How good is Kelowna to women?
Trevor Nichols - Oct 18, 2017 - Biz Releases

Image: The Canadian Press

If you’re a women in Kelowna there’s a good chance you have a better education than most  women in the rest of the country; you’re also more likely to have shakier finances, and about average health.

A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says Kelowna is the 13th best place to be a women in Canada.

The report looks at the gender gap in the 25 biggest metropolitan areas in the country, ranking them based on five different criteria: economic security, education, health, leadership, and security.

According to those criteria, Victoria, B.C. is the best Canadian city to live in if you’re a woman; Windsor, ON is the worst.

Kelowna, meanwhile, sits smack dab in the middle of the pack, buoyed by a high education score, but pulled down by a sub-par economic security raking.

Overall, the city came in at 18th on the economic security list. Report author Kate McInturuff said employment levels in Kelowna are “typical of the national average,” with average employment rates for women falling five points behind those of men.

The wage gap, on the other hand, is more severe in Kelowna than the rest of the country, with women earning about 66 per cent of what men earn. McInturuff says those numbers have actually worsened in the past five years.

On the education side of the equation, Kelowna ranked fourth, thanks in part to the fact that women are more likely to have completed high school, university or college than men.

Women in Kelowna are “considerably more likely” to finish a college degree (24 per cent) than men (17 per cent), while men are twice as likely to have completed trades training and apprenticeships than women.

In the remaining three categories Kelowna ranks essentially in the middle of the pack, coming in at 12th for Health, 11th for Leadership and 13th for Security.

McInturuff points out that 32 per cent of elected officials in the area are women, and that there are female mayors elected in regional municipalities. Women also hold 34 per cent of the management jobs in the region.

Just as in most of the rest of the country, women in Kelowna live slightly longer than men (84 years on average, compared to 79 for men). Men are more likely than women to rate their health as very good or excellent (60 per cent versus 53 per cent, respectively), and women are slightly more likely than men to report high levels of stress in their lives (25 per cent against and 22 per cent).

More details on the rankings are available in the full report, which can be found online.


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