INITIATIVES TO HELP NEWCOMER WOMEN SUCCEED

Barriers to achieving their full potential can be particularly significant for racialized newcomer women, and have increased since the onset of the pandemic and its impact on women.

To help address these challenges and create more opportunities for racialized newcomer women, 11 innovative projects have received $2.1 million in federal funding through the Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot. This work began in 2018, when Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada initially supported 21 projects to help racialized newcomer women find work, develop their skills and more. Support has now been extended for 11 of those projects to continue helping newcomer women.

These projects will help racialized newcomer women by addressing the barriers they may face – gender- and race-based discrimination, precarious or low-income employment, lack of affordable childcare and weak social supports. Some projects will also address the significant issue of credential recognition, for example, helping those with international training in IT put their skills to good use in Canada. In addition, they will provide racialized newcomer women with work placements to develop their skills and abilities in a Canadian work context and further reduce barriers to integration and reintegration into the Canadian labour market.

Part of a larger investment of $15 million in the Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot initiative, the projects build on the progress already made and chart a course to help all racialized newcomer women thrive in this country.

The Pilot will continue to implement targeted programming based on promising practices to date, such as building career exploration opportunities into programming to help newcomer women with specific career and training goals, and developing action plans to help newcomer women build confidence, a unique barrier in navigating the Canadian labour market. Taken together, the activities and pilot will build evidence on what services and approaches are among the most effective in supporting racialized newcomer women to thrive in the Canadian labour market.

Of the projects that recently concluded through this pilot, many have resulted in newcomer women receiving valuable support in accessing employment. A few quick facts:

• The Racialized Newcomer Women Pilot, launched as the Visible Minority Newcomer Women Project in December 2018, committed $31.9 million over three years to support the employment and career advancement of racialized newcomer women.

• In total, 40 organizations have received funding under the pilot.

• Racialized newcomer women have the lowest median annual income of all newcomer groups at $26,624, compared to non-racialized newcomer women ($30,074), racialized newcomer men ($35,574), and non-racialized newcomer men ($42,591).

• The unemployment rate of racialized newcomer women (9.7%) is higher than that of racialized (8.5%) and non-racialized (6.4%) newcomer men, based on the 2016 Census.