Barrie Down The List Of The Best And Worst Places To Be A Woman In Canada

The Gender Gap in Canada’s 25 Biggest Cities

Barrie ranks near the bottom of a list of best cities in Canada for women in terms of economic and personal security, education, health and positions of leadership. The survey, by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, looked at the country’s 25 biggest cities. Barrie ranked 23rd, Just ahead of Oshawa and Windsor. Victoria topped the list. While the wage gap in Barrie is narrowing
the study found women still earn an average $16,000 a year less than men. Barrie was worst for promoting women into leadership positions and women in Barrie are more likely to identify high levels of stress in their lives compared to men. Click here for the full study. The breakdown for Barrie is below.

Barrie

Economic Security
Both men and women are more likely to be employed in Barrie than they are nationally, and the gap in employment rates is slightly smaller than average. The gap in employment has narrowed over the past five years. The full-time employment rate for women is the same as the national average but still lower than for men, producing a larger than average gap. Those higher rates of employment translate into higher than average wages for men and a consequently larger wage gap, with women bringing home $16,000 less per year than men. The wage gap has narrowed only slightly over the past five years, from 61% of men’s earnings to 63% of men’s earnings. Poverty rates in Barrie are below average, with women being only slightly more likely than men to live below the low-income measure.

Educational Attainment
Women in Barrie are more likely than men to have completed high school, college or university, though the share of women and men who hold university degrees (15% and 12% respectively) is well below the national average. At 26%, women in Barrie are much more likely to hold college degrees than the national average (20%). Men are more than twice as likely as women to have completed trades training and apprenticeships (12% and 5% respectively). Economic Security Education Health 21 5 21 Leadership Security Overall Rank 25 9 23 54 Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Leadership
Barrie comes in at the bottom of the rankings for promoting women into leadership positions. The region scores particularly badly when it comes to seeing women in management positions: women make up only 29% of managers in the city. Unlike most cities measured, women actually do better in the political arena here, making up 30% of elected officials in the region. Not one municipality boasts a female mayor.

Health
Life expectancy in Barrie is in keeping with the Canadian average and, as is typically the case, women live slightly longer lives (83 years on average to men’s 78). Just over half of women in Barrie (51%) rate their health as good (compared to 59% of men). This is the lowest share of women reporting good health of the 25 cities surveyed. Women are more likely than men to identify high levels of stress in their lives (23% and 19% respectively). Rates of screening for cervical cancer are average, with 68% of women reporting they had a Pap smear in the last three years.

Personal Security
Sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes in Canada. Statistics Canada estimates that only one in 20 sexual assaults are reported to the police. Moreover, nearly one in five of the sexual assaults that are reported to the police are dismissed as “unfounded.” An unfounded report is one where the police judge that no crime has occurred and therefore do not investigate or record the report of the assault. However, the high variability of unfounded rates from city to city suggests that some police forces are more likely than others to dismiss reports. Domestic violence is also underrecorded, with only one in five incidents reported to the police. Direct surveys of the population are the best way to estimate the actual crime rate for these offences. However, Statistics Canada only conducts a survey on violent crime once every five years. This survey does not sample a large enough segment of the population to provide reliable crime rates at the provincial or municipal level (with the exception of Ontario and Québec). The 2014 General Social Survey found that 2.2% of adults in Canada had experienced a sexual assault in the previous five years and that 3.9% had experienced violence from an intimate partner. This equates to 3,653 incidents of sexual assault and 6,476 incidents of intimate partner violence over the same five years in Barrie. The unfounded rate for police-reported sexual assaults in Barrie is 25%, compared to 19% nationally