Minimum wage work is women’s work: that’s what West Coast LEAF and the Single Mothers’ Alliance BC said in an informative opinion piece published last month in the Vancouver Province newspaper. Here’s a snippet from the article:
Women make up the majority of minimum-wage workers. Among minimum-wage workers aged 25 to 54, 70 per cent are women. Raising B.C.’s minimum wage to $15 an hour from $10.25 would help lift thousands of women and their children out of poverty.
Women are also the vast majority of single parents, almost half of whom live below the poverty line. As a result, low-wage poverty greatly impacts B.C.’s child-poverty rate.
In 2011, 44,500 poor children lived in families with one adult working full time year-round. In one of the richest provinces, in one of the richest countries in the world, working families — especially those headed by women — are still unable to afford the necessities of life.
Read the whole story here.