Gail Watson describes poverty among women in Manitoba as distressing. Watson works for the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg and draws on a report prepared by the clinic to support her assessment.
Speaking during the Manitoba Women’s Institute annual convention in Brandon last week, she was adamant that income disparities affect not only the health of women in poverty, but also society’s health. Based on that view, she said everyone should be concerned about working to alleviate poverty.
The women’s health clinic said Statistics Canada’s low income cutoff, or poverty line in 2001, the year of the last federal census, was $14,561 annually for a single person living at Brandon. For two people, both at least 15 years of age, the poverty line was $18,201.
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- Almost 18 percent of Manitoba women aged 18 and older were poor in 1999. There were 29,000 more poor women than poor men that year.
- More than half of senior women living alone are poor, a situation that has changed little in the past 30 years.
- Roughly a third of visible minority women in Manitoba were living in poverty in 1996, despite the fact that many of those women were more likely than other Canadian women to be working full time.
- Twenty-seven percent of women with disabilities live in poverty.
Poverty puts people at greater risk of encountering health problems, said Watson. As part of the remedy, she said decision makers need to be more aware of the health needs of women. She alsosaid changes are needed to bring more women’s incomes above the poverty line.
Some improvements advocated by the Women’s Health Clinic include increasing minimum wage and social assistance rates. Watson said Manitoba’s social assistance has not been raised in 13 years: “It’s really quite pathetic.”
The clinic also wants to see better access to child care and recreation for women and children living in poverty. Other ideas include reducing the costs of telephone and utility services and providing non-insured health benefits, such as dental care and prescription drugs.
Watson said Canada’s pension program needs to change so that women are not penalized for the years they choose to stay at home and raise a family rather than enter the workforce. Such a change would alleviate the number of homemakers and other unpaid caregivers who find themselves in poverty during their senior years.
“Now that they are in their senior years, they have very, very little,” Watson said. “When you think of their contributions to society, we should be able to support them far better than we are.”
The Women’s Health Clinic is described on its website as a feminist, community-based health centre offering a range of services to women from teens to elders. For more information, go to www.producer.com and click on “Links in the News.”
