Why are women still at risk?
The numbers don’t lie.
In 2020, 160 women and girls were killed in Canada, 90 per cent of the accused were male. This year alone, there were 14 more killings than over the same period last year.
Roughly every six days, a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. Indigenous women are killed at nearly seven times the rate of non-Indigenous women. Women living with disabilities are three times more likely to experience violent victimization than those without a disability, all according to Statistics Canada.
Approximately 1 million workers, mostly women, have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, according to a 2018 Angus Reid study. A survey of federal workplaces found that 94 per cent of sexual harassment complaints were from women, with those with disabilities or those who are racialized to more likely experience harassment.
Enough is enough.
No doubt that the federal government has made substantial commitments and investments including promising to move ahead with a national action plan that maps out strategies for the next 10 years and allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations providing shelter to those fleeing violence.
Yet, there are worrying gaps, especially for women who are particularly at risk: girls and younger women, women living with disabilities, women in rural and remote regions, racialized women, newcomer and immigrant women, and others. The pandemic has exacerbated vulnerabilities.
“Fear, stigma, and xenophobia place marginalized individuals at increased risk of violence,” write the authors of a report produced for the Centre on Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University.
The report further acknowledges the heightened risks for people working in precarious and low-pay employment who face new hazards in the workplace and can struggle to assert their rights.
Why then hasn’t the federal government moved to ratify an international protocol that would help advance progress in the working lives of women who are more often the victims of violence and sexual harassment at work?
In 2019, the International Labour Organization, a UN agency that brings together governments, employers and workers from 187 member states to set international labour standards, made history with the creation of ILO Convention 190 (C190), which sets out to provide minimum standards toward eliminating violence and harassment in the world of work.
“These instruments should guide and help develop Canada Labour Code regulations and guidelines on harassment and violence in the workplace,” reads a 2020 guide produced by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). “Implementation should also be a component of any National Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls.”
Nusrat Nowrin, the founder of Guided Roots, a Canadian Muslim organization that aims to support healthy Muslim families, with a current focus on addressing domestic violence, is crowdfunding to create “An Imam’s Comprehensive Guide to Domestic Violence Intervention.”
And earlier this year, the P.E.I. Rape and Sexual Assault Centre began offering a new program for Indigenous survivors of sexual assault. The Vancouver-based Battered Women’s Support Services has been offering tailored programming for Black women.
Research presented last spring during the Canadian Domestic Homicide Prevention Initiative’s national virtual conference found that newcomer and immigrant survivors struggle to flee violence because of a lack of access to safe and affordable housing and a limited knowledge of (or access to) formal supports, as well as limited financial independence. Furthermore, service providers aren’t always providing culturally appropriate interventions.
“So it’s better for them to say, ‘Tell me how I can be helpful to you,’” one survivor was quoted as saying.
We could all do more to help.