Women Working With Immigrant Women (WWIW)

Women Working With Immigrant Women (WWIW) developed as an umbrella organization for agencies and women working with immigrant women in Metro Toronto in 1974. Its main goals included information sharing and referral, acting as a support group, and initiating programmes and services to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee women and women of colour. Many of these women were facing diminished employment prospects because of racial discrimination, as well as difficulty in accessing adequate housing and opportunities for schooling and training.

The organization also engaged in social and political action on issues affecting these communities, including building alliances among different women of colour and immigrant and refugee women’s communities. It also attempted to link these communities with mainstream organizations and movements.



Women Working With Immigrant Women were profiled twice in the print version of the Connexions Digest, first in 1981, and then again in 1983. Below are the two abstracts which appeared in those publications:

CX7436 (1981)
Women Working With Immigrant Women (WWIW) is an umbrella organization composed of 22 agencies that work specifically with immigrant women. The WWIW Labour Committee aims to raise the consciousness of immigrant women in unions and to provide immigrant women with information in order to allow them to make demands to their unions. WWIW also has a Liaison Committee which aims to develop an effective lobbying body for meeting the needs of immigrant women in Canada and to develop a support network to work in solidarity with the liberation movements in the immigrant women's countries.


CX7793 (1983)
Women Working With Immigrant Women is an umbrella organization for agencies and women working with immigrant women in Metro Toronto. Its main goals are to promote the self-determination of immigrant women, to provide a forum for information sharing and referral, and to engage in social action related to the needs of immigrant women.

The Health Committee of WWIW has produced an updated (1982) “Physicians Services Directory for Immigrant Women,” and has translated into Spanish and Italian and the Addiction Research Foundation slide tape “Women and the Use of Mood-Altering Drugs.”

The Labour Committee works with unions, community agencies, and with the community at large to discuss the reailty of immigrant women in the workplace and the response of the organized labour movement, and to look for solutions. The Education Committee addresses problems that immigrant women and their children face in relation tothe school system particularly language acquistion and streaming.

WWIW produces a quarterly newsletter, as well as slide-tape shows and videos on issues relevant to immigrant women.


Related Topics:
Immigrant Women – Immigrants to Canada – Women & Immigration – Women & the Labour Movement – Women & Work – Women’s Health – Women’s Services – Working Women