To The Editor:

‘Magical’ is just one way to describe Friday evening, May 10, at Moncton’s Community Peace Centre. A great crowd came to honour and celebrate eight local women at the YWCA Moncton’s 7th Annual Women of Distinction Awards Gala, and what a night! Guests were treated to great food, local wine, fantastic entertainment, and many won terrific prizes! The event raised awareness and over $10,000 for work being done in our community through the YWCA’s programs.

YWCA Moncton would like to sincerely thank all our sponsors, donors, friends and supporters who contributed to and attended this wonderful event.

A sincere thank you to: guest speaker the Hon. Marie-Claude Blais, MC Jonna Brewer; sponsors Rogers, SITEL, and RBC Dominion Securities; donors Porter Airlines, VIA Rail, Le Petite Cavalier, Bistro 33, Wrapsters, Café Archibald, 5 Senses Gourmet, Magnetic Hill Winery, Glitz & Glam Décor, Stile, Ben Moss Jewelers, Bonsai Jewelry, Capitol Theatre, Casino NB, Calactus, Catch 22, Comfort Inn, David’s Tea, Do or Dye Salon, Goodlife Finesas, Honeybee Salon, McSweeney’s, Namaste Spa, NB Liquor, Northrup Frye Festival, Pink Fitness, Ramada Inn, Razor’s Edge, Sentimitts, Swiss Chalet and Boston Pizza, and our entertainers, Savannah Simon, Anna-Marie Weir and Dorothy Brzezicki.

And, of course, our wonderful volunteers who worked so hard to make it a memorable night!

The real stars of our event were our eight women of distinction: Dianne VanDommelen, Betty Rubin Druckman, Annette Vautour, Karen Arsenault, Denise Albert-Lanteigne, Kathryn M. Barnes, Simone LeBlanc-Rainville and Kaitlyn Enright.

You inspire us all and we are a better community because of your vision, talent, hard work and commitment.

We’re already planning next year’s gala event, so remember YWCA Moncton next spring as we prepare to gather again in celebration of another group of Women of Distinction!

Jewell Mitchell,

Executive Director

YWCA Moncton

Tomorrow night, YWCA Moncton will be celebrating its 7th annual Women of Distinction awards, honouring eight women from Southeastern New Brunswick who have made outstanding contributions to their communities.

Women of Distinction events are held annually by YWCAs across Canada. Award categories may vary from community to community, but all Women of Distinction events celebrate women for their accomplishments and for serving as role models for other women and girls. Women of Distinction events are often a YWCA’s most important fundraising event of the year. This is certainly the case for YWCA Moncton where funds raised through event sponsorship and ticket sales support community-based programs and services for women and their families.

A Women of Distinction event is more than an awards ceremony and fundraiser. It’s a statement, one that says women’s accomplishments are important and that progress toward women’s equality is being made.

This year, YWCA Moncton is honouring women who come from a broad variety of sectors, lived experiences, and interests: local businesswoman Betty Rubin Druckman, feminist activist Simone LeBlanc-Rainville, architect Dianne VanDommelen, fitness instructor Karen Arsenault, retired city councilor Kathryn Barnes, McGill Masters student Kaitlyn Enright, high school music teacher and band director Denise Albert-Lanteigne, and non-profit executive Annette Vautour.

Women of Distinction intentionally honours women who do not work directly on women’s issues, as well as women who do. This is important because it illustrates that a woman does not have to be a full-time activist or even an avowed feminist to create positive change for women in her community. Women can contribute to achieving gender-based equality in a multitude of ways, including community leadership, public service, or pursing work in a non-traditional field.

For instance, Ms. VanDommelen works within the architecture industry, which has traditionally been dominated by men (she is a co-director and principal architect within her firm, Architects4). Ms. Arsenault teaches fitness classes that don’t fixate on weight-loss or striving to meet an unrealistic body ideal but on healthy living. Ms. Albert-Lanteigne talks to her students about the double standards that are applied to young men and women in terms of dating and sexuality. Ms. Barnes entered municipal politics, where women are typically underrepresented. Ms. Rubin Druckman is a successful businesswoman whose generosity toward women and girls has made her a pillar of our community. Ms. Vautour has been a leader in the community sector on both a local and national scale, a shining example of leadership for young women. Ms. Enright is in a field and level of academic in which women are underrepresented. Together, these women are challenging the gender status quo through their education, career choices, and their actions within our community.

While it’s important to highlight how women can challenge gender inequality obliquely, events like Women of Distinction also celebrate women who have dedicated themselves to direct activism.

Ms. LeBlanc-Rainville is receiving YWCA Moncton’s 2013 Honorary Recognition award for her long-time feminist activism. Ms. LeBlanc-Rainville was the founding president of University of Moncton’ Committee for women’s professors in 1976. Thanks to this committee’s work, the Université de Moncton’s female professors and librarians were able to obtain the right to maternity leave and pay parity with their male colleagues. Simone is a member of numerous feminist and community organizations, and is particularly active with the Coalition for Pay Equity. Ms. LeBlanc-Rainville has recently released a biography on Acadian feminist Corinne Gallant and, in the past, co-authored a French-language text on gender-equality that was used in Francophone schools throughout Ontario and New Brunswick.

YWCA Moncton is making a statement in celebrating these outstanding women, and invites you to participate. The Women of Distinction awards gala takes place tomorrow night from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the Community Peace Centre. Tickets for YWCA Moncton’s Women of Distinction awards gala are $50 and available at the YWCA’s office in the Community Peace Centre.

■ Beth Lyons is the Associate Director of YWCA Moncton.

Last week, “Dove Real Beauty Sketches,” a short video investigating the women’s perceptions of beauty, was in heavy circulation on social media, spreading like wildfire amongst women on Facebook and Twitter.

The video features a forensic sketch artist drawing portraits of a series of women based on verbal descriptions. The twist? For every portrait-subject he produces two sketches: one based on how the woman describes herself and one based on a description from someone who just met her.

The clip shows the artist working away and we hear voice-overs of the portrait subjects being described by themselves and by near-strangers. Self-descriptions focus on perceived flaws; descriptions from strangers are generous, emphasizing prominent cheekbones and eyes that light up.

Once both portraits are completed, they’re lined up for comparison and we see that sketches based on self-descriptions are harsher than those based on descriptions from strangers. The portrait subjects comment on what they’ve realized through this ‘social experiment’ and the phrase “You are more beautiful thank you think” flashes onto the screen as the clip comes to an end.

The Real Beauty Sketches video is part of Dove’s larger Campaign for Real Beauty. The Campaign was launched in 2004 as part of the company’s ‘social mission,’ which is focused on the self-esteem of women and girls and asks us to “Imagine a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety.”

The campaign famously uses photo spreads of groups of underwear-clad women who range from petite to plus in a variety of shapes and skin colours. It also released a video clip showing the behind-the-scenes process of creating a photo suitable for use in a magazine ad, showing the extent to which models are made up and images are manipulated.

From its launch, people were feeling this campaign. Dove was leveling with us about the raw deal we were getting as women, they were speaking to our ‘beauty ideal angst.’ They even went so far as to brand their product line for maturing skin as Dove Pro-Age. Pro-age; a.k.a. in favour of aging! This was revolutionary for a beauty company.

Except it wasn’t. We really wanted it to be; but it wasn’t.

While Dove’s messaging may seem strikingly fresh and honest, it’s all marketing in the end. Dove’s end goal is to move product, not to liberate women and girls from restrictive beauty ideals. They’re making a killing by giving us enough empowering-sounding rhetoric to hook us as brand-loyal customers, but stop short of doing anything that would seriously challenge the societal obsession with beauty that keeps them in business.

What makes me so sure of this? Two things: the kind of work Dove’s parent company engages in outside of the campaign and a closer reading of the campaign’s message.

Dove is owned by Unilever, the same company that owns Axe. The Axe brand consistently produces promotional materials that aggressively uphold stereotypical gender roles and objectifies women. In one Axe commercial, a female character is actually depicted as a pair of walking breasts until the last 10 seconds of the clip.

In addition to being responsible for Axe’s misogynist advertising, Unilever also has a serious stake in the skin-lightening game in India’s beauty industry. In many societies, beauty ideals don’t just uphold youth and thinness as paramount; they also fixate on whiteness. Unilever isn’t above cashing in on the intersection of sexism and racism, so they produce and market creams to women of colour with the promise of lighter skin as a gateway to a better life.

Do those sounds like brands that are concerned with increasing women’s self-esteem?

You might think that I should cut Dove some slack; after all, they can’t control what Unilever’s other brands do. Fair enough, but while Dove doesn’t control Unilever, Unilever does control Dove. Given how much Unilever benefits from women’s continued insecurity and investment in beauty, the fact that they’re on board with the Real Beauty Campaign should give us pause. Would Unilever give the OK to a campaign that was going to dismantle the cultural beauty-obsession they rely on for profits? Unlikely.

If Unilever benefits from our obsession with problematic beauty standards, why was the Real Beauty campaign ever rolled out? This is where the closer reading of the campaign’s message comes in.

In their campaign, Dove is telling women that they are beautiful and that self-esteem is important, not questioning the importance we place on beauty. At one point during the Real Beauty Sketches video, a portrait subject reflects on how she needs to be more appreciative of her natural beauty, because “It impacts everything . . . couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.” As far as the video is concerned, the problem women face is that they don’t think they’re beautiful, not that beauty determines the quality of their lives. According to Dove, women need to learn how to ease up on themselves, not dismantle the beauty-industrial complex.

In addition to affirming the importance of beauty, the video also upholds existing standards of beauty. Women describe themselves critically, talking about having fat faces and protruding chins; as strangers describe positive attributes, the word thin is used repeatedly. When the portraits are revealed, we know which ones Dove wants us to think are more beautiful: the ones depicting a younger, smoother, slimmer face. One woman, while looking at the portrait based on her self-description, comments that she looks “Fatter; sadder, too.” The message is clear: thin is beautiful, and beauty is happiness.

We need to recognize that Dove — and companies that use marketing tactics with a similar veneer of empowerment and awareness — aren’t going to liberate us from our societal obsession with beauty. It’s not their ultimate goal; selling product to women who buy into beauty is.

■ Beth Lyons is the associate director of YWCA Moncton. Her column focuses on equality issues and social justice and appears every other Thursday.

Read more criticisms of the video here, here, and here.

Women chosen as recipients are honoured at the Women of Distinction evening gala and awards ceremony, which is also YWCA Moncton’s most important annual fundraising event. The 2013 Women of Distinction gala will be held at the Community Peace Centre on Friday, May 10th from 6:30 pm-9:30 pm. Jonna Brewer (CBC Information Morning) will be the evening’s MC and the Honourable
Marie-Claude Blais, Q.C., Minister of Justice and Attorney General and Minister responsible for Women’s Issues will be the keynote speaker.

“It is so important that we take the time to celebrate the outstanding work that women do, to acknowledge their generosity of spirit,” explains Jewell Mitchell, Executive Director of YWCA Moncton. “This celebration is all the more poignant because it helps support the YWCA in continuing to offer high quality programs in our community. It also gives an opportunity for the attendees and sponsors to show the same spirit of generosity as our Women of Distinction.”

The YWCA of Moncton is proud to honor the following women:

Dianne VanDommelen – Arts, Culture & Design
Betty Rubin – Business & the Professions
Annette Vautour – Community Building & Volunteerism
Karen Arsenault – Health & Active Living
Denise Albert-Lanteigne – Education, Training & Development
Kathryn M. Barnes – Non-Profit & Public Service
Kaitlyn Enright – Young Woman of Award Distinction
Simone LeBlanc-Rainville – Honorary Recognition

Tickets are $50 and can be purchased from Moncton’s YWCA office, at Read’s Newsstands in Riverview and Moncton (Main Street location), and at Timothy’s (Main Street location). Price of ticket includes a taste-of-the-town in tapas, a glass of wine, and musical entertainment; a raffle (with over $4 000 in prizes to be won) and wine bar will be available for an additional cost. Sponsoring seats for women with limited incomes is encouraged and appreciated. All proceeds from this noteworthy event will support YWCA community initiatives.

YWCA Moncton wishes to thank our event Champion and Patron Sponsors, Rogers Communications and Sitel, as well as all other event sponsors and donors.

YWCA Moncton exists to support and empower women – and their families – through advocacy and integrated services that foster independence, wellness, and equity for all.

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For interviews or more information (including award recipients’ photographs/bios) contact:

Marisa Piccini | Fund Development Manager | mpiccini@ywcamoncton.com | (506) 855-4349

Download the press release here.

Download the poster here.

The topic of women in positions of influence — meaning positions of power and leadership — is having a much-needed moment in the spotlight.

Mid-March, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg released Lean In, her book on women’s leadership in government and the workplace and she is now touring the publicity circuit. Last Friday, Minister for the Status of Women Rona Ambrose announced a powerhouse national advisory council dedicated to promoting the participation of women on public and private corporate boards. Earlier this week, Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s only female prime minister to date, died.

Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Ambrose’s recent efforts explore the fact that women continue to be under represented in positions of power and leadership, with each woman focusing on a different context. Mrs. Thatcher’s continued ownership of the title of sole female UK prime minister — nearly a quarter century after the end of her leadership of Britain’s Conservative Party — illustrates this under representation in a clear way.

For all the gains women have made, we remain under represented in positions of power and leadership. It’s not just that we don’t have 50/50 representation with men in government bodies and on boards. In most cases, we don’t even have enough representation to comprise a critical mass, a concept that holds that a demographic needs 30 per cent representation within a group in order to affect the decisions of a group or shift attitudes, consensus, etc. For instance, women would need to comprise 30 per cent of the New Brunswick legislature in order to have an appreciable impact as women; currently, they make up 15 per cent.

It’s fantastic that Ms. Sandberg and Ms. Ambrose recognize the importance of women’s representation in positions of power and leadership and that they’re using the platforms their positions afford them to spread the word and create change. They’re not calling for a revolution to overthrow the patriarchy, but at least they’re doing something within their sphere of influence: getting more women into positions of influence.

It’s important that we get more women into positions of influence so that girls and other women see such positions being occupied by women. Women and girls need to see examples of women in positions of power and leadership if they are to aspire to such positions themselves. In 2011, Miss Representation, an American documentary on how mainstream media portrayals of women contributed to the lack of women in positions of influence, coined the phrase “You can’t be what you can’t see” to encapsulate this truth.

While it’s important that we see women in positions of influence, it’s also vital that women in such positions do more for women than simply serve as an example of achievement. They have to work to ensure that women’s voices are heard, that decision-making bodies are taking the experiences, perspectives, and needs of women into account.

Women face unique barriers and challenges that stem from continued gender inequality in society, meaning that decisions will often affect us differently than men, and those barriers and challenges often go unconsidered in decision-making processes if women aren’t in the room. Women with power need to use their positions to speak up for women — especially the most vulnerable among us — and to elevate women as a class.

Otherwise, we end up with only part of what we need from a woman in power: a symbol with no follow-through on her potential to drive progress for other women.

To illustrate this point, we return to Margaret Thatcher.

She was important for women, symbolically. Her three-term leadership of the ruling Conservative party demonstrated that a woman could head a country like the UK. Mrs. Thatcher’s value for many women, however, ended there.

During her 11 years in power, Mrs. Thatcher only brought one woman into her cabinet, declined to invest in affordable childcare, criticized working mothers for raising a babyish generation and froze child benefits. At one point, her cutting of a program offering free milk to schoolchildren earned her the nickname “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.”

Mrs. Thatcher also roundly criticized the women’s movement and insisted she had not benefited from it. “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison,” Mrs. Thatcher supposedly said to an advisor. She commented publicly, “The battle for women’s rights has largely been won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone forever.“ She stated, “I owe nothing to women’s lib.”

Despite her claims, Mrs. Thatcher undeniably benefited from the work that her much loathed ‘women’s libbers’ had done. She benefited from the work of feminism and then threw the movement under the bus; she benefited from the work of women before her who agitated for social change, and then did nothing to build on their good work.

As we watch this movement to improve women’s representation in positions of influence, we would do well to remember the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. We can’t trust that simply having women in positions of influence is enough; we need those women who do have power and leadership to understand that women’s inequality persists and that they are in a position to create important change. Women’s equality isn’t going to be achieved through some kind of trickle-down effect, but by all women, no matter their position, acknowledging that inequality persists and leveraging what power they can to challenge it.

■ Beth Lyons is the Associate Director of YWCA Moncton. Her column focuses on equality issues and social justice and appears every other Thursday.

Last week, many of us turned our attention to Steubenville, Ohio, as we awaited a verdict in a horrific rape case involving a 16-year-old female victim and two male perpetrators, ages 16 and 17.

After a night of parties, from which the young woman was incapacitated by alcohol consumption, she was assaulted multiple times in multiple ways, and video and photo documentation of the assault was shared via social media. The perpetrators remained unaccountable for a period of time, largely protected by their status as athletes in a small football town. Ultimately, both young men were found delinquent (American court’s version of ‘guilty’ for juvenile offenders) and will face time in a detention facility.

While this is an American case, it does draw attention to problematic beliefs relating to sexual assault that are not limited to the United States. There’s a lot to unpack (and be appalled by) in this case, but what I want to dig into is the reasoning behind the young men’s defence presented in court.

The defence argued that the young men were not guilty because the young woman didn’t ‘affirmatively say no.’ There was no denial that the activities occurred (social media prevented the defence from taking that route) and there was no claim that she had actively consented to the activities. Instead, the defence argued that it wasn’t rape because she didn’t say no.

This sparked outrage amongst many.

The fact is, the victim was intoxicated to the point of being unable to walk and had thrown up on herself. In other words, she was too drunk to say anything, including a clear ‘no.’ Did that mean she consented? No, it meant that she was in a state in which she was incapable of giving consent.

The defence that was presented in this case sharply throws into focus a serious problem with our current model of sexual consent. I am not referring to legal interpretations of consent in the United States or in Canada, but to Western society’s general understanding of consent, which is that ‘no means no.’

As a millennial, I grew up hearing ‘no means no’ and I absorbed a belief in that adage into my bones. I am grateful for ‘no means no’ and how commonplace it was by the time I arrived at university. I believe that the proliferation of that message was incredibly important in bringing ‘acquaintance rape’ out of the shadows and into our collective understanding and public discussion of sexual assault. I also know that it isn’t enough.

No does mean no, absolutely and incontrovertibly. But if we rely solely on ‘no means no,’ we encounter problems. Most of us realize that the absence of a ‘no’ does not equal consent. However, the idea that it’s not ‘really’ rape unless the victim explicitly said no and fought back is still pervasive. In the case of the Steubenville rape defence strategy, we see ‘no means no’ pushed to a frightening extreme: if ‘no means no,’ then everything else — including the absence of a no — means yes.

One possible solution to this is to combine ‘no means no’ with ‘yes means yes.’ The ‘yes means yes’ model is championed most prominently by American feminist activist and educator Jaclyn Friedman. ‘Yes means yes’ is a slogan that represents a larger conception of sexual consent, known as enthusiastic consent. Under this model, the ‘no means no’ message is always complemented by the accompanying idea that only ‘yes’ means ‘yes.’

The enthusiastic consent model also emphasizes that consent isn’t something that is given once and is then considered to be a ‘done deal,’ but that it is state that must be maintained. Friedman explains that we’ve been taught to think of consent as a light switch, you flick it on and that’s it, it’s on!

In reality, she explains, we need to think of consent as water in a pool. If you want to swim, you’ve got to be in the water. If you’re engaging in sexual activity, consent has to be your environment; it has to surround and envelope you. This means constantly checking in with you partner; it means never assuming that because you’ve engaged in one sex act, all sex acts are fair game. It means understanding that consent can be withdrawn.

This approach to sexual activity sounds onerous to some people. Some scoff and ask if enthusiastic consent means you’d have to formally ask for consent for every single kiss you plant on your significant other.

To them, I say ‘come off it.’ The enthusiastic consent model isn’t about miring down sexual activity in verbal contracts and agreements; it’s about making sure that the people you’re engaging in sexual activity with are stoked on it. Who doesn’t want that to be the condition under which they’re engaging in sexual activity?!

Centring the ‘yes means yes’ model right next to the ‘no means no’ has transformative potential not just for individual sexual encounters, but for society as a whole. Imagine a whole generation growing up being taught that consent (and sexual activity) isn’t a thing that you ‘get’ and run with, but something that is a continual process that needs to be maintained and valued.

Now imagine that generation as our law and policy makers, as our social commentators, as our school principals. In this future, we may never have to hear about what a victim of sexual assault was wearing or what their sexual history is or if they fought back hard enough. In this future, we may never watch another young woman who was too intoxicated to walk or talk answer the question “Did you actually say no?” This is a future I want.

■ Beth Lyons is a Program Manager with YWCA Moncton. Her column focuses on equality issues and social justice and appears every other Thursday.

Tomorrow, one week after International Women’s Day, the United Nations’ 57th Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW) will come to an end. Tomorrow, we find out that either the member states have managed to craft agreed conclusions and resolutions on this CSW’s focus — the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls — or that for the second year in a row they have failed to reach meaningful consensus.

The CSW is an annual international gathering that takes place in New York City. Attended by representatives of governments from around the world, as well as thousands of delegates from non-governmental organizations, it is the primary international body that is focused entirely on women’s equality.

The CSW is rooted in a human rights-based framework and serves as a crucial mechanism to evaluate what progress has been achieved in the advancement of women and girls and to set concrete international gender-based policies and standards where inequality persists.

Each CSW has a theme and, ideally, member states reach agreed conclusions on the theme, with those conclusions including resolutions and recommendations to be implemented by stakeholders (both governmental and civil).

This gathering is important, both concretely and symbolically. The CSW is as old as the UN itself, and while its continued existence is a testament to the persistent inequality that women and girls live with globally, it is also a reflection to the international community’s ongoing commitment to addressing that inequality.

It also serves as an opportunity for many women and girls who have suffered most viciously under this inequality to bear witness to their pain, to the ongoing violation of their human rights, in front of the international powers that be and to demand better.

Tribute is also paid at CSW to women and girls who cannot be present to tell their own stories, because they do not have the financial resources to attend, because they have been denied travel documents, or because they have been killed.

Stories that have pervaded media around the world this year are being told and retold at CSW: that of Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani girl who was shot in the head and neck because of her advocacy work on women’s rights; that of the Delhi gang rape case; and multiple accounts of female partners of male sports heroes being murdered.

The telling of these stories comes with a price. There will be women who attended CSW gatherings and speak of their experiences who will return home after the UN CSW and face violence in direct response to their participation in this event, to their advocacy efforts. There will be women who attend and speak who will not live to see the next UN CSW.

This truth is horrifying and infuriating — but it must not bring us to a standstill.

I had the privilege of attending the first week of the UN CSW with my executive director as a member of YWCA Canada’s delegation, thanks to support from YWCA Canada and our local United Way.

While I listened to stories about incredible levels of violence and I learned about ongoing impunity for human rights violators, I left with a renewed belief that violence against women and girls can be reduced, prevented, and ultimately eliminated.

I saw presentations about life-saving community campaigns that had been expanded in scope. This helped me better understand how the violence-prevention work we do in New Brunswick can have a much bigger effect that we might ever imagine.

I have a new understanding of how the gender-based justice work we engage in here in Moncton, in New Brunswick, and in Canada truly does support women all over the world because our own insistence on women’s full and equal participation in society, even when it is specific to the Canadian context, serves as a statement of solidarity.

In short, I am more committed and equipped than ever to work to help end violence against women and girls. This isn’t in spite of the ‘horrifying and infuriating’ truths that emerge around the UN CSW, but because of them.

And so, tomorrow we will see whether the member states of the UN have been compelled to take coordinated action on violence against women and girls, or if they remain at the same stand still that prevented them from adopting agreed conclusions at last year’s 56th UN CSW.

■ Beth Lyons is a Program Manager with YWCA Moncton. Her column focuses on social justice and appears every other Thursday.

Ask someone what they picture when they think of a homeless person and chances are they will tell you it’s a man in tattered clothes, panhandling on a sidewalk.

Although homelessness certainly can look like that, it also takes other forms. People often have a skewed or narrow image of what forms homelessness takes and what its root causes are — particularly when it comes to women.
Women are, in fact, the fastest growing homeless population in Canada. For this reason, this week YWCA Canada launched Homes for Women, a long-term campaign to prevent, reduce, and ultimately eliminate women’s homelessness in Canada. Homes for Women is a partnership between YWCA Canada, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Frye Societies, Canada Without Poverty-Advocacy Network and Canadian Labour Congress
.
In addition to the partners, Homes for Women is supported by YWCAs and YMCA-YWCAs across Canada, as well as the Canadian Women’s Foundation. The launch of Homes for Women comes just before Parliament votes on Bill C-400, an act that would ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for Canadians. Supporters of the Bill note that passing the act would mean that Canada would no longer be the only G8 country without a national strategy for housing and homelessness.

Women’s housing is an issue YWCA Canada has been addressing for years. Last year, YWCA Canada released a snapshot of women’s homelessness in Canada. The snapshot shares that there are an estimated 150, 000-300,000 Canadians who are homeless. The snapshot also reported 25 to 30 per cent of those living on the streets or in shelters in large cities are women and that an alarming portion of that percentage is comprised of young women. Despite these numbers, women’s homelessness is often hidden. Women alternate staying in shelters with ‘couch surfing’ among friends; other women appear to have a place to stay, when in reality they are being exploited and abused, forced to trade sex for shelter.

The link between homelessness and abuse is undeniable, with abuse being both a result and a cause of homelessness. According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, on any given day in Canada, over 3,000 women (and their 2,500 children) are living in emergency shelters because of domestic violence. Most young women who are homeless in Canada are fleeing violence in the home, including sexual abuse (one study that YWCA Canada cites in their snapshot says that one Vancouver-based study found that 60 per cent of homeless youth aged 12 to 18 had been sexually abused). Women flee their homes because of violence, only to find themselves even more vulnerable to violence due to homelessness.

Homeless women are also at higher-risk for incarceration. The YWCA’s snapshot reports that women are the fastest growing prison population worldwide, which can be attributed in large part to the cuts that social intervention programs have suffered in recent years. With fewer and fewer programs available to women in crisis, prisons become the net that catches these women, and homeless women are particularly vulnerable to being absorbed into the prison system.

Aboriginal women are particularly vulnerable to violence and homelessness, and are also significantly overrepresented in the prison system. “With depleted social service and health systems no longer providing adequate accommodation, criminal justice and correctional systems are increasingly the only response to women,” explains Kim Pate, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. “Prisons are not an appropriate response to women’s homelessness.”

Women’s homelessness is not just a big-city issue. Since 2000, Greater Moncton has had a Homelessness Steering Committee, an inter-agency group that brings together representatives from organizations in Greater Moncton that are taking action on homelessness. Since 2008, the Committee has been publishing an annual report card on homelessness, as well as a quarterly newsletter. The Committee’s 2012 report card states that in 2011, shelter beds in the Moncton area were used a staggering 7,378 times. The government’s Women’s Issues Branch reports that in 2009/2010, 1,117 women and 634 children were admitted to N.B. transitional housing facilities for victims of violence.

Greater Moncton is also home to some fantastic initiatives addressing homelessness. At Home/Chez Soi, a federal multi-city project that provides subsidized and supportive housing to with people living with mental health issues who have a history of homelessness, has a site in Moncton. to provide subsidized and supportive housing. Operating since 2009, the Moncton site has reported a 93 per cent successful housing rate since January 2012.

YWCA Moncton is targeting women’s homelessness with its Homes for Her housing strategy, which is funded by the federal Homelessness Partnership Strategy and being carried out in collaboration with Crossroads for Women. Currently, Homes for Her is offering subsidized, supportive housing to women in the Moncton area who are homeless or at-risk of being homeless.

So that is what homelessness looks like. It looks like young women who have a place to stay, but only because they’re being sexually exploited in return. It looks like women with mental health and addiction issues locked up in prison, and abuse and trauma survivors living in shelters with their children. It looks like this in Toronto, and it looks like this right here in Moncton. If you are interested in learning more about the Homes for Women campaign and helping to erase women’s homelessness in Canada, visit http://tpe-h4w.ca/.

■ Beth Lyons is a program manager with YWCA Moncton. Henceforth, her column alternates with that of Jody Dallaire and also focuses on social justice issues and women’s issues.

Ottawa, February 26, 2013 – With new polling information showing more than 50% of Canadians are unaware of the real extent of women’s homelessness, YWCA Canada, the country’s single largest provider of shelter for women, is in the nation’s capital today to launch Homes for Women, a broad-based, long term, national campaign to prevent, reduce and eventually end women’s homelessness. YWCA Canada is joined by Homes for Women campaign partners the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and Canada Without Poverty-Advocacy Network and supported by the Canadian Labour Congress.

“We are in this campaign until we succeed,” says Paulette Senior, CEO of YWCA Canada, “and with over 100 years of history, we can go the distance. It’s unacceptable that women struggle to live without a safe home. A year ago we reported that homelessness has become a women’s issue. Today, with organizations across the country, we say it’s time to turn this trend around. It’s time to make sure every woman and girl in Canada has a safe place to sleep, every night, in every community. We know it can be done.”

On learning about the extent of women’s homelessness, two-thirds of those in the national survey ranked it as equal to, or more important than, their previous number one concern.

“With depleted social service and health systems no longer providing adequate accommodation, criminal justice and correctional systems are increasingly the only response to women,” says Kim Pate, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies. “Prisons are not an appropriate response to women’s homelessness.”

“Canada needs a national housing strategy now,” says Leilani Farha, Executive Director of Canada Without Poverty-Advocacy Network. “Bill C-400 is before the House of Commons for a vote tomorrow night and we’re calling on MPs to give it their full support. We need federal leadership to make sure the human right to adequate housing is actually implemented in Canada, especially for those most vulnerable to homelessness.”

“Safe, affordable, quality housing is necessary to help women enter the work force or participate in training programs. You need to put down roots in order to grow and flourish,” says Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Governments need to get back in action on housing”.

“Poverty in general is complex and women with low-incomes especially feel the brunt of poverty,” says Harriett McLachlan, Board of Directors President, Canada Without Poverty. “In my personal and professional experiences many live in intolerable housing situations, such as being ‘forced’ to stay with an abusive partner because she cannot afford a place of her own, or choosing between buying food or paying rent, or like myself living with rats for 10 years. In a country as wealthy as Canada this is not acceptable and is in violation of basic human rights.”

Polling showed solid support for both a national campaign to end women’s and girls’ homelessness and a national housing strategy as effective tools for change.

The opinion poll was an online survey conducted by the national research firm Strategic Communications Inc. from February 6th to 8th, 2013, hosted on the Angus Reid forum. The poll’s sample is reflective of Canada’s actual regional, gender, education and age composition relative to the 2006 Census. A probabilistic sample of this size (2060) yields a margin of error of ±-2.2 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

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Contact Laura Tilley, Manager of Communications at 416-962-8881 x 233 to set up an interview with:

• Paulette Senior, CEO, YWCA Canada
• Ann Decter, Director of Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
• Harriett McLachlan, President, Board of Directors, Canada Without Poverty

For an interview with:

• Kim Pate, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, phone 1-800-637-4606 or 1-613-238-2422.
• Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress, 1-613-863-8522
• Leilani Farha, Executive Director, Canada Without Poverty-Advocacy Network, phone: 1-613-302-7769 or 1-613-789-0115

About YWCA Canada:

YWCA Canada is the country’s oldest and largest women’s multi-service organization. With 32 Member Associations across the country, our programs serve women and girls in nine provinces and two territories. YWCA Canada is the nation’s single largest provider of shelter to women and children fleeing violence, the second largest provider of child care services, and an active member of the World YWCA. For more information visit www.ywcacanada.ca, find us on Twitter @YWCA_Canada or at www.facebook.com/ywcacanada.