Impacting Women: Provincial Government Cuts to Health Care

This speech, by Caryn Duncan, Executive Director of the Vancouver Women's Health Collective (VWHC), was presented at the UBC Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at their International Women's Day event in March, 2005. The speech addresses the cuts to health care and women's centres that work to negatively impact women's lives, from women who use the services provided by women's centres, to women who both access and make up the majority of health care workers. It examines social determinants of health through a gender-based analysis, and provides statistics to show the ways that increases in Medical Services Plan (MSP) user fees, cuts to welfare, closures of residential care facilities, reduced home support services, privatization of the health care industry and loss of unionized jobs, all impact women at a disproportionate level than men.