Victoria, British Columbia, is the best place in Canada for women to live, according to a new study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Why was Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, at the bottom of the list?

Victoria, British Columbia, is the best place in Canada for women to live, according to a new study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Why was Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, at the bottom of the list?
Photo Credit: CP / Deddeda Stemler

Canadian women fare best in Victoria, British Columbia

Canadian women have the best of everything, on the west-coast, in Victoria, British Columbia. This is in comparison to 24 other cities across the country,  This was one of the findings by Kate McInturf, senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

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This was the second year of the study, but this year McInturf expanded it to include 25 cities. She said she modelled it on international meaures of gender inequality.  She used the World Economic Forum’s ‘Global Gender Gap Report’ but instead of comparing countries, McInturf looked at the differences between our provinces, and more specifically, cities.

 Given the economy you do have in a community, are men and women benefiting equally from jobs and services?

She intends to continue on an annual basis, and hopes the findings will motivate discussion and action on the challenges, and the sharing of programs and policies that are working well in some area. “I think that communities across Canada have a lot to learn from one another, and particularly with these smaller grass roots initiatives.  Someone who’s working on a neighbourhood initiative in Ottawa isn’t necessarily going to call someone in Victoria up to share what they’ve learned,  And so what I’m really hoping is that the discussion around the report becomes a way for communities to know more about each other and know more about what’s working across the country so that they can scale up those things that are really working to make women’s lives better.”

Kate McInturf cites the use of the Hollaback movement in Ottawa, where the street harassment of women around public transit became visible, and when the municipal authorities were informed, a public awareness campaign was created.

Kitchener-Waterloo, one of the bedroom communities of Toronto, and home of the Black Berry, came in last this year. McInturf explains that it is about the gap between men and women.

“Given the economy you do have in a community, are men and women benefiting equally from jobs and services?” This is the overall query. In the case of the Kitchener-Waterloo region, McInturf says there are bigger gaps; bigger gaps in pay, bigger gaps in rates of poverty between women and men, a persistent pay gap actually in women with university degrees who experience the same pay gap working full time as women with high school degrees, and normally the trend is that as people become more educated you see that gender wage gap start to narrow, but I had a closer look obviously when they came out on the bottom of the list at some of the demographics there and there seems to be this persistence of the pay gap even at the highest levels of education, so that’s factoring into their score.”

Large public sector employers which do a really good job of tracking gaps in wages and promotion and working to narrow them where they find them.

Victoria, British Columbia, like Quebec City, is a provincial capital. McInturf says “both of those cities have large public-sector employers, which do a really good job of tracking gaps in wages and promotion and working to narrow them where they find them.”

Last year’s version of the report ranked Victoria as the fifth best place for women.  But the city’s mayor, Lisa Helps, said she was not surprised with the top ranking this year. She told CBC News that the move into first place could be because of Victoria’s focus on diversity within the business community, an “open-hearted” police chief and even her own election as the city’s second female mayor last November.

“Everyone should totally move to Victoria,” Helps said. “What’s really unique and striking about Victoria is in all sorts of ways it’s open to diversity, to innovation, to creativity. There’s something here that is nowhere else in Canada.”

Perhaps one general conclusion we may draw from this year’s study, is that women’s lives are better overall, in capital cities.

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