By Shauna Rempel
Nubia Cermeno moved to Canada in 1975 to get an education in a country with more opportunities for women than in her native Venezuela. Just a few years after arriving, however, she found herself divorced and on her own with a young son to support.
“I found that it was very difficult in the beginning to get any help,” Cermeno says. Every time she tried to get help from the government, Cermeno says she was considered too young, too old or somehow ineligible for education and employment programs.
“It’s a vicious circle, everywhere you try,” says Cermeno, an Ottawa activist. “You have to learn here to jump all obstacles that you find in your way.”
Immigrant women face unique obstacles that make it difficult to get services like language instruction, employment advice and childcare, according to research done for the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.
Over 114,000 women became permanent Canadian residents in 2003. Many of those women arrived as refugees or under the family class, an immigration program in which a landed immigrant sponsors a family member from their home country. This can force sponsored women to rely on men. In cases of domestic abuse, a sponsored woman may be unwilling to report her husband for fear of being deported.
Family class can carry regulations that make it difficult for women to receive social assistance and old age security, and limit their access to social housing and job-training programs. Nearly one-third of all immigrant women live in low-income situations, according to the federal government
This means immigrant women are more likely to suffer in silence than their male counterparts, according to CRIAW.
Compounding the problem is the narrow view many Canadians have about immigrant women, such as the perception that immigrant women are less educated or skilled than Canadian women, says Tahira Gonsalves, a CRIAW researcher originally from India.
To counteract this, organizations must make special efforts to reach out to immigrant women, says Roya Ghafari, who works with immigrant women at Ottawa’s Sexual Assault Support Centre.
Despite two diplomas from Algonquin College, Cermeno ended up working as a cook and housekeeper to support herself and her son.
“Discrimination is a touchy subject. Many times when I applied for a job I felt it, and it hurts,” says Cermeno, who now teaches part-time at an English as a second language school. She says women arriving in Canada still face the same problems she did 30 years ago.
But Canada is making an effort. The federal government reported to the United Nations on the tenth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, an international commitment to women’s equality. The 2005 federal budget included a promise to recognize the qualifications of foreign-trained health-care workers and pledged $400 million to improve immigrants’ job prospects.
Janet Dench of the Canadian Council for Refugees says Canada has adapted to the special needs of recently arrived women such as making English and French language programs more readily available.
Dench cites shelters aimed specifically at immigrant women as another way Canada is adapting. “We take shelters for granted, but many women come from countries where there is no place to go,” she says.
Dench says many women coming to Canada find new freedoms. “There are good things to be said about the space that Canada gives to immigrant women,” she says. Some women enjoy new opportunities and become leaders in their community.
Cermeno says while her experience in Canada has been a difficult one, it has helped her advise other women struggling to make a better life in Canada.
“I’m a survivor,” she says. “First I was a tax deduction but now I am a survivor.”
But Cermeno says she’s tired of being underemployed and plans to move back to Venezuela after she completes a social work program at Algonquin College.
“Enough is enough. I’m not going to be able to make it here,” she says.