Ontario's Pay Equity Act marks its 30th anniversary in 2017. The act was created to ensure equal pay for work of equal value, in particular to address gender-based disparities in pay. In the intervening years, significant gains and increases in awareness have been made in addressing the wage gap. Yet, as statistics and evidence, including community based research, demonstrates, the gender wage gap, and systemic employment inequities that facilitate the gap, continue to be pressing equity and human rights issues today.
The Ontario Women's Health Network (OWHN) carried out this project to learn about the intersecting determinants that shape immigrant women's experiences of the gender wage gap; the facilitators and barriers to equitable employment that they face; and the discriminations they experience in seeking to enter Ontario's labour market. This project's contribution to a rich body of grey literature and academic evidence regarding immigrant women and employment in Canada is to share the personal stories behind the systemic issues that perpetuate the gender wage gap. This work shines a light on the lived experiences and perspectives of immigrant women related to settlement and employment in Ontario and the impacts of these experiences for themselves and their families.
The Toolkit: An Introduction
What Is Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR)? In a nutshell, CBPR is an approach to research in which researchers and community members share power, resources, and decision-making at every level of the research process, working together to enhance the understanding of a given phenomenon and integrating that knowledge with action to improve the health and well-being of those most affected.
What Is the Toolkit? The goal of this toolkit is to support emerging researchers who would like to learn more about CBPR approaches, particularly in the context of domestic violence. While much of the content is aimed at researchers, there is much here that will help advocates and other community partners understand the CBPR approach and its benefits.
Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile is an annual report produced by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics under the Federal Family Violence Initiative. Since 1998, this report has provided current data on the nature and extent of family violence in Canada, as well as analysis of trends over time. The information presented here is used extensively to monitor changes that inform policy makers and the public.Â
Despite half a century of research on both sexual violence and elder abuse, the intersection between the two remains largely unexplored. Using theoretical lenses of feminist criminology and critical feminist gerontology, this article explores the intersection between age and sexual violence drawing on interviews with 23 practitioners supporting older survivors (aged 60 and over). They reported physical and emotional effects of sexual violence leading to limited lifestyles, disengagement from social networks, and reliance on pathogenic coping strategies.
In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as 'revenge porn'. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly's (Surviving sexual violence. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988) pioneering work, we suggest that 'revenge porn' should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the 'continuum of imagebased sexual abuse'. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.
What is Neglect of an Older Adult?
Neglect, whether physical or psychological, is deliberate, intentional behaviour towards an older adult, like withholding basic necessities of life and/or failing to provide emotional support that may result in physical harm and/or psychological anguish. Neglect is attributable to ageism, the abuser's need to exercise power and control, wanting to create a dependency or from a sense of entitlement to the assets of the older person.
Although older adults may be mistreated by strangers, neglect often occurs in the context of a relationship such as one with family members, friends, a spouse, volunteer caregivers, legal guardians, care-facility staff and professionals like physicians/health care providers or lawyers.
What is Physical Abuse of Older Adults?
Physical abuse is any act of violence or rough handling that may or may not result in physical injury but causes physical discomfort or pain and it might include:
- Physical assault - hitting, shoving, slapping, rough handling
- Pushing, pulling, kicking, beating, twisting, shaking
- Pulling hair, biting, pinching, spitting at someone
- Confinement, inappropriate restraint use
- Overmedicating, withholding necessary medications
 What is Financial Abuse of Older Adults?
Any improper conduct, done with or without the informed consent of the older adult, that results in monetary and/or personal gain to the abuser and/or monetary/personal loss to the older adult. It may include:
- Misuse of an older adult's property and/or funds
- Theft, forgery, fraud or scams
- Misuse of a Power of Attorney
- Sharing the older adult's home, without paying a fair share of the expenses
- Unexplained disappearances of personal belongings
- Undue pressure to:
- - Move from, sell, or relinquish his/her home or other personal property
- - Sign legal documents, that they do not fully understand
- - Give money to relatives or caregivers
What is Emotional Abuse of Older Adults?
Emotional Abuse is any action, verbal or non-verbal, that lessens a person's sense of identity, dignity and self-worth.
Emotional abuse includes any attempt to demoralize, dehumanize or intimidate older adults. Perpetrators of psychological abuse against older adults often take advantage of older adult's vulnerability in ways that control or humiliate them. Similar to other forms of abuse, the underlying motivation for emotional abuse is the desire of perpetrators to exert control over other individuals and destroy their sense of self-esteem.
What is Sexual Abuse of Older Adults
Sexual Abuse is "non-consensual sexual contact, of any kind, with an older adult. Sexual contact with any person incapable of giving consent is considered sexual abuse. It includes, but is not limited to, unwanted touching and all types of sexual assault or battery, such asrape, sodomy, coerced nudity, and sexually explicit photographing."
Sexual Harassment is "engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought to be known to be unwelcome." (Ontario Human Rights Code)