debunked a common myth that some university programs have scant real-world value and prepare graduates for little more than low-paid jobs as baristas.

EPRI’s researchers linked student records for more than 620,000 graduates of the University of Ottawa and 13 other universities and colleges to income tax data between 2005 and 2013 to track their earnings. The study found that men who graduated from university in 2005 earned $2,800 more than women in their first year after graduation. By year eight, the earnings gap had widened to $27,300, meaning male graduates were earning 44 per cent more on average than female graduates.

The pattern held in all fields of study, though the gap was highest for graduates in business, engineering, social sciences and science & agriculture. It was smallest for humanities and fine arts graduates.  Women who graduated from health and humanities programs initially earned more than their male counterparts, but fell behind over time.

Among 2005 college diploma graduates, the gender wage gap was $5,500 in the first year. By year eight, men were earning 56 per cent more than female graduates, a gap of $23,600.

Further analysis could shed light on at least some of the complex reasons for the wage gap, said University of Ottawa professor Ross Finnie, EPRI’s director.

One might be that men and women are focusing on different things within the same broad area of study, and the areas that women choose don’t have as much earnings growth over time, Finnie said.

Another could be the life choices that men and women make, he said. For example, women are more likely to drop out of the workforce temporarily to have children, then work part-time afterward.

“They lose labour market experience and sometimes the labour market punishes people because of that.” And to some degree, “pure labour market discrimination” is likely part of the explanation as well, Finnie said. “It’s a combination of all those things.”

Source: Study finds widening gender gap in wages among post-secondary graduates

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