D6

Elsie Hambrook

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The World Bank recently said that to break intergenerational cycles of poverty in the world, invest in . . . you'll never guess . . . teenage girls.

A bit surprising from the World Bank? Their reasoning is economically based.

Improving teen girls' economic opportunities has a very high payoff for their families and their future children, "with long term benefits for poverty reduction." When young women do not have the same opportunities as young men to gain financial independence and become productive, it's a drain on economic growth.

The World Bank is so convinced of the link between gender and development that it has a "Gender Equality as Smart Economics" branch and recently launched an Adolescent Girl Initiative "to smooth the transition from school to productive employment for girls and young women."

As a World Bank article stated, sex differences "emerge most sharply with the onset of puberty, affecting the life trajectories of girls and boys in profoundly different ways. This is especially so in developing societies, where their adolescence may be cut short by early marriage and /or early pregnancy."

The status of girls and women is significantly different in developed countries like Canada compared to developing countries. Yet here too, as the World Bank says, "childbearing or marriage often coincides with the end of schooling," and children of adolescent mothers are more likely to become adolescent mothers themselves.

That resonates in a province like New Brunswick with our high birth rate to teen mothers. About 500 teenage girls give birth in New Brunswick in a typical year. Over six per cent of our newborns were to teens, compared to four per cent over all in Canada.

In Saint John County, the area in the province with the highest proportion of teen mothers, a child is born every five days to a teen mother. A community group produced a report on the topic three years ago. They showed that the number of pregnant and parenting young mothers who drop out of school is unfortunately not known for anywhere in the province, but it is known that in Saint John, unlike most other communities across Canada, girls are almost as likely as boys to leave school before graduation.

The provincial government does confirm that in 2004, of all parenting youth aged 21 or younger who were clients of Family and Community Services, only 25 per cent have completed high school.

Most teenage girls do not get pregnant, but for those who do, their story can easily become one classic example of how women enter poverty. The teenager who -- possibly because they can't afford contraception, even emergency contraception, or an abortion -- becomes a parent too soon, often loses out on educational and job opportunities and may begin, or perpetuate, a cycle of poverty. Lack of childcare and other supports can mean she settles for low-paid poor quality jobs for most of her adult life, destined for a 'poverty pension.'

Poverty can also increase the likelihood of her living or staying in a violent relationship. Some women turn to the sex trade to survive.

There are other stories typical of women living in poverty or near-poverty. Women drop out of the labour market to take care of children or parents. Recently, the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner described it as "women ending up in poverty in retirement as a result of gender inequality at every point in their life and because they do society's caring work . . . Women are more likely to accumulate poverty during their lives than wealth . . . The problem is not women's decisions . . . it's the under-valuation of these kinds of work and the long-term financial penalty that follows."

A woman may train for a well-paid job in a male-dominated trade only to be forced out by discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and end up in ghetto under-paid jobs.

Despite women's massive labour force participation and comparable educational levels, they still earn considerably less on average than men in the province. The current hourly pay gap of 14 per cent, and the full-time, full-year gap of 25 per cent translate into lower pension benefits and savings for women.

Men's entry into poverty and the obstacles they face to leave poverty are quite different from women's.

That is why governments and economic groups like the World Bank increasingly pay attention to the 'gendered nature' of poverty. Canada has come under fire from a few bodies, including a United Nations committee, for persistent high poverty rates among certain groups, especially Aboriginal women and single mothers.

The Newfoundland and Labrador strategy on poverty, adopted a few years ago, made the issue an integral part of its action plan, recognizing the connection between poverty and gender. Their definition of poverty recognized the harm of social exclusion and diminished power and control, and stated that eliminating prejudice and encouraging full participation in social and economic life is part of the solution.

New Brunswick launches this month into the final phase of its process to develop a poverty reduction strategy.

For New Brunswickers who work but live in poverty, what is needed is decent employment with a living wage -- full-time minimum wage work should mean living above the poverty line. For those living in poverty who cannot work, a decent level of support is needed. And for all citizens, full participation in the economic and social life of communities.

* Elsie Hambrook is Chairperson of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Her column on women's issues appears in the Times & Transcript every Thursday. She may be reached via e-mail at acswcccf@gnb.ca