Stats Canada and Women's Shelters....

Statistics Canada has published today its usual biased report on Women's Shelters.

Here are some of the details:

o 24% of women go to shelters for reasons other than to escape abuse. Two-thirds of these women sought shelter because they couldn't find (or didn't want to find) affordable housing. There is no such housing program for men.

o 46% of women going to shelters reported 'financial abuse'. Gee, what exaclty is financial abuse?

o 31% of women going to shelters reported 'harassment". Now, is harassment a real reason to go to a shelter???

o Women going to shelters is declining - 6% from 1997-1998.

o Of all the women who had stayed in shelters - 38% had been there 2-4 times, and one in ten had been there five times or more in the previous year. We should followup these people and find out why they have to go to shelter more than once - are they violent as well?

The biggest problem with the Statistics Canada study is that it only looks at abused women. Abused men are left out because there are NO shelters for them - even though men make up half of abused spouses.