Black Women in Canada

Education is a foundational pillar within Canadian society and is publicly recognized as a “fundamental social good.” For countless Black students, however, educational institutions are places where they encounter “degradation, harm, and psychological violence.”³  The discourse of race neutrality⁴ or colour blindness prevalent in Canada’s education system renders the experiences of Black students invisible, while the research on Black children that does exist typically overlooks the perspectives of Black girls, compounding the significant barriers they face.⁵ 

Statistics from the Toronto Board of Education show that 20% of black students drop out of high school, double the rate for white (11%) and other racialized students (9%).

“Black students are also more than twice as likely to take applied courses in high school, making advancing to university difficult—nearly half of them won’t even apply to post-secondary.”⁶ These statistics highlight the failings of Canada’s public education system.   

There exists a paucity of research and data on the experiences of Black girls (children and youth under the age of 18) in public education in Canada. We know that girls generally tend to outperform boys in elementary and secondary school, and that girls are more likely to graduate from high school.⁷ But we have few sources of information that track the experiences or educational outcomes of Black girls. We effectively have no information about the intersection of identities, such as LGBTQIA+, immigrant status, Afro-Indigenous, language group or presence of a disability. 

Black scholars posit that overall, Black students experience schools as “carceral places characterized by neglect, heightened surveillance, and arbitrary and often extreme punishment for any perceived disobedience.”⁸

In particular, Black girls experience, and must contend with the “sexual stereotypes and perceptions of low educational aspirations and achievements”⁹ forced onto them. As Robyn Maynard argues, the purpose of schooling is to encourage the learning and practice of socio-cultural behaviours, to provide opportunities to cultivate the relations and minds of children and youth and to assist in building their futures;¹⁰ however, this is not the reality for Black students. 

Many of the resources available discuss the mistreatment of Black children and youth within Canadian educational systems through their own words and understandings. This information details the violent experiences of many Black students in their interactions with teachers and peers, including verbal abuse such as “the regular use of the n-word”¹¹ and being placed within lower-achieving academic streams based on racist justifications and not actual abilities.¹² Black students also speak about the lack of attention towards their worries, interests and requests, and an unwillingness on the part of teachers and administrators to act on complaints of racism.¹³ 

The barriers that Black girls face in the public education system is one of the key reasons behind lower levels of educational attainment at college and university—although this gap has been closing. In 2016, 32.5% of Black women aged 25 to 34 years held a university degree compared to 36.5% of women who did not report being part of a visible minority.¹⁴

Education reform—based on research and evidence that centers and amplifies the experiences, voices and perspectives of Black girl-children and youth and employs an intersecting, anti-racist, anti-oppressive lens—is critical. “Educators need to be aware of how structures of inequities like racism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia operate in educational institutions.”¹⁵ When educational systems are structured equally and equitably, when programming adopts a holistic approach and is guided by the Black community, the experiences of Black girls within public education can and will improve.  

Black women living in Canada face unquestionable health disparities and unnecessary poor health outcomes due to marginalization and social exclusion. Research shows that the cumulative impact of racism, discrimination, poverty and other structural and systemic inequalities profoundly impact the physical, emotional and mental health of all Black women in Canada.¹⁶ 

Black women are overrepresented in the national rates for most significant chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, lupus and hypertension.¹⁷ Diabetes rates, for example, doubled among Black women from 6% to 12% between 2001 and 2012. Black women also experienced the most drastic increase in rates of high blood pressure across any ethnic group in Canada, increasing from 20% to 27% over this time period.¹⁸ 

At the same time, there is little research on the health of Black women. In a recent scoping review, researchers surveyed over 2,000 studies for information on cervical and breast cancer in Black Canadians. Only 23 studies focused on these cancers in Black Canadian women and none of the studies reported the incidence, prevalence or mortality rates of cervical cancer or breast cancer for this population.¹⁹

This lack of health data continues to place Black Canadian women at risk.

Anti-Black racism has been identified as a key factor in the disproportionate experience of chronic illness such as depression which further undermines Black women’s ability to thrive.²⁰ It is also a significant barrier to Black women and girls accessing needed service and supports.²¹ Despite Canada’s universal healthcare system being touted as one of the best in the world, the bodies and wellbeing of Black women reveal the gaping cracks in our system. 

Yet, in the face of this urgent crisis, Canada does not have a national Black health strategy and the province of Ontario, home to over half of the country’s Black population, has assigned limited healthcare resources to address the pressing needs of Black women. 

Black women are consistently and disproportionately vulnerable to incarceration—the result of “racial bias at all levels of the [criminal justice] system, from racial profiling to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the imposition of pretrial incarceration and disparities in sentencing.”²² Black women represent roughly 6% of all federally incarcerated female prisoners, but only 3.1% of Canada’s overall female population (aged 15 and older) according to the Office of the Correctional Investigator.²³

The criminalization of Black women in Canada extends beyond formal incarceration.

Racial profiling of Black women continues to be a practiced at every stage of the criminal justice system. In a 2017 report on racial profiling by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Black women shared their experiences attesting to this.²⁴ Examples included: Black women being stereotyped as sex workers when stopped by a police officer while driving with their white boyfriend; being characterized as an “angry Black woman” when speaking up for themselves in family court; or being followed and subjected to hyper scrutiny in retail stores because of suspicion that they were shoplifters. 

Once incarcerated, Black women experience elevated rates of isolation due to separation from their families and lack of access to culturally appropriate services and supports (e.g., medicated creams and ointments for Black skin and hair care and other hygiene products; inadequate access to religious and spiritual support; lack of access to diverse educational and training opportunities). Black women also report being stereotyped as drug traffickers and addicts, as reflected in their compulsory enrollment in prison programming designed to address these challenges. They are often unfairly labeled as ‘trouble makers’ for simply congregating together to socialize within the institution.

This pervasive mistreatment of Black women heightens the likelihood and vulnerability of Black women to being targeted and ensnared by Canada’s criminal justice system. To respond to this and other systemic injustices faced by Black women in Canada, the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent recommended that Canada “[d]evelop a comprehensive national gender equality policy to address structural factors such as anti-Black racism that lead to Black-gendered inequality faced by women of African descent.” Canada has yet to do this while Black women continue to experience elevated rates of disadvantage at all levels of the criminal justice system.

One of the biggest paradoxes of the Canadian labour market is that both men and women who identify as Black have higher labour force participation rates than their non-racialized counterparts.

In 2016, the labour force participation rate was 66.1% among Black women, over five percentage points higher than that of non-racialized women.²⁵ Yet, unemployment among Black women was roughly twice the rate of non-racialized women (12.2% vs 6.4%),²⁶ and their earnings gap was significantly larger (Black women earn 59 cents on average for every dollar that non-racialized men earn).²⁷ 

These data highlight the systemic challenges Black women experience, including discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, in attempting to achieve economic security. In general, Black women face greater barriers to getting jobs, well-paid jobs in particular, compared to other racialized and white women. They are over-represented in precarious and part-time employment which typically pays less and provides fewer hours of work overall. They experience long and frequent periods of unemployment, slower career advancement, and more “long term” entry-level jobs.²⁸

Studies also show that Black women are subject to discrimination on the part of employers who screen out job applicants with African, Asian or Muslim “sounding” names, or those who live in certain neighbourhoods, even when applicants have equivalent education and experience.²⁹ On their mission to Canada, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent expressed concern about the targeting of Black women and girls by police and the increase in their contact with the criminal justice system. This represents an additional barrier to employment because employers’ use of police record checks in the hiring process entrenches the exclusion of over-policed communities of colour from the labour market.

Taken together, discrimination in the labour force and growth in precarious employment have contributed significantly to high levels of poverty among racialized families.

Black women in particular are disproportionately entrenched in a cycle of poverty and marginalization that deprives them and their families of the resources necessary to fully participate in Canadian life. 

According to the 2016 Census, one-quarter of Black women live below the poverty line in Canada, approximately twice the proportion of non-racialized women.³⁰ For Black women who are single parents family poverty is 65% compared to 26% for families led by white single mothers. Employment offers little protection from poverty. In the greater Toronto area, one of the highest rates of working poverty was among Black women at 10.5%, more than twice the rates for white male workers and white female workers (at 4.8% and 4.7%, respectively).³¹ 

Canada has instituted several programs to promote labour market equity, and inclusion and diversity in employment. However, the lack of intentional measures to recognize and combat anti-Black racism undermine their effectiveness in tackling the profound and persistent labour market inequalities experienced by Black women.

The shortcomings of current employment equity programs are evident in the experiences of Black women in the academic workforce. The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) reports that Black academics make up only 2.0% of all university professors, experience the highest rates of unemployment at 10.7%, and make 11.7% less than the average earnings of all university teachers.³²

Racialized women (including Black women) are the most under-represented among full-time, full-year (FTFY) professors and instructors, with 44.9% working on an FTFY basis in universities and only 31.5% in colleges. The comparative figures for non-racialized men were 61.8% and 51.5%, respectively. The size of the employment gap, in turn, is reflected in the size of the earnings gap. In 2016, racialized women professors earned 68 cents for every dollar earned by non-racialized men; college instructors earned even less at 63 cents on that dollar.³³

While there are significant gaps in available “equity and diversity” data, what does exist is enough to conclude that the academic workforce is neither representative of the diversity of the student body nor the labour force, a reality well-known by Black women navigating academia as students. 

In addition to systemic discrimination, incidences of interpersonal discrimination on university and college campuses are common. Recent examples include incidences of racial slurs being used by professors in lectures,³⁴ professors telling Black female students that they are, both individually and as a community, unsuccessful in comparison to other racialized groups,³⁵ and Black female students being told they are “too dark” to sit at the back of the lecture hall.³⁶ Many incidents go unreported because of fears of backlash.³⁷ 

Working and studying in these environments have multiple, multifaceted effects on the research, careers, and quality of life of Black academics that do not end at graduation, or upon exiting the academic workforce.³⁸ While there has been little political intervention,³⁹ groups and individuals have taken up the mandate of supporting and celebrating Black and other racialized academics. One recent example is Canada’s first (now annual) Black Graduation celebration;⁴⁰ an event organized by Black female academics with the purpose of validating the experiences of Black academics, celebrating accomplishments, and increasing representation of Black academics for future generations.⁴¹ 

To date, attempts at equity and diversity policy in Canada have failed to address the systemic and interpersonal discrimination against and oppression of Black female academics, both students and those who are part of the academic workforce. In the absence of action and an intersectional lens being applied to policy reform, the Canadian government remains complicit in the oppression of Black female academics on and off campus.