High percentage of women from B.C. and Alberta choose not to work: Meanwhile, employers scramble to find enough people to fill jobs
Vancouver Sun
June 16, 2006
Businessbc - By: Gillian Shaw
EXCERPT

Alberta and British Columbia have among the highest percentage of women choosing to stay out of the workforce despite hot job markets in Western Canada that have employers scrambling to find enough people to fill positions.

Women are entering and exiting the job market for reasons that have little to do with financial need, but rather factors such as the availability of daycare, educational levels and the number of children they have, according to a study published Thursday by Statistics Canada.

For 2005, the period of the study, the most striking gap between the West and Eastern Canada was among women with children under the age of six. Alberta women had the lowest participation in the labour force at 64.9 percent, with B.C. at 69 per cent. Quebec women have the highest participation of mothers of young children at 76 per cent -- meaning they are either employed or looking for work.

For Bibiana Leikucs, a chartered financial analyst who left a job after six months because her boss failed to live up to promised flexible work arrangements, the statistics are no surprise.

The mother of four children aged eight to 13 is among a growing of number of women who are opting to leave the workforce if they can't find work that allows them to balance their life.

"There is a huge underdeveloped resource of talent available to people if they start thinking in a different model," said Leikucs. "I attempted to get back into the workforce. They said I could have flex time, I could work remotely when I wanted to. But the conditions changed.

"They thought when they got me in the door I would conform to the old model.. . ."I had to quit."

For Lorraine Baldwin, a mother of two daughters aged 15 months and three years, an understanding and progressive employer made the difference in her choice of whether to work.

"Work-life balance and being a flexible workplace is absolutely a factor for me," said Baldwin, public relations manager with IBM Canada. She lives in Langley, with her children in full-time daycare seven minutes from her home...

The study suggests higher education levels and low-cost daycare in Quebec have attributed to the increase in participation rates...

"If employers recognized changing needs, there would be more women in the workforce."

Laurie Geschke, national president of Real Women of Canada, attributes the lower participation of women in the labour force in the West to younger generations who are demanding more balance in their lives.

"Children who grew up with working mothers are now becoming mothers themselves, and they don't want their children to grow up the way they did," she said.

"I don't see this as an indication to call for universal child care at all. It is an indication women are saying, 'My family is more important than this, and I am going to act accordingly'. And more power to them."