Canadian Council on Social Development 441 MacLaren Street 4th/e Floor/Étage Ottawa, ON K2P 2H3

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Bringing Down the Barriers:
The Labour Market and Women with Disabilities in Ontario

by Gail Fawcett

     

Section 1:
Women with disabilities in the labour market

In October 1998, the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for Social Services released In Unison: A Canadian Approach to Disability Issues.⁵ In Unison "sets out a blueprint for promoting the integration of persons with disabilities in Canada" under the umbrella of the Social Union.⁶ It is the latest attempt to lay the foundation for a new approach to disability issues in Canada.

The overarching goal of In Unison is the full citizenship and full participation of Canadians with disabilities in all aspects of society. Its framework relies upon three main building blocks:

• disability-related supports
• employment
• income.

The research for this report shows that employment is a key element in full citizenship and is strongly linked to both disability-related supports and income. This means that positive change in the labour market for persons with disabilities cannot occur without positive change within the other two.

However, even before the release of In Unison, persons with disabilities understood the importance of employment in their lives. Employment provides a sense of fulfilment and self-worth; it is also the best defence against poverty.

Having a disability almost doubles your chances of living in poverty

The connection between disability and poverty is clear. In 1995, the rate of poverty for working-age women (that is, those aged 15 to 64) with a disability in Canada was twice that of working-age women without a disability: 36 per cent compared to 18 per cent.⁷

In Ontario, poverty rates were slightly lower than average, at 32 per cent among women with disabilities and 16 per cent among women without disabilities.

 

Labour market activity and poverty

As would be expected, there is an enormous difference in the poverty rate of women with disabilities who do not work at all in the paid labour force and those who work full-time and full-year. The poverty rate for women with disabilities who were employed full-time, full-year in Ontario was 8 per cent; among women with disabilities in Ontario who were not employed at all, the poverty rate was 40 per cent – five times higher. For Ontario women with disabilities who worked part-time and full-year, the poverty rate was 19 per cent; for those who worked either part-time or full-time for less than 49 weeks (part-year), the rate of poverty was higher, at 25 per cent.

Poverty rates in Ontario for women with and without disabilities are strongly linked to employment patterns. While women with disabilities are still more likely than their non-disabled counterparts to be poor, the gap between them narrows considerably when they have similar work patterns. This suggests that while employment alone will not put women with disabilities on an equal footing with either men with disabilities or women without disabilities, it would go a long way toward improving their overall economic situation.

Employment levels vary throughout Ontario

In Ontario, where women with disabilities live is related to some extent to their likelihood of being employed. Women with disabilities in Sudbury were among the least likely to be employed, with just over two-thirds not working for pay at all during 1995. Difficulties finding work in Sudbury extended to the rest of the local population as well, as 29 per cent of women without disabilities, 60 per cent of men with disabilities and 16 per cent of men without disabilities remained without work for the entire year.

At the other end of the spectrum, Kitchener had the lowest proportion of persons going without paid employment for an entire year. Among women with disabilities in Kitchener, over half (56 per cent) did not have paid employment. While women with disabilities in Kitchener fared worse than any other group in that city with respect to having paid employment that year, they still had a better chance of finding paid work than their counterparts in the other CMAs listed.

Women with disabilities are last in the employment queue

Regardless of where they live, women with disabilities are the most likely to be without employment and the least likely to have full-time, full-year employment. This indicates that a sort of queue operates in the labour market and women with disabilities are consistently at the very end of it. If employment prospects are high in one location, women with disabilities are more likely to have a job, but their employment rates lag behind men with disabilities, women without disabilities and men without disabilities, in that order.

 

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