Happy Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Ca! ~ “wishing you prosperity” in Mandarin.

It’s the year of the Dragon. The Dragon is a symbol of good fortune and intense power. The Dragon is larger than life and its appearance means that big things are to come. The economy is unstable and we are witnessing a great shift in consciousness whether it be the Arab Spring to the East or the Occupy Movement to the West. If this is to be a year of great change – let us change the world to one of greater equality, justice, and opportunity for all. Together we have the power to change the world for the better!

January 13, 2012 – YWCA Hamilton is delighted to announce we have not only met, but exceeded the employee campaign target for the United Way Campaign 2011 – “Be The Change”! YWCA Hamilton is also thrilled to be nominated for the Agency Campaign of the Year Award!! This award is presented to the agency that organizes and conducts the most exceptional United Way campaign, achieving outstanding results. Congratulations to all YWCA staff & members for modeling “change” in our community!

United Way Campaign 2011 – “Be The Change”!

 This year the ‘YWCA Hamilton Holiday Toy Drive’ was generously supported by the Christmas Tree of Hope program through local radio station CHML and Y108. This essential toy drive is held annually for children utilizing YWCA’s Supervised Access Program (SAP) and child care programs.

“We are so pleased to receive toys from the CHML/Y108 Christmas Tree of Hope. This allows us to give hope to families struggling this holiday season by having a direct impact on the children in our community,” said Denise Doyle CEO YWCA Hamilton, “YWCA Hamilton is grateful to CHML/Y108 and the community for their support for families in Hamilton”.

By Denise Doyle, CEO YWCA Hamilton

Violence continues to be the leading cause of women’s homelessness in Canada, with more than 100,000 women and children fleeing their homes each year. Many of them never make it to a shelter at all. They live on the streets of our cities, in poverty and exposed daily to sexual harassment and violence.

December 6^th is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women – marking the anniversary of the Montreal shooting deaths of 14 women in 1989. This year YWCA Canada and its member associations across the country are speaking out to draw attention and demand action on the crisis in women’s homelessness and its inherent links to violence.

To get a glimpse at conditions faced by homeless women, The Social Planning and Research Council prepared a unique and first of its kind report, Not To Be Forgotten: Homeless Women in Hamilton, last May for Mission Services (full report at sprc.hamilton.on.ca).

Upon investigation, the SPRC found over 7,000 women and their families are at immediate risk of homelessness in our city. They estimate at least 3,000 additional women are part of Hamilton’s hidden homeless – living on friend’s couches with limited power and control.

Homeless women face 10 times the mortality rate of other women, and according to the SPRC, they die on average at the age of 39 – this is half of the Canadian life expectancy for women. Without a roof over their heads and a door to lock safely behind them women risk assault, harassment, and even murder.

The report reveals that the experience of homelessness and the way we address it cannot be done from a gender-neutral lens.  “The needs of homeless women … tend to be even more complex than men,” the report says. “Women tend to access shelter only after exhausting all other social and community resources, making it much harder to assist them in rebuilding their lives.”

As a community we can take action to end violence by ending women’s homelessness. While there is no single solution to either issue, we need to ensure that women’s homelessness is being discussed and investments are made.

Moving directly from homelessness to permanent housing is not effective for all women. The SPRC found that the vast majority of Hamilton’s homeless women cycle between one shelter to the next – never able to scrape together enough money for first and last month’s rent or have the supports and resources in place to successfully lead healthy and independent lives.

Based on these findings, we can say with certainty that transitional and supportive housing clearly play an important role in ending homelessness for some women. “The gaps within services for homeless women include transitional housing. The insufficient number of transitional housing beds and services has left many women cycling through the shelter system” says SPRC.

When we think about investment and planning for women’s homelessness we need to ensure more gender-segregated programs for homeless men and women. The solution for women’s homelessness needs to be different.

At YWCA Hamilton, we offer 65 beds through our Transitional Living Program to women in need of a safe, secure environment where they can access support, programs and services to rebuild their lives.

There are other services in Hamilton also addressing the needs of single women at risk of or experiencing homelessness. But the effectiveness of all of our programs is undermined by a lack of resources that would better support women toward achieving safe and sustainable homes in our community. Across the province there is no secure established funding for transitional housing programs for marginalized homeless women.

Women’s organizations and homeless women have been voicing their concerns that solutions to reducing homelessness have not responded to women’s needs. Various levels of government are beginning to listen.

It is time for us, as individuals and taxpayers, to urge our elected officials and community leaders to educate themselves on women’s homelessness in Hamilton and take action to fix the gaps in services.

It is time for governments at the federal, provincial and municipal level as well as other funding institutions to declare women’s homelessness unacceptable and respond with effective, sustainable and co-ordinated solutions.

Denise Doyle is CEO of YWCA Hamilton.

December 1, 2011 – Today is World AIDS Day. The face of AIDS is changing. In Ontario, HIV among women, aboriginals and new Canadians is on the rise. Biologically women are twice as likely to become infected through unprotected sex. Women are also less able to negotiate condom use, are more likely to be subjected to forced sex, and have higher rates of poverty increasing their risk to HIV infection. In Canada we have pockets of third world conditions – one reason why Aboriginal women are vastly over represented by this epidemic. Globally, AIDs is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age. HIV/AIDs programming needs to address underlying gender inequalities if we are reverse this alarming trend.

Women, War & Peace is a new five-part PBS television series challenging the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain. The vast majority of today’s conflicts are not fought by nation states and their armies, but rather by informal entities: gangs and warlords using small arms and improvised weapons. The series reveals how the post-Cold War proliferation of small arms has changed the landscape of war, with women becoming primary targets and suffering unprecedented casualties. Yet they are simultaneously emerging as necessary partners in brokering lasting peace and as leaders in forging new international laws governing conflict. Women, War & Peace spotlights the stories of women in conflict zones from Bosnia to Afghanistan and Colombia to Liberia, placing women at the center of an urgent dialogue about conflict and security, and reframing our understanding of modern warfare.

Women, War & Peace premieres on PBS Tuesday nights throughout October and November, 2011. Watch the entire series here.

The “Don’t Be That Guy” poster campaign was developed by the Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton (SAVE) and was launched in November 2010.  Since that time, the campaign has gained international attention, having been launched in communities across Canada and abroad.  The campaign focuses on the issue of drug-facilitated sexual assaults.

Drug-facilitated sexual assault is a sexual assault perpetrated by an offender with a victim who is profoundly intoxicated by alcohol or drugs.  In these cases, the victim is not capable of giving consent.

The intent of the posters is to generate conversation and to redirect the community’s understanding of where the responsibility lies.  The campaign targets potential offenders as they are the ones responsible for the assault and they are responsible for stopping it just as the guy that stands back and does nothing is.

Diana Tikasz, MSW, RSW, Clinical Specialist, Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Care Centre, Hamilton Health Sciences says, “The burden should not be on individual women to prevent drug facilitated sexual assault.  Sexual assault is a societal issue.  This campaign, through our partnerships, is our community’s commitment to raise awareness about this type of sexual violence.  In Ontario, one in five women who were sexually assaulted believed that they were drugged prior to the assault.”

“Many awareness campaigns target women by reminding them how they can ‘prevent’ being sexually assaulted.  This approach can have the unintended effect of reinforcing self-blame because it places the responsibility for stopping sexual assault on the potential victims.  This campaign speaks to men and shows us where the true responsibility for stopping sexual assault lies:  100% with the offender.  It’s a very refreshing approach.”, said Krista Warnke, Public Education, Coordinator for the Sexual Assault Centre Hamilton and Area (SACHA).

The social marketing campaign will run from November 10^th, 2011 to January 10^th, 2012.  The campaign consists of mini-boards posted in licensed establishments in the Hamilton bar district.  The posters will also be distributed in and around the McMaster University and Mohawk College campuses, and displayed by the partnering agencies.  Any business, organization or agency wishing to get involved with the poster campaign is asked to contact the Hamilton Police Service Crime Prevention Unit at 905.546.4900.

A new study reveals that Canada is far behind other countries such as Sri Lanka, Uganda and Guyana when it comes to how much political power women have relative to men.

While Canadian women have gained almost equal ground in the areas of health and education, the gaps between men and women are enormous in economics and politics. 

 ”We often make an assumption, not just in Canada but in other countries, that we’ve achieved equality for women and we can move on to talk about other issues. This is a wake up call that we have a lot of work to do,” said Deborah Gillis, senior vice-president and head of the Canadian office of Catalyst, an international advocacy group for women in business.

Business was measured in wages and management positions. The study reveals that Canadian women have an attainment level only three-quarters to that of men. This is not surprising as here in Hamilton, 7% of women working full-time all year long earn wages so low they still live in poverty. This amounts to more than 4,000 working poor women in Hamilton.

The issue of gender equality is not just a human rights issue, there are also serious economically ramifications. “Our research shows that more women in leadership roles on boards of directors and senior leadership teams points, for instance, to organizations having stronger financial performance,” says Gillis.

Most alarming is Canada’s gender inequality in politics, measured by the number of female legislators and cabinet ministers. Here a 71% gap exists between men and women! While Canada is making gains federally, 76 women (24.7%) were elected to the House of Commons this past spring; women must meet a critical threshold of 30% in governments before women’s concerns can begin to be addressed in a substantial way.

Is it no wonder that the economic inequalities between men and women are directly linked to a lack of political power? As long as Canadian women continue to hit the political glass ceiling, concerns over the pink ghetto and cheap labour will not be prioritized and the drive for equal pay and the pursuit of a family wage will not be championed in the way it needs to be.

Sources:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/02/women-world-economic-participation.html

http://www.sprc.hamilton.on.ca/Poverty/WomenAndPoverty.php