‘Best place to be a woman’ survey is best taken with a grain of salt

What’s the best city in Canada for a woman to live? What’s the worst?

On one level, it’s all a fun diversion. The U.S. personal finance website WalletHub puts out a daily report on topics like this: The worst city in America to drive in (San Francisco), the happiest state (Minnesota) and the best place to celebrate Oktoberfest (Cincinnati).

But you’ll need a grain of salt. Earlier this year, Canadian news media reported on a survey by Amazon on the most romantic city in Canada. It turned out to be Victoria, B.C., which had more lacy lingerie and romance novels per capita than anywhere else in the country. But the survey was based only on sales of romancerelated products, so the “story” seemed mostly like marketing, disguised as news.

But still … You want to know, don’t you? Waterloo was seventh. Kitchener and Cambridge did not make the Top 20.

This week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a leftleaning research institute, put out its annual report on the best and worst places for a woman to live. It’s not much more scientific than that Amazon survey.

Victoria was deemed the best and Windsor, the worst. KitchenerWaterloo-Cambridge, which was dead last in 2016, moved up to 20th place this year.

There are lots of things that make life better for women, from not being forced to wear high heels at work, to feeling safe when walking alone at night, to having choices about whether to be pregnant.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives measures employment rates between men and women. Statistics Canada says women across the country have a 77.5 per cent employment rate, while 85.3 per cent of men are employed. The difference is 7.8 percentage points.

With 87.5 per cent of men working, and 81.3 per cent of women, Waterloo Region has higher overall employment and more equality, with a gap of 6.3 per cent. That’s better than the Canadian average. Yet this area was ranked 19th of 25 for economic security. Weird.

And the centre disregards other key factors, like the cost of child care and ease of access to reproductive health services.

Statistics Canada measures median monthly daycare costs. For an infant, they range from $1,736 in Toronto to $174 in the Quebec cities of Montreal, Gatineau and Quebec (child care is subsidized in that province).

Hamilton charges $1,239 and London, $1,180. In Kitchener, it’s $868. Yet both London and Hamilton are seen as better places for a woman to live than Kitchener.

And finally: There is not a word about one of the most important factors for women — Do we have control over their own bodies? In Waterloo Region, we do.

Lyndsey Butcher, executive director of the SHORE Centre, the Kitchener-based agency offering education and support on sexual health, says women here can get abortions without delay.

Also, since August, Kitchener has also been one of the few places with access to the abortion pill.

“People drive in from Windsor, from London” for that, she said. “There’s no access in Hamilton.”

Why isn’t the Centre for Policy Alternatives including these issues in its survey? Without them, it’s hard to take its work seriously. And that wouldn’t matter, except that the survey has been dominating news headlines. It’s a reminder that not every survey is worth your time.