The National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC), an organization MAW is a member of, has started a project called Securing Our Future.

The project’s mandate is to bring some of the issues the NCWC has been working on involving women’s poverty in later life to younger women of Canada and to give younger women a voice, to foster lifelong understanding of financial planning, and economic security issues.

The first part of the project started in fall 2000 with Thinktank consultations through the local NCWC councils of women and study groups across Canada.

In June, there was a Roundtable Discussion (RTD) held during the NCWC’s Annual General Meeting in Vancouver.

MAW member Ingrid Ermanovics and I spent the day attending the RTD. The approximately 100-120 women, whose ages ranged from 15 to late 80’s, were divided into smaller groups.

The morning was spent identifying barriers to securing our economic futures and the afternoon spent looking at possible solutions. After the two sessions we gathered as a whole to discuss what barriers and solutions were identified in our individual groups.

I had doubts that the group I was in was going to come up with anything identifiable, as there was endless open-ended discussion that roamed from topic to topic, with each generation of participant sharing her perspective.

Much of it being individual accounts from the older NCWC members of how they got where they are today and what they’ve seen happen in their lifetimes. However, when we all came together at the end of the day it was interesting to see that each of the 5 groups of women had come to the same conclusions.

Barriers identified to secure economic futures weren’t about poor money management or of not having enough money to save, but rather bigger issues of globalization, lack of universal childcare, lack of measurement and valuation of unpaid work, healthcare, and media, along with a few others.

Most of the solutions identified were quality education, quality health care, universal childcare, and a shift in the media of bringing more awareness of social issues than economic ones.

An interesting part of the NCWC Roundtable Discussion was the opportunity I had to meet with some of the women from other organizations, particularly the younger women (aged 15-31).

An informal group of these younger women met with the project coordinator to get a sense of what would be happening over the weekend. I listened to their perceptions of the older NCWC members, and of the choices their mothers had made in relation to their mother’s economic security in later life.

Many of these younger women were of the opinion that you’re value is directly related to your paid work, the more money you earn, the more you’re worth.

A few of the women slighted their stay-at-home moms who did nothing and should’ve had a job all those years they were home with them instead of being economically dependent on their fathers; many mothers having divorced after the children left home. These young women blamed their mothers for their near poverty status as they are nearing retirement age.

Being a young woman, an “at-home” mother, and a feminist, I was keen to challenge some of their ideas.

• What choices will they make about having children?

• What choices will they make about their child’s care?

• Had they explored these options or rather did they know if they had any options?

• How about their mothers’ choices when they were starting out?

Almost all hoped to have children someday.

Some of the women in relationships shared that this is a major point of conflict with their potential mates, who will raise the future kids, and at what cost to their building careers and economic livelihood.

Hence, there were a few young women who said they had no plans of having children, and others who said they were really scared about this aspect of their future.

I explained how we have to be careful about the language we use in talking about our “work”.

I asked them to challenge themselves and asked how do we “value” work?

Is the mother caring for her child of less value than the daycare worker?

Is the volunteer working at women’s centre of less value because she’s not paid?

Are the years their mothers spent caring for them of no value to them or to their mothers?

And as hospitals downsize and home-care becomes the catch phrase, exactly who will care for their mothers should they become ill?

Are the unpaid volunteers in our society who run organizations, fight for women equality, offer support and services less important to society because they’re not paid?

I spoke of the lack of measurement of unpaid work and how there is little recognition for the unpaid work that people contribute to our communities.

How if we measured and counted the unpaid work we do, it would change almost everything considered in crafting public policy. In recognizing the unpaid contribution changes the legal, economic and academic worlds for women and all of society.

It was a good opportunity to spread the word about unpaid work and I’d like to think it helped to challenge the younger women’s perceptions.

I hope they will continue in their activist roles and continue to make change for women. These young women have an energy and determination to be economically autonomous that the older women of NCWC had a difficult time understanding.

They are pushing way beyond the glass ceilings and corporate ladders; but they wonder at what costs, and there’s almost a survival instinct in them to do things differently than the generation before them.

They’re fighting for their equality but it’s a different kind of fight.

The next phase of the project, cross-Canada community Roundtables, will start in November. Some of the communities will be: the St. Catherine’s area, Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg.

If you’re interested in attending one of these Roundtables in your area on behalf of MAW please call the NCWC information number 1-877-319-0993 and take part.

All of the information gathered from the Roundtables and further strategies will be presented at the NCWC’s AGM in Halifax in June 2002.

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