Finance and Investment

Involve women in decision-making, implementation and evaluation of all changes to the regulatory and tax environment.

use broad-based consultation with women and women’s organizations.

integrate Gender-based analysis (GBA) and include GBA education of regulators and policy makers.

Fund research, training and access to information on the social economy (SE) sector and the realities of gender inequality for social economy actors and policy makers.

Implement national child care program and pay equity to support women’s equal participation and gender equality.

Enterprise Development

Women must be included in defining social enterprise as part of the Canadian Revenue Agency’s reclassification, including GBA (pay equity, child and elder care, increased maternity leave, etc.).

Broaden the social enterprise definition.

Tax incentives must be based on specific eligibility criteria (ie. procurement from social enterprise) that are co-constructed with women at the table.

Social return on investment (SROI) research, analysis and education as well as research to establish a baseline for sector impacts.

Support capacity-building within the SE sector.

Communication: engage the media and social media to promote and showcase the sector and build public awareness - have an awareness strategy to build and enhance public awareness – led by the sector.

To be at the table to co-construct policies and programs with all government levels: municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal.

Ask the government to modify the data collection of Statistics Canada to document and quantify the social economy (number of jobs, $, research, etc.).

Develop tools to collect data – set benchmarks, show the impact for the sector, the society and for government.

Having an horizontal collaboration approach amongst social enterprise across the sector.

Create the space for women’s involvement in mentorship and leadership.

Local Revitalization

Ensure that the community-level data collected is age and sex disaggregated and is analyzed with a gender and diversity lens.

Local government must be trained to work with the data collected.

GBA throughout all recommendations.

Ensure that GBA for funding results in solutions that work for women and their communities.

Women’s leadership at all levels of decision-making.

Organizing the Social Economy Marketplace

Ensure gender equality in SE leadership

Reinforce entrepreneurial asset building component.

Enhance business skills of SE actors while simultaneously strengthening partnerships with family resource centres to better support women’s participation and support GBA.

Communications plan (brand) for the SE sector with communications champions.

Include children in gender lens analysis (not to be exclusion of women without children) but as an entry point into working more with women and other vulnerable groups.

Addressing the issue of including more women in the governance structure of the market place (SE) particularly in the private + co-op business.

Creating a recognizable brand and brand spokespeople.

Strengthening the Movement

Create a national roundtable on building a people-centred economy, ensuring diversity including representation of major women’s organizations and conducting GBA of the roundtable’s work.

Plan and implement a national communication plan to promote citizen support for social economy organizations and their products and services, ensuring that diverse voices are part of all communications.

Create space for the grassroots participants i.e. students, service providers to discuss how they see the future for themselves and what they want to organize.

Ensure that l’Union culturelle des Franco-Ontariennes (l’UCF♀) and the Women’s Economic Council (WEC) are represented at the national roundtable.

Ensure diversity at the roundtable.

Ensure that GBA is done on work that results.

Toward a Global People-Centred Economy

Ensure that gender equality is specifically addressed in the recommendations (ie. in the Millenium Development Goals, the goal of reducing poverty of women is clearly stated.).

Recognize the importance of unpaid care work and make it visible.

For all recommendations, conduct gender based analysis and make changes as appropriate.

Include the gendered impacts of environment and climate change.

Support the promotion of a people-centred economy, including a social solidarity economy, everywhere on the planet at all levels of government and international institutions with funding, taking into account women & men as actors of change.

Seek recognition within society of the crucial importance of having people take charge of their own development, taking into account the specific issues of women relating to equity + equality and of the essential role that civil society plays in supporting this approach.