Advancing Women’s Economic Security and Prosperity
Advancing Women’s Economic Security and Prosperity
Across Canada, women continue to be disproportionately affected by poverty, housing insecurity, precarious employment, and economic violence. These realities are even more severe for women living at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression, including racialized women, Indigenous women, immigrant women, women with disabilities, and low-income women.
NAWL works to ensure that all women in Canada can live with dignity, security, and autonomy. To achieve this goal, we advocate for a comprehensive approach to economic security that addresses the structural causes of inequality. This includes promoting laws that advance equity and transparency, advocating for access to safe, affordable, and accessible housing, and strengthening social protection programs to reduce poverty and improve the living conditions of women and their families.
Dignity, Safety, and a Guaranteed Livable Income
Women and gender-diverse people are more likely to experience poverty, to remain poor for longer periods, and to face compounding barriers linked to disability, caregiving responsibilities, racialization, Indigeneity, violence, housing precarity, and geography. Any serious effort to address poverty, therefore, must grapple not only with income adequacy, but with how income insecurity operates differently across lived realities.
Bill S-206, An Act to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income, is a legislative measure that calls on the federal government to develop a plan to implement a guaranteed livable basic income across Canada, accessible to anyone in Canada over the age of 17 who is in need. The bill is currently being studied by the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
