Recent Projects

Still Shopping for Training: Women, Training and Livelihoods

(completed November 2001)

Today, women's choices for training and employment services are at the same time more limited, and greater than ever before. For women on social assistance, there are very few programs, offering minimal training opportunities. On the other hand, for the declining number of women who qualify for Employment Insurance-related training, changes in federal policy have created a wide range of choice. Even here, choice does not necessarily create opportunity. Uptake is small in contrast to the number of women who are eligible for training. Despite more than twenty years of focus on women's employment and training services, federal and provincial policies and funding criteria restrict programs from effectively assisting women in getting the jobs they want and need.

This article is a chapter in the book, Training for the Excluded: Access and Equity for Women, Immigrants, First Nations, Youth and People with Low Income, edited by Marjorie Griffin Cohen, University of British Columbia Press.