Motivation at the Margins: Gender Issues in the Canadian Voluntary
Sector
August 25, 2003
By Louise Chatterton Luchuk
How would you describe the realities facing the voluntary sector today?
Are any of these on your list: low salaries, nonexistent benefits, increased
workloads, reductions in core funding, increased demand for volunteers,
lag in information and communication technology use? In order to understand
the challenges facing women volunteers and paid staff in the voluntary
and community sector, to identify gaps in research, and to make recommendations
that would contribute to gender equality, Louise Mailloux, Heather
Horak and Colette Godin prepared the 2002 report entitled
Motivation
at the Margins: Gender Issues in the Canadian Voluntary Sector.
The report was commissioned by the Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI)
Secretariat as part of its mandate to build the capacity of the voluntary
sector and improve the sector's relationship with the federal government.
The incomplete picture
Research and statistics about the voluntary sector, and more specifically about
the role of women within the sector, is limited. The researchers gleaned
their information from the available research and also relied on interviews
and consultations with 15 key people from the voluntary sector. The information
was organized to provide an historical overview of the impact of women's
involvement in the voluntary sector, followed by a look at what motivates
women's involvement - as well as the differences in motivation for men
and women's giving, volunteering, and participating. The researchers then
examined a series of equity issues that led to their recommendations to
the VSI Secretariat.
Motivations uncovered
Mining the research, the authors of the report uncovered a variety of motivations
for women involved in the voluntary sector. Studies indicate that:
- even though a group of upper middle class Canadian women married
between 1914-1945 did considerable unpaid work - and were encouraged
and even expected to do so - their work was not considered serious
work.
- women often volunteer as a strategy to paid employment as they enter/re-enter
the workforce at different stages in their lives.
- there has been a change from a political activist motivation for
becoming involved to a more general sense of wanting to help.
- women with disabilities are motivated to volunteer in order to gain
a sense of contributing in a way that they may not experience otherwise
because of very high poverty and unemployment rates.
- immigrant women are encouraged to volunteer as part of the integration
process.
- women are involved in more informal volunteer work than men even
though they may not perceive this work as volunteering.
Equity issues uncovered
The motivations for women's involvement provides a segue into five identified
equity issues. The first equity issue that the researchers tackled related
to the factors influencing the participation of women. The researchers
cite the situation experienced by women from visible minorities, who often
face racism, sexism, and classism in their attempts to integrate into
mainstream organizations. This often leads them to participate solely
within their own communities. Women with disabilities are also likely
to volunteer within their own community, where accessibility is a paramount
consideration. The researchers also point out the financial obstacles
experienced by many women - especially as volunteers - and encourage organizations
to consider childcare, transportation, and meal expenses so that woman
can participate fully in a women-friendly environment. Women are also
less represented in the upper levels of management, especially in the
larger, more well-established, and well-known organizations.
An evident equity issue is gender differences in salaries and benefits.
The researchers point out that "meager wages paid not only cost women
individually, but Canadian society as well, as these women age without
adequate pensions or personal savings, thereby becoming dependent on government
assistance." Employment statistics available at the time of the report
- including information about wages and benefits - were limited. However,
according to Lynne Toupin, project director for Developing
Human Resources in the Voluntary Sector, the Canadian
Policy Research Network (CPRN) has released three reports
on the state of the paid workforce in the nonprofit sector (with another
forthcoming report to synthesize all of the key findings). "To varying
degrees," says Toupin, "each report contains some data that relates to
the gender issue in the paid labour market of the voluntary sector. Plus
there is a two-year project in Quebec to investigate the state of salaries
and benefits in voluntary sector organizations in that province."
The third identified equity issue was the impact of government cuts to
the voluntary sector. How have the cuts heightened gender inequity? The
researchers cite increased demands for service, increased workloads, and
increased paperwork. While this is true for all voluntary sector staff
and volunteers regardless of gender, the researchers found that "as the
welfare-state disintegrates, women pick up the slack again informally."
Women's organizations struggle with funding cutbacks but they also struggle
to obtain funding in a way that many other voluntary sector organizations
don't have to at all. Kathy Marshall, national coordinator of DisAbled
Women's Network (DAWN) Canada, who was consulted for the report, emphasizes
that "if you look at equality-seeking women's organizations, more than
10% of what they do is advocacy work and they are, therefore, ineligible
for charitable tax status. They need government funding." Furthermore,
the report found that granting bodies prefer to fund groups that provide
universal programs instead of women-specific funding requests.
Without stable core funding, many women's organizations are left with
an uncomfortable contradiction - relying on women's unpaid work in order
to keep their doors open. This fourth equity issue draws attention to
the large amount of unpaid work that women contribute and the toll it
takes on them.
Finally, the researchers examine how unequal access to information and
communications technologies (ICT) marginalizes women. Here, similar issues
resurface: lack of funding and/or ineligibility for funding because only
women would have access - versus universal access - to the ICT resources.
Recommendations for research and action
From more thorough gender analysis of the sector, to implementing pay equity policies,
to educating organizations about discrimination and accommodation, to
securing long-term government funding, the researchers provide eleven
key recommendations to the voluntary sector and the VSI Secretariat. "What
a dream it would be," reflects Marshall, "if all the recommendations were
implemented. All of them are fundamental principles." Jo Sutton,
another woman consulted for the report, is the executive director of Womenspace,
an equality-seeking women's organization that works to ensure that women
are included in information and communications technology progress. She
would like to see the recommendations integrated into the Accord between
the Government of Canada and the voluntary sector. Says Sutton, "funding
guides the work that gets done, so the government can still give some
leadership."
Completing the picture: a beginning
Considering that in certain areas of the voluntary sector, 80% to 90% of volunteers
and paid staff are women, Motivation at the Margins: Gender Issues
in the Canadian Voluntary Sector fills an important gap in the voluntary
sector knowledge base. "We've sort of known some of this information but
this report is the first one I've seen of its kind," summarizes Sutton.
"I'm pleased that equality-seeking women's organizations are being talked
about because they're often not included in statements about the voluntary
sector." And as Marshall points out, the research findings might best
be read with "an equality-seeking women's group lens" in order to fully
understand the extent of the gender issues in the Canadian voluntary sector.
Louise Chatterton Luchuk is a freelance writer and consultant who combines her love of writing with experience at the local, provincial and national levels of volunteer-involving organizations. For more information, visit www.luchuk.com.
