December 16, 2023 – A recently released study by Statistics Canada reveals that Canadian Filipino women had the lowest rate of self-employment at only five percent. Black Canadian women are slightly higher than Canadian Filipino women at six percent compared to their Korean counterparts who had the highest self-employment rate at 25 percent.
The study by Statistics Canada senior researcher Sharanjit Uppal provides a profile of self-employment among women between racialized and non-racialized women as well as within the context of self-employment among Canadian men.
Based on data from the 2021 Census of Population, the study also finds that the self-employed were “more likely to be operating without employees.” In 2022, 80 percent of self-employed women operated without employees compared to 68 percent of the men.
One in five self-employed women worked in the health care and social assistance industry.
The study funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada notes that of the top five occupations among racialized groups, a significant number of Canadian Filipino women were light duty cleaners at almost 14 percent against an overall 4.5 percent among all respondents.
The other top four occupations were managers in agriculture (4.6 percent), accounting technicians and bookkeepers (4.2 percent), hairstylists and barbers (four percent) and real estate agents and salespersons (3.9 percent).
Following light duty cleaners, seven percent of Filipino women respondents are home childcare providers and insurance agents or brokers both at four percent.
Also among Canadian Filipino self-employed women are nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates as well as home childcare providers with both categories at over seven percent. With provincial governments’ initiatives to recruit nurses and health care workers from the Philippines, this number may go up by the next national census.
Almost five percent of Canadian Filipino men are delivery service drivers and distributors, 4.2 percent are transport truck drivers and almost four percent, like their female counterparts, are light duty cleaners.
Details of the study can be found here: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00014-eng.htm
About the Author
Rachel Ramos-Reid started writing for magazines and newspapers when she was still a junior at the University of the Philippines’ Communication degree program majoring in Journalism. She continued to write in a public relations/corporate communications capacity in various private and government offices until moving out of the country in 1997 to work as Programme Officer for the arts and culture branch of the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO-SPAFA) in Bangkok, Thailand. At the end of her term, Rachel found herself immigrating to Canada in the year 2000 and again searching for new beginnings. Currently she is the Executive Assistant to a small rural college on Vancouver Island.
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