• Currently, 2.4 million women in Canada are living in poverty.  20.8 % or 1 in 5 Manitoba women are poor.
• The picture is much worse for single mothers. Single mothers continue to represent the poorest of all families in Canada. Half -  50.9% - of single-mother Manitoba families are living in poverty.
• 70% of Manitoba children living in poverty are living in a single female household.
• More than half of senior women living alone in Manitoba are poor.
• Poor children live in poor families. On average, the Manitoba child poverty rate has steadily remained above the national rate from 1989 to 2002.  One in five Manitoba children live in poverty.  Nationally, one in six children are in poor families.
• The burden of poverty falls heavily on single women, even though many are working hard.
• The income of a lone mother with 2 children working 40 hrs a week at minimum wage is less than 50% of Statistics Canada Low Income Cut-Off (LICO).  In real dollars, she earns just $15,000 a year but requires $31,000 to meet basic family needs and remain above the poverty line.
• Put another way, a single mother with two children would need to work 80 hours a week at minimum wage to climb out of poverty.
• Women account for two thirds of Canadian minimum wage workers.
• Mothers struggling with poverty report routinely missing meals themselves in order to provide food for their children.
• Some women are especially vulnerable to poverty.  The poverty rate for immigrant women is five percentage points higher, visible minority women’s rates are roughly two times and the rate for Aboriginal women are more than double relative to Canadian women overall.
  

Sources:
Status of Women in Canada, Beijing + 10: Fact Sheet, Women and Poverty, 2005; Women’s Coalition for Equality, Budget lets Women Down, 2005; Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Keeping them poor: women and minimum wage, 2005; UN Platform for Action Committee, Women and the Economy, 2003;
Message from the Steelworker Canadian Directors, 2005; Manitoba Child Poverty Report Card 2004;
Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence, Women Need Safe, Stable, Affordable Housing: A study of Social Housing, Private Rental Housing, and Coop Housing in Winnipeg, 2004

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2006