1 in 7 women in Canada live in poverty. Women earn just 76% of a man’s wage. More often than not women who are poor are faced with choosing between paying their rent or feeding their children.

Nowhere else is this more evident than at Nellie’s. In 2008, Nellie’s delivered 1,331 meals through our weekly food program –“Supper Surprise”. Last year, that number hit 1,810 – a 26 per cent increase, with an average of 71 families relying on this program for weekly food supplements.

What does Poverty look like for the clients at Nellies? This is what women had to say at W.E.A.V our Women Ending Violence Support Group

• “Working everyday 2 or even 3 jobs and we don’t make enough to put food on our table every day.”
• “Sometimes I don’t eat dinner—that way my kids have enough.”
• “Poverty, struggling to survive, trying to stay alive.”
• “Homeless, living on the street, trying to find something to eat.”
• “Depressed, angry, hungry, frustrated, lonely and isolated.”
• “You can’t get money and you can’t find a job and that’s sad.”

Many factors cause women’s poverty including: lack of access to education, opportunities, childcare and fair income, sex-role stereotypes in paid work, changes in family composition such as divorce, health, violence and abuse, leaving gainful employment to caregive, and greater risk and increased poverty for women who are Aboriginal, non-white, disAbled or queer.

Women as the face of poverty results in children who are poor. Poverty among children is strongly linked to ill-health and poor academic achievement. By keeping women poor, we are also keeping children poor, making them sick, sabotaging their futures, contributing to crime, and perpetuating the cycle of poverty and violence. We need to work together to effect change social changes that will help not just some, but all women and children to succeed.