(多伦多21日加新社电)最近的一项研究发现，加拿大的就业保险制度对女性不公平，现行制度等于要求妇女补贴男人的失业金。3名妇女有2人不符合资格，没法申请失业金。她们供款给就业保险金，但一毛钱失业金也拿不到，就业保险金系统却有数百万元盈余。
调查报告建议政府更改申请资格，用更长的时间计算工时，惠及更多妇女。
加拿大另类政策中心(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives)将于周四发表报告，分析目前的就业保险(Employment Insurance)福利制度，指出女性的待遇不及男性。
报告说，政府在10年前为就业保险体系收紧申请资格，许多妇女失业后，未能达到要求标准，无法享受福利。在就职妇女中，每3人有2人虽已供款，在失业后却无法享受就业保险福利。
报告合撰人汤森(Monica Townson)说：“女性很少符合资格，等于将福利资助男性，这看上去不公平。”按统计局数字，40%的失业汉在2004年收到就业保险，而女性只有32%。
汤森说：“规则看来是以男性全年、全职标准工作为基础。大群妇女从事非标准工作，兼职、临时工、合约工等，她们很难积累足够工时。”
在旧体系下，民众工作20周，每周15小时，或总计300小时，就能享受失就业保险。但保险金制度因巨大赤字所迫，联邦政府在1996年提高标准，失业者工作20周，每周平均35小时，或总计700小时，才符合资格。
汤森说，联邦设定35小时的标准，其实比对两性的工时，在中间落墨，男性平均每周工作39小时，女性平均30小时。
不过，妇女要照顾孩子和家庭，通常需要休假一段长时间，男性一般不需要这样做。妇女几年后返回岗位，必须工作足够小时，再符合就业保险标准，即最近52周要工作至少910小时。
汤森说，即使妇女从事全职工作，她们工作小时数也通常少于男性。她们在超时工作时，不能得到加班费，收入就不会计入就业保险。
报告建议，应从长远角度确定就业保险资格，可以建立360小时的标准，或过去52周工作360小时，或过去5年中有3年，平均工作至少360小时。
EI short-changes women, study suggests
Nov 21, 2007 06:01 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Canadian women are being unfairly short-changed by the country’s Employment Insurance system, which was made more restrictive a decade ago and now boasts a multibillion-dollar surplus, a study concludes.
The study for the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, to be released today, finds the qualification requirements for EI have left many women who lose their jobs out of pocket despite having paid their fair share of premiums.
In fact, the study finds, as many as two in three working women who pay into EI don’t receive a penny in benefits if they lose their jobs.
“Because so few of them qualify, they’re subsidizing the benefits for men, who are more likely to qualify, and that doesn’t seem fair,” study co-author Monica Townson said in an interview.
Statistics Canada data show that 40 per cent of unemployed men received EI benefits in 2004. For women, the figure was only 32 per cent.
“The rules seem to be based on the standard male job of full time, full year,” Townson said.
“A lot of women are in non-standard jobs – part time, temporary work, contract work and that kind of thing – so it’s very difficult for them to get the hours in a lot of those cases.”
Under the old system, qualification for what was then Unemployment Insurance was based on 20 weeks of 15 hours a week or 300 hours. Battling a huge deficit, the federal government raised the qualification in 1996 to an average of 35 hours of work a week for 20 weeks or 700 hours.
Ottawa settled on the 35-hour qualification because it was somewhere between the 39 hours a week the average man worked and the 30 hours a week the average women worked, Townson said.
“In many cases, the hours required to qualify doubled, or, in some cases, tripled,” Townson said. “That’s where it all started.”
However, because of their child-rearing and family responsibility roles, women are required to take prolonged periods of time out of the work force, something men usually don’t have to do.
When a woman does return to work after a few years, she is required to re-qualify for EI from scratch by working at least 910 hours in the most recent 52-week period.
“It doesn’t take account of the fact that women have to be out of the workforce for periods to look after their children and that may make it harder for them to qualify for benefits,” Townson said.
“(Yet) many of those women coming back into the work force actually have a long-term attachment to paid employment.”
Even when women work full-time jobs, they tend to work fewer hours than men. And when they work overtime, they are less likely to be paid, and so the earnings don’t translate into enhanced EI benefits.
The report recommends taking a longer-term view to determine eligibility for EI benefits, say by setting a qualification threshold of 360 hours either within the last 52 weeks before unemployment, or an average of at least 360 work hours in three of the past five years.
“A longer-term perspective would help women in the patterns that (women) have of paid and unpaid work,” Townson said.
The report comes at a time when the EI program is running a surplus of about $2 billion a year, and is currently in the black by about $51 billion.
“They’ve made it so restrictive that people are still paying in but very few are getting benefits,” said Townson.
