Corporate information
Raison d’être, mandate and role: who we are and what we do
Raison d’être
The Department for Women and Gender Equality works to advance gender equality through an intersectional gendered lens. Working in partnership with key stakeholders, including civil society organizations, labour groups, the private sector, other orders of government, and First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples, the Department actively promotes the inclusion of all people in Canada’s economic, social, and political life. The Department for Women and Gender Equality works to uphold its mandate to advance gender equality by performing a central coordination function within the Government of Canada by developing and implementing policies, providing grants and contributions, delivering programs, investing in research, and providing advice to achieve equality for people of all genders, including women.
Mandate and role
The mandate of the Department is to advance equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression through the inclusion of people of all genders, including women, in Canada’s economic, social, and political life. This application of a gender and diversity lens will help us to understand better the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors. These factors include – but are not limited to – race, national and ethnic origin, Indigenous origin or identity, age, sexual orientation, socio-economic condition, place of residence and disability.
WAGE works within the context of a number of federal and international instruments that support the principle of gender equality such as: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
WAGE’s responsibilities include the following:
- supporting the development of a National Action Plan on Gender-Based Violence;
- leading the implementation of Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) across the federal government and working to improve the quality and scope of GBA+ in future budgets;
- implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Calls for Justice in partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples;
- providing expert advice and strategic support to federal departments and agencies in the development of policies, programs and legislation related to gender equality;
- sharing research and policy expertise with the organizations and other levels of governments that have the levers to address gender equality issues;
- providing funding to Canadian women’s organizations and equality-seeking groups, including supporting community action to tackle systemic barriers that perpetuate gender inequality;
- supporting the creation of more accessible and affordable childcare and access to housing that is affordable and meets the needs of Canadian women and girls;
- supporting Canada’s efforts to meet international obligations on promoting gender equality abroad; and,
- promoting commemorative dates related to gender equality.
Operating context
With the help of WAGE, Canada continues to make significant progress on gender equality. In spite of this, women still face challenges in achieving full equality in Canada. Women continue to be under-represented in politics and leadership roles and earn less – on average – than men. Women are also more likely to experience gender-based violence including sexual assaults and intimate-partner violence. Some groups of women, Indigenous women and girls in particular, are disproportionately affected by these types of violence.
- In January 2021, women comprised 30% of the House of Commons representation. Women represented about one-third of all provincial and territorial legislators and 13% of mayors in municipalities with over 200,000 inhabitants across Canada in 2020.
- In 2020, women accounted for 29% of persons employed in senior management occupations. When considering the number of women on boards of directors across both public and private corporations and government business enterprises, 18% of all leadership roles in corporations conducting business in Canada were held by women in 2017.
- When comparing average hourly wages of women and men (aged 15+) working full-time and part-time in 2020, women earned 89 cents for every dollar earned by men, suggesting a gap of 11%.
- A 2019 study from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship found that women in Canadian tech jobs, with a bachelor’s degree or higher, earned nearly $20,000 less a year than their male counterparts in 2016 (with women averaging $75,500 a year, compared with $95,100 for men).
- According to police-reported data, between 2009 and 2014, women accounted for about 9 in 10 survivors (87%) of sexual assaults in Canada. Among women who experienced a sexual assault, those under the age of 25 accounted for 7 in 10 (70%) survivors.
- Self-reported data from 2018 shows that Indigenous women were about 1.5 times as likely as non-Indigenous women in Canada to have been sexually assaulted at least once since the age of 15 (43% versus 30%, respectively).
- According to 2018 police-reported data, women accounted for almost 8 in 10 (79%) survivors of intimate partner violence in Canada.
- Police-reported data shows that, between 2014 and 2019, 400 women in Canada were killed by an intimate partner, accounting for 8 in 10 (80%) victims of intimate partner homicides. In 2019 only, 54 women were killed by an intimate partner, accounting for about 7 in 10 (74%) victims of intimate-partner homicides in Canada.
- While accounting for about 5% of all women in Canada, Indigenous women accounted for 21% (83) of all women killed by an intimate partner between 2014 and 2019.
Certain groups of women and gender minorities may be more vulnerable to these challenges, including LGBTQ2 people, Indigenous women and girls, young women, immigrant women, and racialized women. The #MeToo, #TimesUp and Black Lives Matters movements, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ Calls for Justice have drawn greater public attention to these challenges. Sustained and heightened attention to gender equality issues has resulted in higher demands on the organization to assist, and provide guidance and feedback to other departments on their priorities, as well as address new and emerging departmental priorities.
In December 2018, new legislation created Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), transforming the former Status of Women Canada into an official department of the Government of Canada. While WAGE continues to work towards more equitable economic, political and social outcomes for women and girls in Canada, its mandate establishes WAGE as a center of expertise that leads and mobilizes federal activities to advance equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, recognizing intersections between sex, gender and other identity factors.
In spite of this, important data gaps limit our understanding of existing gender inequalities and how they disproportionately impact vulnerable groups. The government of Canada has demonstrated its commitment to advancing gender equality through significant investments in key programs, policies and initiatives. WAGE is funding and sharing important research to fill knowledge gaps on issues relevant to gender equality, which in turn will help support policymakers and service providers at all levels use evidence to inform their decisions and practices.
Gender equality and the COVID-19 pandemic
As a virus, COVID-19 does not discriminate who it infects, and yet, its impacts are felt differently and more severely by different groups. These groups happen to be Canada's most vulnerable and so the virus has magnified inequalities experienced long before it took hold in Canada.
- The economic, health, and social impacts of COVID-19 are being felt most severely among women in Canada, and in particular, racialized, newcomer, and immigrant women, women with disabilities, women living in poverty, LGBTQ2 women, and women who are experiencing gender-based violence.
- Because of the disproportionate economic effects that COVID-19 is having on women, economists are calling it a "she-cession". According to Statistics Canada, in March 2020, women made up the majority (63%) of all employment losses, experiencing job losses at twice the rate of men. Women were over-represented in workplaces hard hit by COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, including accommodation, food services, and educational services. These were women doing essential work for low wages. They were too often racialized women and newcomers to Canada.
- In addition, Indigenous women, recent immigrant women, female lone parents, senior women, and LGBTQ2 people are disproportionately impacted by poverty and face core housing needs, and are therefore more financially vulnerable to the economic impacts of the pandemic.
- By December 2020, employment for women between the ages of 25-54 was nearing pre-shutdown levels. However, among Indigenous Canadians, employment remained further from recovery for women than men. Employment also remained farther from pre-pandemic levels for youth than for all other demographic groups, with female youth continuing to be harder hit than their male counterparts.
- In late December 2020 and early January 2021, a number of provinces extended public health measures in response to increasing COVID-19 cases. As in March and April 2020, when the initial COVID-19 economic shutdown resulted in larger job losses for women than for men, the employment decline in January was more than twice as large among core-aged women compared to core-aged men.
- Employment for parents were also affected by lockdowns in January 2021 and the transition to remote learning. The decrease was more pronounced among mothers whose youngest child was aged 6 to 12, for whom the employment rate fell 2.9 percentage points to 77.4%. This was the largest monthly decline for parents since April 2020, as their employment rate had approached pre-COVID levels in September 2020 and had been relatively stable over the fall.
- In terms of household tasks, men were more likely to contribute to these tasks in 2020 than in 2017. However, women were more likely than men to report that they were mostly responsible for parenting tasks. Specifically, 64% of women were primarily responsible for home schooling and helping with homework, an additional task for parents during the pandemic, versus 19% of men.
- People in Canada have been asked to stay home to prevent the spread of COVID-19, yet home is not a safe place for everyone. We have seen a “shadow pandemic” emerge for those isolated at home with their abusers. In December 2020, Women’s Shelters Canada released the results of its seventh national survey of transition houses and shelters. The survey found that, while initially shelters experienced a decrease in calls during the first three months of the pandemic, call and requests for admittance increased once lockdown measures were eased. More concerning, half of shelters surveys reported an increase in the severity of violence being experience.
Organization context
In order to deliver on Government priorities WAGE continues to establish itself as a centre of expertise on gender equality. In particular, WAGE is focusing on strengthening its organizational structure, governance and processes in order to effectively deliver on priorities and to coordinate gender equality initiatives across federal departments and agencies. This includes improving the organizational and leadership structures for more effective work functions and people management; developing and implementing a plan for diversity and inclusion; and implementing initiatives to support the health and well-being of staff. These changes will create more effective business processes and enhance the operations of the department, which is integral to identifying and delivering on government priorities.
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