Province earns B+ on gender equality report card

The P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women released its equality report card Thursday, awarding the province a B+ for its work toward gender equality between 2019 to 2021.

The three-year assessment looked at topics including violence prevention, workforce development and women's health in relation to gender equality on the Island.

It involved more than 30 community and focus groups, more than 65 different surveys and responses from every department of government on its current and new initiatives on gender and diversity, as well as its COVID-19 response.

The report is the first in four years and it gave the government its highest grade since the council's first pilot report in 2008.

Council chair Cathy Rose said the province has done good work in applying a diversity and gender lens to everything it did but there are still improvements to be made, especially in poverty reduction.

"We're certainly way behind as far as poverty reduction assistance for the general public, and in particular for women," she said. 

"Because of inflation, because of the price of housing, I hear it again and again. We hear it again and again — that people are between paying their rent and their gas, they have no money left for food."

The report also indicates racism and other types of discrimination further affect time, energy and money for those in excluded groups.

In addition, women have higher rates of poverty than men because many lead single-parent households, and are caregivers for children and their families, the council said. 

Initiatives like the province's poverty reduction action plan and its poverty reduction advisory council are some of the highlights of the government's sustained progress in the report.

But executive director Jane Ledwell said the next step for the province would be to look at the existing issues that need to change to improve the work that's already been done.

"Having to constantly go for charity, to ask for help outside the systems that are in place for social assistance means people are in a state of a lack of dignity," she said.

Ledwell suggests an investment in social assistance rates that meet people's basic needs.

She also wants the government to look at expanding eligibility for those supports to make it easier for those who need them to apply, which includes reducing the stigma surrounding them and monitoring applicants less. 

One of the best ways to work toward eliminating poverty, the council said, would be to establish a basic income guarantee.

It's something a special committee at the legislature provided costs for and was supported by all parties, but nothing has come out of that work so far. 

With notable progress already in many areas, the council's hope is to be able to put more focus now on issues like poverty that will require more effort to overcome.

"Just because there is a B-plus grade worth of progress … it doesn't mean we're at the graduation date yet," said Ledwell.