These notes summarize comments made by Jane Ledwell on behalf of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women as part of a panel presentation at the PEI Public Transit Coalition Symposium in Summerside, PEI, on October 26, 2007:
I represent the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women on the Public Transit Coalition, and I’m going to comment today on why public transit is an issue important to women and why Island-wide public transit is a matter of social equity and would represent a public good and a social good.
My own awareness of the importance of public transit came as a child growing up in rural Prince Edward Island. In fact, public transit was one of the first public services I was conscious of lacking. Our household had only one car when I was very small, and my mother was a full-time unpaid caregiver at home with me and my younger siblings. Any time we wanted to get out of the house to go to town, whether for an emergency, a necessity, or some fun, my mother had to make special and sometimes complicated arrangements. She spent some long, long days in the country with a brood of small children and nowhere to go. My father’s stories of taking the train from an Eastern PEI village to Charlottetown in his childhood sounded pretty appealing on winter days when we had no access to a car.
Issues of isolation persist for caregivers of children and seniors today, and we know that it is mostly women who are primary caregivers in Island families.
Isolation is a more significant and dangerous factor in families where there is abuse or violence. In these families, isolation plays in multiple ways. An abusive partner may control transportation as a way of controlling and isolating as part of a pattern of abuse; we can imagine that access to public transit could reduce one element of control in an abusive relationship.
Additionally, the isolation that comes from lack of access to public transit or other transportation options plays into difficulties women may have accessing support services to get themselves and their families safe. Women, especially with young families, don’t want to move to a shelter if they won’t be able to get back and forth to work and family commitments.
Many women leaving abusive relationships face poverty. Financial factors are often a real and major factor keeping women and their families in unsafe situations in their homes. Some women might feel more supported to leave if they knew they could rely on public transit to get themselves and families around and might not have to invest in an expensive private vehicle as they start their independent lives.
The economic need for public transit is clear in many Island families, not just families in crisis. Most communities and many jobs in PEI require a worker to have a private car to be connected to the labourforce. Women have high labourforce participation on PEI, but women still receive lower wages than men, so they feel the effects of high individual transportation costs disproportionately. If they transport their children to childcare, they shoulder an even greater private transportation cost just to be able to work.
There’s a growing population of senior women on PEI, and they are acutely affected by lack of public transit. They experience isolation and stress on fixed incomes, and often these stresses extend to their caregivers, as well.
In study after study of women’s needs – whether the study looks at senior women or new moms or or women with low income or women with mobility challenges or women offenders reintegrating into society – one of the needs that comes up again and again is the need for access to affordable transportation. The best way to provide affordable transportation is through a well-run, responsive Island-wide system of public transit.
In PEI, we aren’t alone in facing this need. The Advisory Council attended meetings in Ottawa recently to compare notes with other Advisory Councils from across Canada. In the Northwest Territories, we heard, the Advisory Council on the Status of Women there is doing ground-breaking work, training women in trades so women there can reap equal benefits from mining, oil, and gas industries there. Women are saying the training is great, but in order to participate in the trades, they say, training is not enough. They need wraparound support services that make it possible for them to work and participate. What do they say they need? Not surprisingly, they say they need childcare and access to transportation.
Where public transit is lacking, women’s ability to participate fully in the life and richness of society is also lacking. If PEI implements Island-wide public transit, it will be a significant step towards greater equality for Island women.
