Excerpt: "International Women鈥檚 Day gives us a moment of reflection on the status of women recognizing that achieving decent work conditions and gender equality in the workplace remain a challenge. The United Nations Day for Women鈥檚 Rights and International Peace declared on March 8th 鈥 this year鈥檚 theme is Invest in women: Accelerate progress. Early Learning and Child Care will see further progress if we invest more in the educators. On this International Women鈥檚 Day, we turn our lens to the working conditions of educators in early learning and child care recognizing that educators still earn less than the provincial average with extremely low rates of unionization. Progress is being made in the working conditions with the introduction of publicly funded pension plans in some early learning programs. The addition of over 80,000 new spaces under Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreements (CWELCC) has created $ 10.00 per day affordable spaces for families. With a central focus on affordability and expansion of access, CWELCC has largely ignored the growing workforce crisis. With cursory attention to the working conditions of educators in some jurisdictions, many increases in licensed spaces are not operational due staff shortages."
