Vital Signs 2022: the women and girls of Greater Montréal

With the Vital Signs of Greater Montreal series of reports, the Foundation of Greater Montreal (FGM) aims to inform, bring together and mobilize our community around the most important issues it faces. In gathering and disseminating contextualized and reliable data on the state of our community, our goal is to stimulate reflection, collaboration, and the implementation of solutions appropriate to these issues.

Since 2020, FGM has especially active in working to improve conditions for women and girls in our community. This is evidenced by the creation of the Women’s Impact Montreal (WIM) Collective Fund, a circle of women donors and volunteer members who have taken on a mission to support community organizations that specifically work to assist women and girls.

In moving to integrate an approach based on concepts of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI), which it placed at the heart of its 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, the FGM also reinforced its commitment to those who make up the most marginalized populations in our community. These orientations will underpin all of our activity as a community foundation.

This new 2022 edition of Vital Signs, is, in that spirit, intended as an overview of the situation of women and girls in Greater Montreal. It is split into three parts, focusing on three issues that warrant in-depth examination: violence against women, mental health, and work and employment. With a view to including the intersectional aspects of these issues, each part will also deal with the particular situations experienced by LGBTQ2S+, Indigenous, immigrant, racialized, young, adolescent, elderly, or single-parent women, and those living with a disability or experiencing homelessness.

We especially want to thank the Institut du Québec, which compiled the relevant data in a rigorous and inventive fashion. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the volunteer members of the Vital Signs working group. With generosity and openness, they shared with us their fine-grained knowledge of the trends and needs on the ground. They helped make this report more detailed, more human and more reflective of what women and girls in Greater Montreal are truly experiencing.

We want this Vital Signs 2022 report to be a lever and a motor for all actors in our community. Each of us has a role to play in strengthening gender equality and enabling all women and girls to flourish, and take their rightful place in society. Let’s commit to working towards this ambitious and vital goal.

Read on, and we hope you enjoy this report.

Karel Mayrand
President and CEO
Foundation of Greater Montreal