Women Plan Toronto (1985 - 2000) and Toronto Women’s City Alliance (2004 - and struggling on): Experiences and Lessons

Abstract

This article presents the history, analysis and prospects for women’s capacity to engender the planning process in Toronto. It recounts the  origins and actions of Women Plan Toronto in the early 1980s to the Toronto Women’s City Alliance campaigns, setting this pioneering work  against today’s cut-backs of transit, child care, and social housing and efforts to establish  a Women’s Equalities Office. The two 
women's groups have been struggling to eliminate ongoing silencing, discrimination, inadequate safety for women and girls and violence against them. They continue to strive for recognition of the importance and implications of care giving and domestic responsibilities which still burden women 
far more than men. This inequality renders women in general but particularly single parent and minority women poorer, more vulnerable, disempowered and voiceless. To address these issues gender implications need to be systematically taken into account in budgeting, planning, designing, servicing and administering a City. The article tells of the strategies, obstacles, successes and failures of women's ongoing efforts in Toronto.