^1
WOMEN WORK
WOMEN WORK
INEQUALITY IN THE CANADIAN LABOl'R MARKET
This completely revised edition of Women and Work analyses women's
position in the Canadian labour market with the aid of the blest
siatistics and employment trends. The authors show how the
restructuring of the Canadia n economy towards a global, corporatist,
information-driven system continues to short-change women. They
remain, despite impressive advances, largely behind the ghetto walls
of "women's work."
A new chapter on unemployment insurance describes how its
support has been successively cut back, especially in ihe 1990s, when
the federal government used its accumulated surplus of $19 billion to
eliminate the deficit
As well as documenting women's position in the working world,
the authors also seek the reasons for disparities and look at ways they
might be changed. both women and men will find this book cogent
and clear in explaining their relative positions, as Canada continues to
shift from a goods- to a service-producing economy.
si recent ii\i f(n
" — Resources f<" Feminist ftesearc*
muk in
"A thought-provoking study of problems fat ed by women in the
pas!, present unit future," — Ctinuthuri Material
PAUL PHTLLIPiS is Professor of Economies at the University of
Manitoba, Professor of American Studies, University of Ljubljana,
Slovenia, and the author of Regional Disparities.
ERIN PHILLIPS is a chaplain at the University of Lethbndge and
Lethbridge Community College, and lectures at the University of
Lethbridge in Religious Studies.
James Lorimer & Company Ltd..
Publishers
U55O28-7O6-O
$19.95
Women and Work
Inequality in the Canadian
Labour Market
Third Edition
Paul Phillips and Erin Phillips
James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
Toronto, 2000
Copyright © 1983, 1993, 2000 by Paul Phillips and Erin Phillips
1983,1993 Revised edition, 2000 Third edition.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
James Lorimer & Company Ltd. acknowledges the support of the
Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Devel-
opment Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. We acknow-
ledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our
publishing program.
Cover:
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Phillips, Paul, 1938-
Women and work: inequality in the Canadian labour market
3rd ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ISBN 1-55028-706-0
I. Women - Employment - Canada. I. Phillips, Erin, 1961 - .
II. Title.
HD6099.P61 2000 331.4'0971 C00-930833-4
James Lorimer & Company Ltd.,
35 Britain Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 1R7
Printed in Canada
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Women's Work in Canada: The Historical Perspective 9
2 Participation in the Workplace 37
3 Wages and Inequality 56
4 The Economics of Market Dualism 84
5 Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring:
Women and the New Economic Order 107
6 Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market
Evolution: A Woman's Issue 130
7 Women and the Labour Movement 148
8 The Future: Proposals and Prospects for Change 182
Notes on Sources and Further Reading 208
Index 232
We would like to dedicate this book
to the memory of a sister,
aunt and feminist:
To Ruth
Introduction
We are on the edge of a new century — perhaps even a new millen-
nium though that seems to be disputed by some. It is time for a new
look at the real world that surrounds us and how women have coped
with the economic upheavals of the nineties. The last edition of
Women and Work was published in 1993 and reflected changes that
had taken place over the eighties, a period when the effects of the
neo-liberal revolution in economic and social policy and its techno-
logical and international manifestations were just beginning to be felt
and recognized by economic and social analysts. Since then we have
seen a technological revolution, which we now call the information
economy. We have seen the globalization of corporate capitalist
hegemony, through the agency of "free trade" and dominated by
American capital; and we have witnessed the virtual demise of any
alternative to American-led, capitalist hegemony with the collapse
of the Soviet Union and disintegration of Communism in Eastern
Europe.
Only some of the potential implications for women's work due to
these profound changes were evident in time for the last edition. We
did suggest some ominous implications that ought to be looked for
— such as the decline in clerical jobs and light manufacturing work,
and in traditional women's jobs in the social program sector beset
by government cutbacks. Indeed we wrote:
The second negative portent for female equality was the emer-
gence of the neo-conservative economic agenda in the 1980s
— free trade, restructuring, deregulation, privatization, re-
trenchment in the public sector and in social programs, and the
assault on unionism. We will document the negative impact of
these developments on the economic prospects for women in
later chapters. It is clear that the unregulated labour market does
a very poor job in ensuring equality of either economic oppor-
tunities or income results. Therefore, the movement to more
and more unrestricted labour markets is a recipe for increased
inequality, with obvious negative prospects for women and
other disadvantaged groups in the labour market.
2 Women and Work
There is nothing we have seen since the early years of this decade
to suggest we ought to change our opinion.
Initially, we viewed these processes as autonomous, marching not
to the beat of a single drummer, but to a series of unrelated pressures,
political, economic, corporate and technological. Now, we cannot be
so sure. One analyst for whom me have much respect, Heather
Menzies, has written in her book Whose Brave New World?:
... social-spending cuts and deficit reduction are not the key
issues of the day; they are only part of the larger agenda asso-
ciated with technological restructuring. Those issues, plus the
late 1980s debates about free trade and deregulation, represent
the administrative and social-policy follow-up to the techno-
logical restructuring going on in local workplaces and through-
out the economy. That restructuring, I believe, is geared to the
interests and needs not of people, but of corporate economic
renewal and global expansion ...
[T]he main themes ... [are] the disintegration of society
being caused by technological restructuring. The shift to the
information highway is the final phase of a twenty-year-long
restructuring of the corporate economy to create a global sys-
tems economy. The stages in this massive restructuring run
from the automation and integration phases of the 1980s to the
networking and information highway phases of the 1990s. This
restructuring has involved a massive erosion, deskilling, and
demeaning of work and set the stage for a centralization of
control through computers and a new regime of computerized
control in work and society at large, (xv-xvi)
I think it is now easier to see how all these forces — technological
change, neo-liberal policy, "globalization," deskilling, downsizing
the public sector, rising corporate power — are acting together to
restructure the Canadian labour market in a very fundamental way.
This restructuring does not bode well for the welfare of workers
though it is at least arguable that in some respects men have been
more negatively affected than have women during the nineties. This
is reflected in the claim by some analysts that the nineties has seen
the "feminization" of the Canadian labour market. By "feminization"
is meant that the male labour force is beginning to take on more and
more of the characteristics of the female labour force. In short, there
has been a "levelling down" of opportunities and rewards for male
Introduction 3
labour to the level of women rather than a "levelling up" of oppor-
tunities and rewards for female labour to the level formerly attained
by men.
What is the evidence for this? Women's real earnings during the
nineties have continued to increase, albeit very slowly, while men's
real wages, which began declining as early as the late 1970s, have
stagnated. For full-time, full-year workers, women's earnings rose
on average by around one per cent per year between 1990 and 1997.
Over the same period, male earnings increased by a minuscule .04
per cent per year averaged over the period and, in fact, declined in
almost half of the seven years in the period. As a result the ratio of
women's to men's earnings rose from 67.7 per cent to 72.5 per cent.
Furthermore, a higher proportion of men, particularly young men,
are working part-time and at wages that are much closer to women's.
Average female earnings for part-time or part-year workers rose 6
per cent between 1990 and 1997 whereas average male earnings/*?//
by 5 per cent for this group of workers. The result was a rise in the
female/male wage ratio from 70.7 to 78.6. Taking all workers to-
gether, the average female wage rose 7 per cent over the 1990-97
period, while the average male wage rose less than half a per cent
and was actually one per cent lower than it was at its pre-recession
peak in 1989. This has been compounded by an unemployment crisis
among young males.
These figures are taken from the Statistics Canada publication
Earnings of Men and Women (1997). Figures for income (which
includes both earned and unearned income) from the Canadian Cen-
sus are somewhat grimmer but paint the same picture. Between the
two censuses in the nineties (i.e. between 1990 and 1995), male incomes
fell on average eight per cent, female incomes by two per cent, raising
the ratio of women's incomes to men's from 58 to 62 per cent.
American studies have credited this narrowing and relative decline
in male labour market outcomes to the shift from a goods producing
to a service producing economy. Simply put, the male wage advan-
tage is greater both absolutely and relatively in manufacturing and
goods production than it is in the service sector so that a shift of male
labour from goods production to services would serve both to de-
crease average male wages and to increase the ratio of women's to
men's wages. Canadian wage data is consistent with this explanation.
This can be clearly seen in Table I-1. Note that all of the occupations
associated with goods production have both higher average wages
and lower female/male wage ratios when compared with sales and
4 Women and Work
Table 1-1
Average Wage Rates and Wage Ratios
by Occupational Group, 1998
Sales and Service
Retail Sales
Occ. in Pood and Bev.
Trades, Trans, and
Equipt. Ops.
Occ. in Primary Industry
Occ. in Process., Manu.
and Utilities
Av. Male Wage
12.79
11.44
9.73
16.44
13.54
15.80
Av. Female Wage
9.78
8.65
8.55
11.77
9.62
10.86
Wage Ratio
76.5
75.6
87.9
71.6
71.0
68.7
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998.
service occupations. Furthermore, the rise in part-time employment
associated with the rise of the service economy and corporate down-
sizing, reorganization and outsourcing, accentuates this trend be-
cause female part-time wages are, on average, higher than men's in
most occupational categories by an average of almost 14 per cent.
While earnings and income data show an improvement, albeit,
rather small, in women's relative standing in the labour market dur-
ing the 1990s, women's participation rates ceased growing. After
growing by almost one per cent per year since the 1960s, the female
participation rate levelled off and, indeed, even declined in several
years during the recession and jobless growth of the first half of the
decade though it should be noted that the participation rate for mar-
ried women did increase marginally over the period. Furthermore,
there is little evidence that women have breeched the ghetto walls of
"women's work." In fact, in many male-oriented occupations, the
number of women employed has actually fallen. On the more posi-
tive side, women's relative participation in unions has continued to
increase though, again, this is partly the result of the decline in male
unionism in the face of economic restructuring, technological
change, and employer and government hostility.
Again, we must look at how neo-liberalism, technological change,
globalization, deregulation, the rising power of finance capital, and
public sector downsizing are reshaping the labour market with par-
ticular regard to the impact on women's jobs and employment. Ob-
viously, the restructuring of the world economy and the impact of
Introduction 5
electronic technology is continuing. In ten years, with the benefit of
hindsight, we will be able to look back and explain exactly how
restructuring and technology changed the world of work, both
women's and men's. At this time, however, all we can do is point to
what has happened over the past decade and, by extrapolation, pre-
dict what we expect to happen over the next. How accurate the
prediction turns out to be will be a measure of how well we under-
stand the changing dynamics of the contemporary labour market and
the forces acting upon it.
To understand the potential impacts, we must understand the na-
ture, extent and causes of labour market discrimination. Is it rooted
in overt male discrimination against women or in the failure of
women to acquire the skills and behaviour patterns that are valued
in the marketplace? Is it biological differences between the sexes that
restrict female participation in work or is it social organization,
attitudes and institutions that, wittingly or unwittingly, discriminate
against women? These are questions we will pursue in this third
edition of our book, first through an historical review of women's
work in Canada, and secondly through an in-depth look at the nature
of the contemporary market situation of women workers. We will
also have to consider the impact of technological change and global
restructuring on traditional male work as well as on women's. The
way men respond can have either positive or negative implications
for women's prospects. Will men try to protect themselves at the
expense of women? Or will men realize that both sexes are victims
of the same processes and adopt a common and complementary
program?
A great deal will depend on the strength and unity of the labour
movement and on women's participation in it. Unions have been
important in improving the status of workers, not just in terms of
monetary compensation but also job security, career opportunities,
and numerous fringe benefits. Worker participation in decision mak-
ing in what is arguably the most important aspect of daily life, work,
has also increased through union efforts. As noted, women's partici-
pation in unions has been increasing until now it is only slightly
lower than men's but it is still lower than men's. As well, unionism
overall has been under attack and is in decline, particularly in the
private, goods-producing sector. We must explore the implications
of these trends for women. With this background, we can once again
explore the challenges and prospects for the future.
6 Women and Work
This book is primarily directed at studying women's labour mar-
ket activity rather than trying to also include analysis of women's
other sphere of work, domestic and reproductive work. We did ex-
plain in previous editions that although we did not discuss in any
detail women's double work load (work in the home as well as in
the marketplace), it was the starting point of our whole analysis. We
argued that women's labour market participation, wage and occupa-
tional structure, and lack of career opportunities were directly related
to their primary responsibility for work in the home. However, we
concentrated in the text on paid work, on the effects of the "double
ghetto" on women in the labour market and, consequently, on how
their economic status has been incorporated into the prevailing eco-
nomic structure.
We intend to devote a little more attention to women's domestic
work in this edition in the historical chapter on unpaid home work
and how it shaped women's lives in and out of the labour market.
However, to do justice to the topic and the burgeoning literature on
it would require more time and space than we have available. There-
fore we have included in our "Notes on Sources and Further Read-
ing" references to some of the works, particularly Canadian ones,
related to the topics, but we do not intend to survey this material here
in any depth. Rather, we will very briefly state what we see as the
connection between home work and labour market work with the
expectation that readers will keep this in mind as they progress
through the following chapters.
First, we should note that non-paid work in the home is of very
great importance to the real income of Canadians. Estimates vary,
but on average come to the conclusion that home work probably
accounts for around 40 per cent of the value of total market incomes.
That is, almost a third of all our real standard of living originates in
unpaid work in the home, most of it — three quarters or more —
contributed by women.
Biology dictates that only women can reproduce. Biology, how-
ever, does not dictate all of the social and economic relations that
follow. For most of human history, when the household was the
primary institution of production and distribution, a sexual division
of labour prevailed based on the most efficient allocation of tasks
within the family unit as well as the necessity for women to nurture
infants. At the simplest level women concentrated on nurturing and
home-based tasks, men on external tasks and those involving physi-
Introduction 7
cal strength. Still, most work, in and out of the home, involved a
considerable amount of drudgery.
With the expanding role of the market relating primarily to exter-
nal work, "men's" work became increasingly valued in the market-
place while "women's" home work became increasingly un-valued
and, in consequence, undervalued. Some traditional women's work
was incorporated into the market — particularly clothing and textile
manufacture, pottery making, food preparation and related household
work — drawing women into paid factory work, particularly in the
nineteenth century, and thereby intensifying the growing double
work burden on women. The undervaluing of home work, however,
also led to an undervaluing of market work, and since men's work
was the major form of market work and better paid, men became the
"primary" wage earners, further degrading women's paid work. As
male real wages increased in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century, it became possible for middle-class women to withdraw
from market work and reduce the double burden. Ideologically this
was incorporated in the "cult of domesticity" which glorified
women's unpaid home work while deprecating paid work by women.
Working-class women were not so fortunate. Though forced by bi-
ology, ideology and patriarchal power to shoulder the major burden
of home work, they were also forced by economic need to conduct
some form of money income generating activity, whether it be home
work (sewing, washing, baking), growing vegetables, taking in
boarders, or more rarely, taking paid employment.
Rising real family incomes in the twentieth century allowed a
higher proportion of women to reduce the double work load, though
at a significant cost — complete income dependency on their part-
ners. However, from the 1960s on, women began moving back into
the labour market in an unprecedented way. Whatever the reasons
for this (and they will be explored in Chapter 2), the result was an
intensification of the double burden, made much more onerous by
the systematic undervaluation and low esteem of household work.
Thus, the relationship between home and market work is a con-
tinuing and dynamic one which cannot be ignored in devising pro-
grams and policies (discussed in Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8) to promote
gender equity in the labour market. A new chapter has been added
to deal with the gendered nature of the (Un)Employment Insurance
system and, in particular, the changes introduced within the last
decade. One obvious method of reducing the double burden on
women is for men to take on more family responsibilities. However,
8 Women and Work
given that men are normally paid more and have more career oppor-
tunities, it is usually not economically rational for them to do so if
it impinges upon their market work. These are some of the issues we
intend to pursue here.
We have attempted throughout to use inclusive language rather
than the sexist language so deeply imbedded in our industrial culture.
One of the encouraging developments in labour studies has been the
trend toward gender neutral usage, perhaps the best example being
the replacement of "fishermen" with "fishers" common now to most
maritime studies. In the odd place, however, we have consciously
retained conventional forms — "craftsman" and "foreman," for ex-
ample — as a reflection of reality, a reminder that, at least until
recently, these were sexually determined positions. Both these terms
still dominate in collective agreements and legislation.
We have intentionally not tried to fit our analysis into any single
school of thought regarding women in the economy. Rather we have
tried to draw on insights from research that has been done from many
perspectives — orthodox, institutional, feminist and radical. What
we have attempted to develop is our own analysis that incorporates
elements of all schools and that is a realistic interpretation of the
world as it is.
It is impossible to list all of the people who have aided us in this
project, both in the preparation of the first, second and now, the third
edition. To attempt to select a few would be to slight the contribution
of others, so we will not do so. However, we would like to acknow-
ledge the research assistance of Linda DeRiviere in the preparation
of the chapter on unemployment insurance.
Women's Work in Canada:
The Historical Perspective
History and Herstory
Women have not been treated well by history or, at least until re-
cently, by historians. The more we learn of the past, the greater our
awareness that women have been forced to play an unequal role in
the economy. There is a causal connection between such factors as
women's role in reproduction, their assignment to do unpaid work
in the home, the social institutions and attitudes of a patriarchal
society, the imperatives of industrial capitalism, and the inhumanity
of unregulated markets, and the pervasive and persistent inferior
economic status of women.
It is fashionable these days to refer to the "working woman" as if
this were a recent phenomenon. But what is new about women
working? Women have always worked, in many times and places
many more hours than men. The difference in recent years is that
women are increasingly part of the paid labour force, receiving
money incomes for their efforts. Of course, some women have al-
ways taken part in the labour market, but they were a small, and
usually transitory, minority. It is only since the Second World War
that this has changed. It is in the evolution of women's work from
the home to the market that we can look for some understanding of
the roots of the structure of economic reward in our era.
Home Work and Waged Work: Dual Spheres
It is common in everyday speech to refer to female members of the
paid labour force as "working women," thereby implying that what
women do in the home is not work and has no economic value. This,
of course, is not true. Women have always worked, but until recently,
primarily in the home. The problem is that the economic function of
domestic work has never been valued in a capitalist labour market
and, consequently, tends to be ignored or, at best, undervalued, in our
10 Women and Work
pecuniary society. However, the nature and economic contribution
of domestic work has changed quite substantially over the last 200
years in ways that have emphasized the duality in women's work and
in the process created at various stages dual spheres, double ghettos
and double days.
Although the labour market work of women is our primary interest
in this volume, their home work has a much longer history and a
greater complexity. Furthermore, it is impossible to understand the
position of women in today's labour market without also knowing
something about their work in the home, both historically and cur-
rently. Thus, a brief overview of the historical evolution of domestic
work seems in order.
Historians of domestic work have tended to recognize four distinct
periods in the last couple of centuries, the pre-industrial period (be-
fore circa 1850), the period of transition to industrial capitalism
(approximately 1850 to the First World War), the "age of domestic-
ity" (the 1920s through to the 1950s), and the contemporary period
since the 1960s that, for lack of any generally accepted term, we will
label the "period of the double day." Generally speaking, each period
marks a progression of the household from a centre of production to
one of consumption and, at the same time, an increasing separation
between the dual spheres of home work and waged work.
One must use some caution, however, in applying this periodiza-
tion to all domestic work. It is largely based on the experience of
urban, middle class families. For many rural and farm families, the
household even today remains the centre of production; and for many
in the working class, women have always had a double work load,
domestic work and paid work, though in earlier periods more of the
paid work would have been done in the home.
Susannah Wilson, in her book Women, Families and Work, writes,
"despite its patriarchal structure, pre-industrial family life depended
on the labour of both men and women, and women's work was
valued." All family members, children included, had an economic
role in producing the family income. Work was arduous, taxing and
long. In addition to their housework tasks of cooking, cleaning and
caring for infants and young children (a traditional, sexual division
of labour that had dominated in most societies over the ages), women
had the additional work of producing many of the consumption goods
utilized by the family — making clothes, soap, candles, producing
eggs, butter and vegetables, and preserving food for use throughout
the year. Indeed, the amount of production work required of women
Women's Work in Canada 11
to produce necessary consumption goods, the large size of families,
late marriage and short lifespan, and the rudimentary household
equipment, meant women had little time or energy left for the do-
mestic chores of cooking and cleaning.
Parenting, as Wilson points out, "meant preparing children for
adult life. In most cases, this literally meant following in parents'
footsteps. Children worked alongside their parents from an early age.
Girls learned domestic skills by working with their mothers; boys
worked with their fathers." In short, in this period and in rural areas
until much later, women's work in the home was dominated by child
care and the production of consumer goods necessary for the eco-
nomic viability of the pre-industrial family.
Household work began to change somewhat during the period of
industrialization in the second half of the 19
th
 century, at least for
better-off, urban families. There were a number of factors that
brought this about. With the rise of waged work, more and more men
left home during the day for work, leaving the wife to cope alone.
That is, the home ceased to be the centre of production for male
workers. At the same time, the industrial production of many con-
sumer goods such as cloth, clothing and soap relieved middle and
upper income women of the necessity of some home production,
while other household or domestic goods reduced the need for, or
the arduousness of, many household tasks. Major changes during this
period included the introduction of running water, gas and electricity,
the replacement of the open hearth with cooking stoves and of home-
spun with ready-made cloth, and the introduction of the domestic
sewing machine and canned foods. These new products also made it
possible for women to develop the domestic crafts of cooking and
baking and the making and mending of clothes.
Thirdly, urban women were bearing fewer children. We can only
speculate that reduced family size was, at least in part, a response to
the declining need for children in household production. Further-
more, the rise in the public school system also reduced the demand
on women to educate their children, in particular young males. For
the growing number of elite and middle class families, income was
sufficient to hire domestic servants, most frequently the unmarried
daughters of working class families or immigrants, thus relieving the
wives of these privileged classes of much of their domestic work, of
all types.
Finally, there was growing social pressure for the amelioration of
the work burden and working condition of women, both in paid and
12 Women and Work
domestic work. The emergent union movement was demanding a
"family wage." The middle class reformers, the "maternal feminists,"
while providing some basic social services, were also campaigning
to get women out of industrial work in order to free them for the
tasks of homemaking and childrearing. These social pressures, com-
bined with the technological, income and demographic changes, ren-
dered domestic life for women increasingly separate from the public
work-world of men, though for working-class women this did not
become a reality until well into the 20
th
 century. Wilson concludes:
As wage earning became a way of life, the economic responsi-
bilities of husbands and wives changed, although the change
was gradual and had its greatest impact on urban middle-class
families. Because wage labour took most men away from home
during the day, home management and childrearing increas-
ingly became a woman's responsibility — at least for the mid-
dle class ... For urban middle-class families, financially
dependent on a male breadwinner, and able to find and afford
substitutes for domestically produced goods, the public world
of work and the private domestic world became increasingly
separated.
Since women's housework became less necessary to provisioning
the family and less visible to men, women's productive work became
devalued. In its place, however, was the emotive power of the "cult
(or ideology) of domesticity," with glorified women's domestic and
maternal roles, creating the ideal warm, nurturing and spiritual
homes and caring for the morality of society through the maintenance
of a moral — and clean — household. Women were considered
tempermentally different from and morally superior to men. Femi-
ninity, domesticity and morality were thus inextricably bound to-
gether in this "mothering society" ideology. While the cult of
domesticity empowered women politically and socially, it also made
them increasingly dependent on male breadwinners economically,
while confining them to the private sphere of the home and away
from the public sphere of the labour market.
While industrialization produced expanding middle and elite
classes, it also spawned the growth of urban slums, prostitution,
poverty, crime and disease. It was in the context of these problems,
the instabilities of industrialization and the attendant social unrest,
and the cult of domesticity empowering women, that the maternal
Women's Work in Canada 13
feminist movement was spawned. The movement was composed of
a number of organizations, primarily of middle class women eco-
nomically dependent on their husbands, which set out to preserve
and advance family values through social reform and the provision
of social services to the working class and to those less fortunate in
society. This included much charity work including providing social
workers and nurses for city missions, running hostels for immigrants
and migrant women from rural areas, volunteering or raising money
for community temperance. In fact, the reform movement provided
the initial groundwork for the 20th century welfare state in Canada. At
the same time it did open up new occupations for women, but this
proved a mixed blessing. These new occupations were little valued
in monetary terms because of their roots in volunteer and charity work,
thus perpetuating the low wages associated with women's work.
It must be remembered that this was all done in the name of
preserving the family and supporting women's domestic role. As one
writer, Linda DeRiviere, has stated, "Canada was in dire need of
'mothering,' because the family was being compromised through
industrialization and urbanization." For working class and rural
women, however, home life still required a real contribution to the
family income which involved physically demanding production
work both for domestic consumption and for local markets.
By the 1920s, however, the domestic conditions for working class
women had also begun to improve, in part due to the new generation
of consumer goods and appliances and the diffusion of electricity, as
male wages rose to a level that would support a family. But while
material conditions changed, the ideology of domesticity did not.
Further, as Glenna Matthews argues for the United States, the rise of
the home economics profession, the profusion of brand name prod-
ucts, and the expansion of advertising, degraded and deskilled the
craft of homework as the household became a centre of consumption
rather than production. While the arduousness of housework de-
clined, the time required to fulfill domestic tasks did not. So, while
housework may have become less physically demanding, at the same
time it also became less fulfilling. Yet social attitudes continued to
restrict women to this private, domestic world — except in time of
war. As Wilson has noted, from 1920 to 1960, "most married women
were, or wanted to be, full-time housewives ... For the first time in
history, women could devote time to child care and household man-
agement. It was in this context that the ideal of housework as non-
work developed."
14 Women and Work
The high point in the traditional family, in the separation of the
private, female sphere from the public, male sphere, was probably
the 1950s. Suburbanization and the widespread ownership of private
automobiles turned women into chauffeurs as well as consumption
managers, home nurses and child nurturers and teachers. However,
suburbanization and the wide availability of home appliances and
prepared foods also created a sense of isolation, of being cut off from
adult society while degrading domestic work. This spawned unrest
with prevailing social values. Many women through the century had
never accepted their confinement to the home and had made careers
in the new professions open to them such as teaching, nursing and
clerical work, but the price they usually paid for such participation
was to remain single.
All this began to change in the 1960s, a decade marked by rapid
social change. A new feminist movement emerged which challenged
the very philosophical and moral foundations of the cult of domes-
ticity, including the central premise that a woman's place was in the
home. Female participation in the labour market, in particular that of
married women, began to rise rapidly and steadily, a trend that
continued until the 1990s. At the same time, Canada's welfare state
underwent a major expansion, particularly in the areas of health and
education, thereby opening up new job opportunities for women. The
separation of the two spheres began to diminish. However, the dual
spheres were to be replaced by double days. Women were still
expected to do their traditional housework in addition to their paid
work.
The amount and value of this housework is not inconsequential.
If housework were al! to be done by paid labour, the cost has been
estimated to be around 40 per cent of the total measured economic
output (Gross Domestic Product) of the Canadian economy. Never-
theless, women still do a disproportionate share of the housework
whether or not they also have paid work outside the home. The
double day is, thus, a legacy of the dual spheres, though we should
emphasize, as Wilson notes, "women have always had a double day
of productive work and family work." Now, however, productive
work is increasingly outside the home though there are indications
that some is now returning to the home in the form of home-based
business and telecommuting. How significant this counter-movement
will become is yet to be seen. If it were to become a prominent
feature of women's work world, it would be a reversal of the histori-
Women's Work in Canada 15
cal process which moved women's productive work out of the home
and into the marketplace.
The Pre-Industrial Period
Wage labour has been a relatively new experience for most Canadian
workers of both sexes. The wage labour market only developed
between 100 and 150 years ago, and only well into this century did
the majority of working people actually work for wages. For most
of human history the vast majority of people toiled in a non-wage
economy. The common economic unit of production was the family,
to which all members, except the youngest of children, contributed.
Canada's fur traders found out early that women were indispen-
sable. The North West Company men took native wives immedi-
ately, and when the Hudson's Bay Company tried to forbid their men
from following this practice, it had to recant in order that it might be
competitive. The skills of the native women, learned in their own
culture, were essential for survival. They made moccasins, snow-
shoes and pemmican, gathered the gum necessary to make the birch-
bark canoes, and treated hides. In commerce they acted as
interpreters for the traders, and marriage to a native woman brought
with it the protection of her tribe. These attributes, so necessary to
the nomadic economy of the fur trade, were not required for the
settled life of the farmer. As the area which is now called Canada
became settled, and agriculture, forestry and other economic pursuits
replaced the fur trade, the native women gave way to women from
Europe.
The family remained the primary unit of production until this form
of work organization was destroyed by industrialization and the
factory. There was, of course, a sexual division of labour within the
family, a division which appears to have remained more or less
unaltered since people first settled on the land. Women would work
mainly around the home where they could watch over the children.
But they would also do work that was traditionally considered
"men's work" in addition to their own when need dictated. In today's
world it is easy to overlook the importance of children in this early
economy. The bearing and raising of children was central to the
survival of the family, as children soon became an economic asset
contributing to family production.
Women's work around the home was crucial to family income.
Housework kept the family in clothing and food. Particularly in the
settlement period when farm families were toiling to fill the require-
16 Women and Work
ments of gaining title to land grants, every bit of cash income was
needed for capital, machinery and stock. In addition to their respon-
sibilities for the house, children and health care, women worked the
farmyard, garden and sometimes even the fields. With the aid of their
childen, they spun the wool or flax, wove cloth, made soap and
candles, sewed and embroidered. The butter and eggs farm wives
sold were an important source of income for the family. Vegetables
and bread were also sold to railway gangs and bachelor farmers. The
importance of the wife generally meant that women were highly
sought after by men and that most widows quickly remarried.
Life for many women was hard. Productive farms required continu-
ous investment, and extra money usually went to buy farm machin-
ery. Consequently, as one observer has noted, "the modernization of
many households lagged far behind the mechanization of field work.
Long after the farm work had been taken over by horses and ma-
chines, many farm houses ran on woman power." In her article "The
Decline of Women in Canadian Dairying," Marjorie Griffin Cohen
points out that this pattern of failing to upgrade equipment for work
done by women extended beyond the house to the barn as well.
Initially women were responsible for taking care of the dairy cows
and producing butter and cheese. The improvement of dairy technol-
ogy accompanied the redefinition of dairying as work for men.
Not all women were farm wives, though in the days prior to the
rapid growth of urban centres, family life in the village was not that
much different than that on the farm. Some women, frequently
younger ones, were in domestic service. There are records from the
early nineteenth century of girls as young as seven being indentured
until the age of eighteen. Older women, often widows, tended bar in
taverns, acted as cooks in camps, took in washing, and in some cases
ran boarding houses. Midwifery, of course, was the occupational
preserve of women, but for most women their home was their work-
place, where they performed the crucial roles of home production
and family reproduction.
On Canada's east coast, where agriculture played a secondary role
to fishing, women did participate more directly in the production of
the market staple. The men worked the fisheries while the women
worked on the shores, processing and dressing the fish. It is reported
that some women could dress two to three thousand fish in a day.
Still, women's reproductive role, not only in bearing children but in
maintaining the family, was paramount, as children were equally
important in production. It was known that not only could a woman
Women's Work in Canada 17
help as much as another man but that the larger the family, the better
the man did.
Early Industrialization
Beginning around the middle of the last century, Canada entered a
period of economic transformation. The process began in southern
Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River through western Quebec,
though for many other parts of Canada the rise of industrialism and
the decline of the family production unit would not take place until
about the time of the Second World War, if not later. Even with the
expansion of a market economy in the 1850s and 1860s in Central
Canada, in the first stage of transformation, craft work remained
centred in the home and the family was still the primary unit of
production. Typically, men would weave with their sons as appren-
tices, while women and girls would spin. This pattern continued long
after factories were built alongside the cottages of the craft workers.
In the railway shops and machinery and metal plants, however, could
be found the shape of things to come. The factory system began to
predominate in the major industrial centres like Toronto and Mont-
real in the 1870s and 1880s.
Accompanying this change in the economic system was a shift in
the population from the rural areas to the major urban centres. From
1851 to 1901 the population of Ontario doubled while that of Toronto
increased sixfold. In the same period, Quebec's population also doubled
but Montreal's population increased by four and a half times. The
population of Winnipeg, the connecting link between the industrial-
izing East and the western wheat economy, grew dramatically, by
almost eighteenfold between 1881 and 1908. This was a period of
massive immigration into the West, but also into Central Canada,
creating a vast pool of cheap labour for industry. Some people were
also leaving their farms in the face of decreasing opportunities in the
settled areas of Ontario and Quebec. Quebec in particular had a large
surplus rural population, a factor which spurred heavy emigration to
the textile mills and lumber camps of the northeastern United States.
Young women also left the farms in increasing numbers, in part
because the lack of agricultural opportunities meant little prospect of
finding an appropriate husband. By 1871 women outnumbered men
in Montreal in all age groups.
The shift from rural to urban areas was one manifestation of a
much larger phenomenon, the increasing monetization of markets
and its corollary, increased production for the market rather than for
18 Women and Work
home consumption. Agricultural productivity rose with increased
mechanization and new technology. The railways linked up rural and
urban, city and town, bringing food to the market but also integrating
markets, which allowed the growing factories to undercut the crafts-
men located in towns and villages. Companies such as Eaton's used
advertising and the mails to encourage women to buy ready-made
clothing rather than make their own. Goods previously produced by
the family now had to be bought, particularly as the population
urbanized, creating the need for greater cash income. Work that had
been done by women in the home was now done for employers in
return for wages.
The flood of people to the cities, crowding around the industrial
areas where work could be found, created appalling living condi-
tions. Poverty was rampant, since wages were low and work un-
steady. In the course of research for his 1897 study of Montreal, City
Below the Hilt, Herbert Ames discovered that one in every ten dwell-
ings was a rear tenement, frequently in a state of decay, and over half
the families were still using pit privies (outhouses). Greg Kealey and
Michael Piva have documented similar conditions in Toronto around
the same time. In some sections of Montreal, Ames found a popula-
tion density as high as 300 people per acre, with five to eight people
living in two rooms. In some of the poorest areas, the death rate was
almost 50 per cent higher than the average. Almost an eighth of the
population subsisted on less than what Ames considered a poverty
income, a result, in the majority of cases, of the lack of or irregularity
of work. Even when one family member was employed, the single
wage was not usually sufficient to support a family, with the result
that more than one member would have to work. The average family
had 1.41 wage earners but the number varied depending on the
occupation of the father. Bettina Bradbury's study of Montreal in
1871, for instance, showed that the average number of paid workers
in a proprietor's family was 1.2 compared with 1.8 for semi-skilled
and unskilled workers. Evidence before the Royal Commission on
the Relations of Labour and Capital in 1889 showed that a cigar
maker, a wife, and two or three children were barely able to live on
the average salary of $7 a week. But the average pay reported by
immigration agents for unskilled workers in the industrial towns of
Central and Eastern Canada at the time was between $1.00 and $1.50
per day or $6 to $9 a week, if the worker was continuously employed.
In 1889 a male labourer in Ontario averaged less than $6 a week; a
cotton mill operative, under $7. In areas or times when unemploy-
Women's Work in Canada 19
ment was high, in winter when costs rose, or when the father was ill
or disabled, it was essential that other members of the family went
out to work.
Women and children did go out to work and in large numbers, In
1871 women and "girls" made up 34.5 per cent, women and children
42 per cent, of the industrial work force in Montreal. By 1881, the
proportion of industrial workers that was women and girls had risen
to 37 per cent. In the clothing industry women and children com-
prised 80 per cent of the workforce; in tobacco products, 60 per cent.
By 1908 in the Quebec cotton industry, almost 50 per cent of the
operatives in the factories were women. In Toronto in 1871, women
and children made up over half of the workers in light manufacturing
such as in clothing, shoes, printing, tobacco and furniture. They
represented 34 per cent of the total industrial labour force. These
figures, while indicating the importance of women in industry, must
be seen in light of the fact that the vast majority were under the age
of 25, indeed, mostly under 20. As Bradbury notes in her 1984 article,
"for girls wage labour was a temporary and intermittent experience
— something that they did at the most for four or five years, usually
between the ages of 15 and 20." As a result, the percentage of women
over ten years of age working for pay only rose to 11 per cent in
1891 and to 14 per cent in 1911 according to census figures. The
comparable figures for men show an increase to 76 per cent and 79
per cent over the same period, though half of the men were employed
in agriculture. Therefore, although the number of women working
for pay was significant, the majority of women were not registered
as gainfully employed. One consequence of this was that widows
became heavily dependent on the income-earning capacity of their
children rather than on wage work.
The shift to wage work did not immediately affect the family as
a unit in many cases. Initially in the textile industry, the family unit
was preserved by moving it out of the home and into the factory.
Factories advertised for families even in the rural areas, offering the
inducement that children would remain under the family's super-
vision while allowing the mother to earn an income, although this
was really designed to get a whole family of workers for the price
of one living wage. The low wages of the women and children were
a great boon to the emergent industrialists. The companies also
provided cottages near the factory to encourage families to work as
a group. This continued until, later in the nineteenth century, the
spread of public education, the enforcement of truancy laws, changes
20 Women and Work
in work organization, and the passage and enforcement of factory
laws kept younger children out of the mills.
Outside of family work units, women usually moved into jobs that
were commercial counterparts to the work they had done in the home
or on the farm. They would sew, clean, prepare food, teach, or keep
boarders — jobs now done for pay where previously they had been
done for the family. Women who had spun flax or wool produced on
the family farm were now working in textile factories. Rather than
cooking, baking and preserving for their families, women were work-
ing in biscuit factories. For example, by 1891 one-third of the biscuit
and confectionery workers in Toronto were women. In her fascinat-
ing study of the Ganong Bothers factory in St. Stephen, New Bruns-
wick, Margaret McCallum reported that by the turn of century
two-thirds of the 200 confectionery workers employed by the factory
were female, mostly young and single, a pattern not disturbed until
the Second World War. Instead of sewing their children's clothing,
women bought clothing from the companies they worked for. Ac-
cording to the Canadian census, the number of seamstresses in-
creased more than tenfold between 1851 and 1871. The growth of
markets and new technology created some new jobs heavily inhab-
ited by women such as shop girls and telephone operators. In the latter
case, women made up 61 per cent of Bell Telephone employees.
These women were, on the whole, poorly paid in relation to men,
and were frequently subjected to fines and reductions in wages.
Evidence before the 1889 Royal Commission on the Relations of
Labour and Capital showed that Eaton's paid the average salesman
$10 to $12 a week, while a first-class saleswoman could hope to
make $6 to $8 a week. In the Kingston Cotton Company, women
received 57 per cent of the average male wage. Ames conjectured in
his study that the average wage was $8.25 per week for men, $4.50
for women; in other words women's wages were 55 per cent of
men's. Three to five dollars a week was typical pay for women
compared with $6 to $8 or $9 for unskilled males, though there were
isolated examples of experienced laundry workers and skilled seam-
stresses who could make skilled workers' salaries in the $12-to-$18-
a-week range by 1912. Still, in 1910 the average wage for women
employed in manufacturing was only $5.44 per week, which was at
or below minimum subsistence levels for a single person and only
57 per cent of the male average of $9.58.
Fines and other abuses of wages by companies reduced effective
wages further. The 1889 royal commission found situations where
Women's Work in Canada 21
fines were only levied on women and children. In one shoe company,
young girls were paid 10 for every sole they made but were fined 40
for every defective sole. The manufacturer made a clear profit of 10
on every defective sole. At the Crompton Corset Company in
Toronto where 230 of the 250 employees were women, workers were
fined for mistakes on the basis of the time taken to rectify the
mistake, but at a rate of 100 or 110 an hour, about $6 to $7 a week,
even though they were paid only $5 a week in summer and $4.50 a
week in the winter.
How common these abuses were is hard to say, but the practice
of paying lower wages in winter, the off-season when unemployment
was high, was common enough, though not restricted to women's
work. The middle-class National Council of Women in 1900 ex-
plained that advertisements that promised linen would be hemmed
free did not mean seamstresses were being paid starvation wages but
rather that women were being given employment in the off-season.
It was not unheard of, in fact it was apparently common in the
Maritimes, for employers to be paid relief money as a wage subsidy,
substantially reducing their wage bills. In any case, it is evident that
employers took advantage of unemployment to pay even more in-
adequate wages.
Not only low wages afflicted women workers; they often worked
incredibly long hours, commonly longer than men. In the dress
trades, they might work regularly from eight in the morning to six at
night, but until eleven or twelve at night in the rush season. For
factory workers the average day was nine hours but some clerks in
Montreal shops worked fifteen or sixteen-hour days. Laws were
passed in 1884 restricting the hours women could work to sixty hours
a week in the factories, and the evidence of factory inspectors before
the 1889 royal commission was that this limit was rarely exceeded
except in the woollen mills, where sixty-six hours was common.
There were other ways, however, of abusing women besides the
regular requirement of long hours. The royal commission also dis-
covered that when machines broke down women had to work over-
time without pay to make up the hours lost. A royal commission set
up to investigate Bell Telephone after a strike in 1907 uncovered the
fact that thirty-two operators a day in Toronto worked six and a half
hours a day rather than the scheduled five. The schedule was rotated
and no one received additional pay for the extra hours, while Bell,
on the other hand, received forty-eight hours a day free. As well, on
every five-hour shift, one "girl," as they were referred to, was ex-
22 Women and Work
pected to start work fifteen minutes early, then work the full shift,
while a second worked fifteen minutes late. For every two operators,
Bell received a half hour of unpaid-for work. Why did women tol-
erate these wages and conditions? Simply because the alternatives
were as bad or worse.
Moreover, in many industries, women were employed primarily
as a "flexible" reserve of labour, hired only on a part-year basis in
peak seasons. At the Ganong Brothers factory, for instance, almost
two-thirds of the female workers worked less than half the year in
1931, two-fifths a quarter year or less. On the other hand, among the
male employees, over half were employed full-year or substantially
full-year (ten months or more). Less than 20 per cent were employed
for three months or less.
Domestic work was one alternative to industrial work in the late
ninetenth century, but it was considered the least desirable occupa-
tion by most. In 1891 domestics made up 41 per cent of the female
work force, by 1921 only 18 per cent. As early as the 1870s there
were complaints about the shortage of domestics because young
women were going to work in the factories instead. For most women,
domestic work was the work of last resort. It is not hard to understand
why when one looks at the working conditions. In the 1880s in
Eastern Canada, wages of domestics ranged from $4 to $10 a month,
$10 to $20 a month in Western Canada. By the end of the century,
the rate had risen in the East to $8 to $14 a month but remained much
the same in the West. With room and board, wages were comparable
with factory work but this did not compensate for the fact that
domestic work was lonely and menial, the hours were long, and there
was always the chance of sexual abuse (though this was also all too
common in the factory). To remedy the shortage, unattached female
relatives were taken in as free domestics, and immigrant women were
brought in to work as servants. By 1911, 35 per cent of all domestic
servants were immigrants. In her article, "The Women Ontario Wel-
comed: Immigrant Domestics for Ontario Homes, 1870-1930," Mar-
ilyn Barber writes that between Confederation and the depression
over a quarter of a million women immigrated to Canada with the
intention of working as a domestic. Agencies bringing women to
Canada to work as domestics would tell prospective employers that
they handled only "respectable" women. Perhaps because women
turned to domestic work when they had little choice a link was
preceived between domestic service and prostitution.
Women's Work in Canada 23
Why were female wages so low? The overstocking of the labour
market with women, children and unskilled immigrants meant that
the employers could get away with low pay. Women and children
had to work in order to produce a living family wage. On the other
hand, employers took advantage of this situation to justify low
wages. Young working women were living with their families and
therefore did not need a living wage. To both the 1889 royal com-
mission and the one investigating Bell Telephone, employers as-
serted that they preferred to hire "girls" who lived at home. Cotton
mill owners admitted in 1899 that girls were expected to live at home
since it was unlikely they could manage paying board at $3 per week
when their wage might be only $3 or $4 a week. The operating
manager for Bell in Toronto stated that the company did not pay a
sufficient wage to meet the cost of living, so the 30 to 40 per cent of
the operators who boarded had to work overtime or at a second job.
Despite this, as early as 1868 there were as many as 5,000 "girls"
living on their own in Toronto. As late as 1912, one Toronto writer
described the difficulties of an independent woman attempting to live
on a wage of $5 a week when meals cost $2.25 and a room $1.50,
leaving just $1.25 for all other expenses, including clothes.
Most of these women were young, whether they lived at home or
on their own, and they did not usually stay in the work force for long.
Bell paid extra wage benefits to operators who stayed for more than
two or three years, but the average stay of an operator was still less
than three years. Most women who worked in the factories were
young, between fifteen and twenty years old, and they tended to leave
after a few years to get married, as indeed they virtually had to do
in order to survive. This rapidly overturning, unorganized work force
provided a large pool of cheap labour for employers; and, not inci-
dentally, they also provided another generation of cheap labour,
subsidized by pooled family income.
In his study of Montreal, Ames documented the make-up of the
family work force which reflected women's role as secondary wage
earners. He calculated that in an average 30 families there would be
147 people, 42 wage earners, 46 hometenders, 10 lodgers, 27 school-
age children and 22 infants. He did not document how many of the
lodgers he recorded were men or women, which might have given
some indication of the number of single women living independently.
However, most lodgers were probably men because of the unequal
sex ratio indicated in his family statistics. The wage earners would
be made up of 33 men, 8 women, and 1 child. Of the twelve families
24 Women and Work
with a second wage earner, only three would have a second male
working. The other nine families would have a woman or child
working. Women, therefore, obviously played an important role as
secondary wage earners, and they were probably mostly daughters,
since in 1871 only 2.5 per cent of wives reported any income, though
this certainly understates wives' contribution to family income
through non-wage work.
Within the home, women turned home work into paid work by
sewing at piece rates, by cleaning for someone else or by taking in
lodgers; however, this was almost never recognized in census statis-
tics. Fathers and sons would work in the factories while mothers and
daughters would work at home sewing. The sweating system, where
women sewed for piece rates and were paid as little as possible, was
used by employers to undercut other contractors at the women's
expense. Sewing in the home did, however, make looking after
children possible. Bradbury found that 45 per cent of women in 1871
who sewed at home in the St. Jacques district of Montreal had
children under the age of five.
Taking in boarders or sharing the home with another family was
an alternative way of increasing family income or cutting home costs.
When the children were young and the mother was unable to work
outside the home, the family was most likely to share their home.
Ames reported that nine in ten families shared their homes with
another family, while every third family was also likely to have a
boarder. In one section of the city, he discovered that 20 per cent of
the population were boarders. Having boarders was an alternative to
going out to do domestic work and allowed women to be their own
boss and to care for their children.
When women were forced to support themselves and their fami-
lies, hardship and poverty were frequent companions because
women's wages or home work earnings were paid as if the women
were secondary wage earners. Of the families Ames classed as poor,
36 per cent were relying on women as the primary wage earner. The
poverty that resulted was reflected in the reported cases of starvation,
indigence, and the abandonment of babies, or their placement in
orphanages. The influx of immigrants and rural people and the need
for secondary wage earners provided a surplus labour supply for the
employer, so neither women nor men usually earned a "family"
wage. The degradation of women's wages left them with a further
disadvantage when trying to support a family.
Women's Work in Canada 25
The New Occupations
Not all women's work that emerged from industrialization was menial,
unskilled or directly related to domestic work. The expansion of
compulsory public education required a major expansion in the
number of teachers. Initially there was a debate over the appropri-
ateness of hiring women, whether it was proper for women to teach
in public even though they had taught for many years privately in
homes. Eventually it was accepted that women could teach and
discipline the younger children. It was considered acceptable for
women to look after children in their tender years, but at the secondary
level male teachers were considered necessary to mould young men
into shape for the labour market. It can be argued that women's
teaching at the elementary level was just the extension of the mother's
teaching role in the home, but perhaps more plausible is the argument
that cost was the deciding factor. Women would work for less money
than men, though men were still retained to teach in secondary
schools.
By 1897,421 out of 445 teachers in Toronto were women but their
pay was considerably less than men's. Women teachers were paid as
little as a third of the income of their male counterparts in Eastern
Canada, somewhat better in the West. In the Toronto School Division
in 1858, school masters made $700 a year, headmistresses $400. On
the basis of the then prevailing wage scales it would take a woman
fourteen years to reach the male starting salary, but by this time it
was expected that women would have left teaching to be married.
Married women were not considered appropriate as teachers. The
Toronto board went as far as passing a motion in 1895 prohibiting
the hiring of married women or women over thirty on the assumption
that they should be at home tending their families!
There were several factors behind the low salaries. Women could
enter college at sixteen, two years younger than men, and did not
have to take the same exams. Lower wages were then justified on
the basis that women were less qualified than men. Secondly, there
was a surplus of women applicants. With few work alternatives for
educated women, one-half of women graduates entered teaching. In
1900 the National Council of Women reported the result:
The teaching profession is overcrowded and the prospects
cheerless. Teachers are overworked and underpaid and there is
26 Women and Work
comparatively little hope of advancement for even the most
talented Canadian women teachers.
Boards also maintained that young women would leave after a few
years just as they were becoming experienced and therefore were not
worth the investment of a large salary. Under the prevailing rules in
Toronto where women over thirty who did not quit were let go
anyway, this excuse at best has a hollow ring to it.
Still, teaching was the most important opportunity for women in
the professions. By 1911 women comprised about half of all profes-
sionals and most of these women were teachers. Those who studied
in the other professions such as medicine and law were few in
number due to university regulations, and what is more, provincial
laws usually prevented them from practising. The only other oppor-
tunity for educated middle-class women was charitable or religious
work.
Other white-collar occupations were just beginning to open up to
women. Shop clerking offered the greatest opportunities. Four per
cent of working women were in merchandising occupations in 1891,
but within twenty years this had risen to 12 per cent (though women
still only represented 15 per cent of the total labour force in trade
occupations). The numbers were, however, significant in the larger
centres. Secretarial work still remained primarily a male preserve,
though women were increasingly attending commercial colleges.
Only one in fifty employed women worked at clerical work in 1891,
just a few thousand in the whole of Canada. By 1911 this number
had increased eightfold.
The Reform Movement and "Working Women"
As in Britain and other countries the brutality of the industrial revo-
lution brought to the fore middle-class reform movements, one of
their prime goals being to protect women and children from the
excesses of the factory system through limiting the hours women
could work and through restricting child labour. Previously, children
had been expected to work as part of the family unit, but by the end
of the century reformers were more concerned with the child's right
to a childhood. Factory acts were introduced in Ontario in 1883 and
in Quebec two years later. The acts were hardly rigorous. Girls under
fourteen and boys under twelve were prohibited from working in
factories; but small shops were excluded from this restriction, and
enforcement was lax, allowing employers to avoid the law. In this
Women's Work in Canada 27
they were aided and abetted by some parents who needed the extra
source of income and by certificates of exemption which parents
could routinely request. However, gradually more and more children
did leave the factories and increased their school attendance. The
result was a mixed blessing for working-class families. The woman's
role as reproducer of the family production unit, so important in
pre-industrial and early-industrial society, was undermined. It was
not until the 1920s, according to David Millar's estimates, that male
incomes of the unskilled reached the level of a living family wage.
The family still needed secondary wage earners to support itself but
children were now largely excluded from filling this role. This meant
that that role increasingly fell to wives.
Reformers were disturbed by the results. When J.S. Woodsworth
examined the state of the family in urban communities at the end of
the first decade of this century, he found that mothers had been forced
to go into the work force to replace the earnings of children. The
primary reason given by girls for dropping out of school was that
they had to take care of younger children at home, which led these
same reformers to lament parental neglect and the lack of child
discipline. Agitation for day care was one answer, and even the
orphanages were used as temporary child-care centres.
However, there was more to the reformers' concern than just the
exploitation by industrial employers, particularly of girls, through
low pay and long hours. They sought to keep young girls out of the
work force or in better work situations out of a concern for the
morality of the girls and their role in reproduction rather than out of
a concern for wages. Woodsworth thought girls and young women
would be coarsened by working in factories. Others thought factory
work especially detrimental because of its perceived effect in de-
stroying a woman's "womanliness" and, more important to the pat-
rimony, in making her less anxious to be a wife and mother. The
health of women was a concern because of the expectation that they
would become wives and mothers. The royal commission on the
1907 Bell strike was critical of the employment practices because
the commissioners considered them detrimental to the health of
young women. The National Council of Women was especially glad
to see the Ontario Shops Act passed, which required seating for shop
girls, since it was thought that prolonged standing would hurt their
reproductive organs. It is questionable if all this concern with moral-
ity and health was really at the root of reformer campaigns. At least
one major concern was that female economic independence would
28 Women and Work
undermine the prevailing patriarchal system. Canadian governmental
opposition to women registering homesteads was based on the fear
that women would become too independent and fail to fill their
expected role as reproducers of the labour force.
The reformers also failed to examine the reasons why women
worked and why their wages were so poor. In some ways, despite
their good intentions, the reforms hurt women by excluding them
from the industrial labour force or by making them uncompetitive.
Prior to the reforms, children, including young girls, and men worked
in the factories, while mothers took care of the home. After the
reforms women and men worked while the young girls stayed at
home with the children. Rather than improving the living standards
of the family, reforms tended only to shift the responsibilities of the
work at home from mothers to daughters. In both cases the employer
benefited by paying wages that were part of a family wage. Further,
the reformers were motivated by a middle-class view of family life
that was economically unrealistic for working-class women. In the
words of Sharon Myers, "the contradiction between middle-class
gender role ideals and the intractable demands of industrial capital-
ism placed female industrial workers in the impossible position of
negotiating the territory between prescription and reality."
The Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) also advocated that
women be excluded from work in the factories to preserve male jobs
and wages, and would often appeal to concerns about their morality
and health. A quarter of a century later during the depression, the
same issues surfaced again. Almost certainly with the labour unions
the issue was wages; not women's wages, but men's. The large
supply of cheap female labour helped to keep all wages low.
Work in the home may not have been paid, but it was critical to
the support and reproduction of the family. A contemporary observer
noted, for instance, how girls who lived at home could afford to live
on their wages because they received such things as free laundering,
cooking and living space. The benefit of this unpaid work went to
the employer, who got more work than he paid for, while the burden
was shouldered by the working-class wife. This conclusion did not
escape the royal commissioners investigating the strike at Bell Tele-
phone:
To the extent to which the Bell Telephone Company has prof-
ited by the necessities of its operators, or has secured services
at a rate which would not have enabled those who rendered
Women's Work in Canada 29
them to have lived, but for the support received from members
of their own families, or in ways other than those provided by
the company, to this extent the profits of the company have
been derived by a species of sweating, or by the levying of a
tax upon homes and individuals for which no compensation has
been made.
War, Depression and War
The second phase of the industrial revolution in Canada was drawing
to a close in the years just prior to the First World War. Reform was
restricting women's access to factory work, but that was probably
much less important than the third phase of industrial change, the
emergence of large corporations and the administrative revolution
that followed. In the 1890s the process was well under way in the
United States and, to a lesser extent, in Britain. In Canada the full
impact was not felt until the first great merger movement from 1907
to 1912 when a number of giant Canadian firms were created by
joining together smaller, previously competitive, firms. The process
would be continued in the twenties with enormous impact on
women's paid work, particularly in the resulting rise of the clerical
trades. Even by 1911 some effects were evident. Nine per cent of
women workers were clerks, up from just over two per cent in 1891.
Production work on the other hand, was increasingly male-dominated
except in some of the traditional light industries like clothing and
textiles. The service occupations, teaching and health care, were the
havens for women workers in the transition.
For much of Canada, the upheaval we have described in women's
work in the late nineteenth century was as distant as it was to the
families of Ontario in the 1820s. With the new century, however, the
woman's role as partner in the family enterprise, albeit a subordinate
partner, was rapidly disappearing. Although the farms of the Prairies
remained family concerns, in the regional urban centres like Win-
nipeg, Vancouver and Halifax the family production unit was de-
stroyed to a greater or lesser extent as the market invaded the home.
And in the primary sector comparable developments were underway.
The mines and forest industries of the resource hinterlands never did
employ women. Women living in these areas had to look to other
places to augment the family income. The B.C. fishing industry was
capitalist from the start, and women worked in the canning factories,
as they did in the fish-processing plants of the Atlantic, as secondary
30 Women and Work
wage earners. It is perhaps significant that the relative wage levels
of women through the industrial revolution in Central Canada and,
to a lesser extent, in the Maritimes remained consistently between
55 and 60 per cent of male wages — significant in the sense that
throughout Canada, the differential remained more or less unchanged
over the following century. The market did nothing to diminish
systemic discrimination.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 brought very little
immediate change to the Canadian labour market. The economy was
still in the throes of a depression which began in 1912, and the ranks
of enlisted men were readily filled without the mobilization of
women workers. Conscription was not introduced until late in the
war as well. Despite the Imperial War Board's encouragement to
employers to use women in non-traditional factory work, therefore,
there was little need to do so and women were still registering as
unemployed until well into the hostilities. In a thesis written in 1919,
investigating changes in the occupations of women, Enid Price re-
vealed that during the war most factories that lost men to the armed
forces generally replaced them with other men or did not replace
them at all. This policy was encouraged by the craft unions, which
feared dilution of their skills and the devaluation of their members'
work.
As the war dragged on and mobilization increased, the labour
market began to tighten up and by 1916 the economy began to
approach full employment. Many factories were switched over to
produce munitions for the Imperial Munitions Board, and in these
factories women began to fill positions. While there were no women
among the 6,000 munitions workers in 1915 in Montreal, by 1917,
35 per cent of the 15,000 employed were women. Their wages, as
might be expected, lagged well behind those of the men. Women's
wages in the munitions industry ranged between twenty and thirty-
five cents per hour, or approximately between 50 and 80 per cent of
those of men. As the war began to draw to a close, however, the
women workers were beginning to be replaced by returning soldiers
and other men; consequently, by 1918 women's share of employment
in the industry had fallen to 22 per cent of the work force. Relative
wages had shown some improvement, on the other hand, to between
twenty-one cents and forty-five cents per hour or 60 to 80 per cent
of the average male wage.
The relatively small increase in the number of women participat-
ing in the labour force is reflected in the fact that the composition of
Women's Work in Canada 31
women workers as measured by marital status did not change appre-
ciably. Women workers were largely unmarried, 80 per cent being
single, and only 15 per cent of them were entering employment for
the first time. Most moved from other factories into the munitions
plants or stayed on when their factories were converted over, al-
though there was some movement from less lucrative traditional
women's occupations. Price, for instance, found that 6 per cent had
formerly worked in domestic service.
In factories where traditional work remained, such as the clothing
plants and textile mills, the role of women changed even less than in
the munitions plants. While they may have replaced men for a while
on some of the machines, the changes were generally temporary. The
reason, according to Price, was that even when conscription was
introduced, many of the men working in these factories were ineli-
gible. Either they were not of military age, they were married, or,
very importantly in areas with large numbers of immigrant workers,
they were not Canadian citizens. The only new industry that was
hiring women in significant numbers was the rubber goods industry
where they were sufficiently well regarded that employers wished to
keep them on even when the soldiers returned. We suspect a major
inducement was the prevailing lower female wage.
Though there was not a large change in female participation in
non-traditional jobs in the primary and secondary industries, there
were more substantive effects on tertiary employment and particu-
larly in clerical occupations, effects that persisted after the war. Price
found for Montreal that while the number of clerical workers dropped
by 20 per cent from 1914 to 1918, the number of women in these
occupations rose by 50 per cent. Women had represented 15 per cent
of clerical workers in 1914 but 30 per cent in 1918. As well, their
income rose substantially, from $47 a month to $90, and in relation
to men, from 60 per cent of the male salary to 85 per cent.
The substitution of women clerks for men occurred in a number
of industries. In wholesale houses where men were assumed to be
needed to lift heavy containers, clerical work passed to women as
enlistment rapidly depleted the ranks of male labourers and office
workers and the remaining men were shifted to the heavier work. An
interesting feature, if somewhat atypical, was the fact that women
took these places at equal pay.
Women working in the railway shops were not so fortunate. In
1914 they made up only 3 per cent of the clerical work force,
although, surprisingly, they earned 4 per cent more than men. By
32 Women and Work
1918, however, they comprised 30 per cent of the work force but
were making only 80 to 90 per cent of the male salary.
These shifts in clerical work from a traditional male domain to a
female one are only examples of a larger trend which was under way
even before the war but undoubtedly accelerated by it. By 1911
women already comprised a third of all clerical workers; by 1921
their proportion was over 40 per cent. The percentage of women
workers in clerical occupations doubled over that decade, reaching
almost one out of every five by 1921. No comparable increase was
achieved before or after this period until the Second World War.
Banks and retail outlets also turned to the female labour force
during the First World War. In Montreal the number of female bank
clerks rose from 12.5 per cent in 1914 to 42 per cent in 1918. The
Royal Bank of Canada alone had hired almost three times as many
women by 1916 as it had employed in 1914. Starting salaries rose
over the same period from $400 to $600 a year, no doubt reflecting
the tightness of the labour market and rising inflation. Apparently,
the monetary inducement was successful, since 54 per cent of the
women working as clerks by 1918 were working at their first paid job.
In retail trade the expansion was less dramatic but nevertheless
significant. Women took temporary jobs as sales clerks despite
twelve-and-a-half-hour work days. There were reportedly 12,000 of
them in Canada late in the war, almost half of them in Toronto. Most
were young and single, between eighteen and twenty-two years old.
These changes in women's paid work, with the exception of the
rise of the clerical trades, were to prove transitory. After the war the
proportion of women working and the areas in which they worked
largely reverted back to pre-war characteristics. However, there were
some significant changes — at least working conditions had im-
proved over what they had been a decade or two earlier. Hours of
paid work for women declined slightly from those at the turn of the
century, from around sixty to fifty-two to fifty-five hours a week.
The average age of women workers also rose as an increasing pro-
portion of women over twenty-five entered the work force and fewer
and fewer girls between ten and nineteen. However, the decline in
the number of young girls does not seem to indicate they were going
to school. In his study of Montreal, Anatomy of Poverty, Terry Copp
comes to the conclusion that many stayed at home to look after the
younger children while their mothers went out to work.
This movement towards older women in the work force corre-
sponds with the drop in the relative importance of female factory
Women's Work in Canada 33
work, a longtime work area for young, single women, which was
particularly evident in the twenties. Between 1921 and 1931, the
percentage of women working in manufacturing dropped from 18 to
13 per cent, while those working in the service industry and in clerical
jobs rose from 46 to 52 per cent. The composition of service work
was likewise changing. Women working in domestic service dropped
from 42 per cent in 1901 to 26 per cent in 1921 and continued falling
in subsequent decades.
Despite the fierce depression in the early years of the twenties,
some real gains were made by labour even in the face of the virtual
destruction of the organized labour movement. A number of mini-
mum wage acts were established, with Manitoba and British Colum-
bia leading the way in 1918 (though perhaps the most important
effect was to put a floor under male wages rather than benefit women
directly). Quebec, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Ontario followed
in 1920. Women were not involved in the regulatory commissions
established, however, and the wage levels set were inadequate and
in any case did not cover home, farm or piece work. The only other
protective legislation was the implementation in 1921 of a six-week
maternity leave in British Columbia.
Economic changes that had begun before the war re-emerged in
the later twenties when a second merger wave furthered the rise of
corporate capitalism with its application of principles of scientific
management, job stratification and, in response to the labour upheav-
als after the war, measures of corporate welfarism — principles
applied not only to the production floor but to the increasing corpo-
rate bureaucracies. The result, as one student of the process has
noted, "was a highly rationalized office in which deskilled jobs were
defined as suitable women's work." The triumph of industrialism
was not without its benefits. Real wages did improve and male wages
rose sufficiently to constitute a living family wage.
Neither protective legislation, industrial growth nor higher real
wages, however, proved any protection against the ravages of the
Great Depression of the thirties. Production fell dramatically, unem-
ployment rose to around a quarter of the labour force, and wages fell.
Wage rates by 1931 were already below the levels of 1921. Women
were especially hurt, as they tended to be the first let go. Less skilled
and less organized than men, they were easy victims. There was a
particular social opposition to married women working because it
was seen as a threat to the jobs of men and their ability to support
families. Indeed, Ruth Roach Pierson notes that except during the
34 Women and Work
wartime period when there was a shortage of qualified teachers and
civil servants, "the policy of most school boards and provincial and
municipal civil services as well as of the federal government itself
(until 1955), was to require women to relinquish their positions at
marriage or, alternatively, at first pregnancy."
This attitude towards married women was exemplified in the
debate over the various unemployment insurance plans proposed in
1935,1938 and 1940, and in the actual provisions of the one finally
adopted in 1940. The basic assumption underpinning the entire de-
bate was that women were either "single, independent working
women" (young women, not yet married), or "dependent
wives/mothers." Since the former would have no dependents and the
latter were assumed to be looked after by a male receiving a "family
wage," the Unemployment Insurance scheme, in Pierson's words
"sought to preserve, not eliminate, wage differentials of both class
and gender ... [W]omen's principal access to benefit was to be
through the indirect channel of dependants' allowances ... [which
served] to enforce their dependence [rather] than to entitle dependent
wives and children to adequate provision."
Women's wages were equally open to attack. An example of what
happened to women can be found in the experience of women work-
ing for Eaton's in Toronto, which led in part to the establishment of
the Royal Commission on Price Spreads. By 1935 some women were
making as little as $6.00 to $7.00 a week despite the fact that $12.50
was the established minimum subsistence level for women living on
their own. Piecework rates for dressmakers had been reduced by
more than 50 per cent, to $1.75 for twelve dresses after 1933 from
the previous level of $3.60. Women also faced an extension in hours;
it is estimated that on average they worked more than 10 per cent
longer hours than men, though female wages remained between 50
and 60 per cent of male wages, continuing the pattern of a half
century earlier.
The Second World War prompted a dramatic turn-around in the
economy and with it a relief from some of labour's problems. As
men left the work camps and relief lines to become soldiers and
industry started to expand again, women entered the labour market
in large numbers. The number of working women grew from 638,000
in 1939 to 1,077,000 by October of 1944, a growth of 69 per cent.
Women were offered incentives to entice them into the labour mar-
ket, including day care, tax breaks, and a registration and referral
service offered by the National Selective Service. (The NSS was
Women's Work in Canada 35
established in 1942 when it became obvious that the pools of unem-
ployed from the depression had completely dried up.) The NSS's
appeal to women's patriotism was hardly necessary after a decade of
depression. A survey of women over thirty-five who were working
(the least likely group to be in the labour force) found that only 9 per
cent were working out of patriotism. The majority, 60 per cent, gave
money as their reason.
For the same monetary reason women left their traditional areas
of work to enter the war industries where they received higher pay.
One result was a rising shortage of labour in the service industries,
hospitals, restaurants and hotels. The NSS responded with an aggres-
sive campaign to recruit women into the work force. Young, single
women were the prime target of this campaign, followed by childless
married women, and, finally, married women with children. All
women between twenty and twenty-four years of age (excepting
nuns, the sick or the criminal) were registered. The problem the
agency encountered was that the young, single group targeted as the
first reserve of labour had already been largely utilized in the indus-
trially developed areas. Concentration was then shifted to encourage
unmarried women to move from the less-developed and rural areas
to where jobs were available.
The campaigns were vigorous and aggressive. Female industrial
workers were paraded. Advertisements, demonstrations and even
fashion shows of factory clothing were used to encourage women to
seek employment in the factories — except in Quebec where the
politicians feared that the public was still too socially conservative
to accept the idea of a working mother. Campaigns were tailor-made
to fit the needs of a particular area. In Ottawa, for instance, there was
an appeal to former civil servants to work in the government war
offices.
As the recruitment proceeded and women with children were
involved, the issues of child care and women's position as tax de-
ductions on their husbands' incomes had to be resolved to entice
women into the labour market. The federal government moved to
solve these problems with an offer of cost-sharing with the provinces
for day care and changes in the income tax act. Under the day-care
provisions twenty-eight new day nurseries were established in On-
tario and five in Quebec, hardly a major program. Under the tax
revisions husbands retained their wives' marriage exemption regard-
less of the wives' earnings. These concessions were only temporary,
however.
36 Women and Work
As the men returned from the front and went back to their old jobs,
women were informed that their obligation was finished. The federal
government stopped funding day care, and most of the centres —
including all the Quebec centres — disappeared. The tax law was
also changed, putting a limit of $250 a year on the amount a woman
could earn without affecting her husband's deductions. It would
appear from the complaints of employers that it was this tax measure
that encouraged many married women to once again leave the labour
market or to restrict themselves to part-time work, leaving the field
to young, single women.
The Postwar Period
Despite the experience of women in the labour market during both
wars, there is little evidence that it comprised much more than a
temporary, war-induced aberration. Female participation rates in
1951 were only marginally higher than in 1941 and still well under
one-quarter of the potential female labour force. Most were still
young and single and concentrated in the same narrow range of
occupations. As after the First World War, however, the growth in
clerical occupations expanded, more than three times as rapidly as
the labour force generally, and women made up the majority of this
increase. By 1951 more than one out of every four employed women
were classed as clerical and they comprised 57 per cent of all clerical
workers, a rise from 50 per cent a decade earlier. The growth of
corporate capitalism had been given considerable impetus by war-
time mobilization and the postwar boom.
At the same time, wartime labour demand and the introduction of
capital-intensive technology was causing a revolution on the farm.
Between 1941 and 1951, the number of occupied farms in Canada
fell 15 per cent. Five years later the number had fallen a further 8
per cent. Urbanization and the decline of the family production unit
accelerated, creating the conditions for the revolution in women's
labour market participation that took off in the sixties and seventies.
The stage was set for the contemporary era.
Participation in the
Workplace
The historical record of women's work in Canada up until the con-
temporary era gives considerable support to the contention that
women have suffered from an inferior economic position in the
labour market relative to that of most working men. This is not to
say that life was ever very easy for most men but, in addition to the
basic struggle for a living wage and decent working conditions,
women suffered from a further double burden, discrimination in the
labour market and responsibility for the bulk of work in the home.
The postwar period, and the sustained economic growth that oc-
curred up until the stagflation of the seventies, have commonly been
thought to have produced a major social and economic transforma-
tion in North American society. Rising per capita incomes and the
spread of mass consumption led the prominent economist John Ken-
neth Galbraith to declare America The Affluent Society as early as
1958. But while incomes were growing, they were not growing
equally; while opportunities were expanding, they were not open to
all. The result was social unrest, particularly in the sixties, which
spawned the civil rights movement, the war on poverty and a massive
expansion of the education system. In Canada it also prompted the
spread of unionism to the public sector and a substantial expansion
in social programs. As evidenced by the appointment of the Royal
Commission on the Status of Women, it also brought forward a new
feminist movement critical of the restricted economic and career
opportunities available in the workplace and the general repression
of women in a male-dominated society. The problem was deemed
particularly acute because of the rapid rise in female participation in
the labour force, a rise that contributed to the image of the "new
working woman." The unresolved question, however, is, have the
social, legislative and economic changes of the last few decades really
changed the income and employment opportunities for women?
38 Women and Work
Figure 2-1
Participation Rates
D)
•centi
D-
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
1901* 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991
June (Census)
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
Annual Averages
Source: 1961, 1991 Censuses; Labour Force Historical Review; Women in the
Labour Force 75-507F, 1982.
Female Participation
We will leave consideration of the first aspect of the question, income
opportunities, to the next chapter. As to the second, employment
opportunities have changed in number, though not markedly in type,
and changed quite dramatically in recent years, at least up until the
1990s. There was a steady increase in this century in the proportion
of women working for pay rather than working only as unpaid labour
in the household up until 1990 (Figure 2-1). The increase was slow
but was constant in the earlier years of this century. From the 1960s
through the 1980s, however, this trickle has became a flood. The
increase in participation rates in both the sixties and seventies
equalled the total increase in the previous six decades, from 1901 to
Participation in the Workplace 39
Table 2-1
Participation Rates of Women by Marital Status
Status
Single
Married
Divorced/ Separated
Widowed
Total (15+ years)
1951
58.2
11.2
70.2
17.2
24.1
1981
65.0
51.4
64.5
18.3
52.3
1991
66.7
61.7
64.0
13.3
58.5
1998
64.3
62.3
64.6
10.0
58.1
Percentage of Female Labour Force by Marital Status
Status
Single
Married
Divorced / Separated
Widowed
Total (15+ years)
1951
62.1
30.0
1.1
6.8
100.0
1981
29.8
60.4
6.6
3.2
100.0
1991
25.7
64.4
7.8
2.1
100.0
1998
25.7
63.9
8.9
1.6
100.0
Sources: 1951 Census; Labour Force Historical Statistics.
1961. In the eighties, the rate of change moderated only slightly with
the participation rate increase averaging almost two-thirds of a per-
centage point per year. However, with the severe recession in the
early 1990s and the subsequent jobless recovery, at least before 1998,
women's participation actually fell by almost one and a half percent-
age points before recovering slightly in 1998 to a level still 0.6
percentage points below its 1990 peak.
By the nineties, six out of every ten women were in the labour
market (though with economic recession, free trade restructuring, the
disappearance of many jobs and the consequent high unemployment,
the increase in female participation rates dropped precipitously late
in the decade, averaging only 0.15 per cent between 1989 and 1991.
However, male participation rates in the same period fell by almost
2 per cent). Moreover, there has been a very significant change in
the characteristics of women working in the labour market. In the
early years of the century the vast majority of women in paid work
were single, a high percentage in the fifteen to twenty-four age group.
That is, they entered the labour market until marriage and family-
rearing responsibilities took them out of the market and into the
home. This remained true even by mid-century. In the great surge of
40 Women and Work
Figure 2-2
Female Participation Rates by Age
age Perceni
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
15-19 20-24 25-34
35-^4
Age
45-54 55-64
65+
Source: 1961-1971: Census (June Figures); 1981-1991: Statistics Canada, The
Labour Force Annual Averages (71-001; 71-220).
female participation over the last thirty years, however, this pattern
has greatly altered. Over 62 per cent of the married women in Canada
are now in the labour force, and in 1998 they represented just under
64 per cent of total female income earners, a pattern little changed
from the beginning of the decade (see Table 2-1).
This influx of married women into the labour force has signifi-
cantly changed the age structure of female workers. In earlier years
the predominant pattern was for women to enter the labour market
until they married or became pregnant, at which point they would
leave the labour force. After the family had grown up, a significant
number would re-enter the market, giving the pattern of female partici-
pation the typical "saddle" shape (Figure 2-2). By the mid-seventies,
however, this pattern had changed. Fewer and fewer women were
Participation in the Workplace 41
leaving the labour force to get married or raise a family. The saddle
had disappeared. By 1991 all trace of the reproduction function had
disappeared with participation rates peaking in the major family-
rearing age categories, 25-44 years. Female participation patterns are
more and more approaching male labour participation patterns.
In short, there has been a revolution in women's labour market
participation in the last four decades, a revolution marked by rapid
increases in total female participation, most particularly among mar-
ried women between the ages of twenty-four and fifty-five. What lies
behind this revolution?
Why the Increase in Female Participation?
It has been generally true for the last century that a large proportion
of single women, except perhaps for the daughters of the middle and
upper classes, have worked either to support themselves or to con-
tribute to the support of their families. The participation rate of single
female children (age fifteen plus) still living in the family was just
under 60 per cent by 1998 and fast approaching the comparable rate
for male children (64.1 per cent). The figure for unattached women
(single, widowed, divorced and separated not living in families) is
somewhat lower, just 44.6, still well below the comparable male rate
(70.8) and, in fact, falling slightly from the rate a decade earlier.
Adding to this number the female heads of households — 2,466,200
by 1998 — just over 36 per cent of all working women were without
husbands (unmarried, widowed, separated or divorced). Included in
this were over 1,056,000 female-headed, single parent families, the
number of which has multiplied in recent decades. According to the
1990 Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck study, single parent families,
the majority headed by women, were 6 per cent of all families in
1961. By 1986 this had almost tripled, to 17 per cent. With rates of
divorce and separation approaching a third of marriage rates and the
trend to more single women having and keeping their children (15
per cent of female-headed, single parent families in 1986), the
number of such families is increasing and is bound to continue to do
so. These are women who must work to support themselves and then-
dependents. The alternative — to rely on usually insufficient welfare
payments, support payments, widows' pensions or some other form
of transfer payment — is a recipe for poverty. Gunderson, Muszynski
and Keck, for example, report that in 1986 the rate of poverty for
single parent mothers who did not work in the labour market was
62.3 per cent. According to the National Council of Welfare Poverty
42 Women and Work
Profile 1996, for all single parent, female-headed families with children
under 18, the rate of poverty in 1996 was 61.4 per cent even including
the 46 per cent who had some labour market earnings. For the most
part, therefore, single women work just to put bread upon the table.
Nevertheless, it is not non-married women who have accounted
for the largest part of the tremendous upsurge in female participation.
This is illustrated by the dramatic increase in two-earner families and
the corresponding decrease in families where only the husband
worked (reported in the Gunderson, et al. poverty study). In 1961,
65 per cent of all families were traditional "male breadwinner" fami-
lies. By 1986 this had fallen to 12 per cent. Over the longer period
to 1998, families with both spouses working increased from 14 per
cent to 60 per cent. The explanation for this increase is not so
straightforward. Three explanations have been advanced in the eco-
nomic literature. The first is economic — women need to enter the
work force in order to maintain the real income of the family, par-
ticularly in a period of steadily rising prices, falling real incomes and
rising tax burdens, or to purchase goods considered necessities due
to rising expectations or social pressures. In 1996, the Poverty Profile
reported 10.5 per cent of coupled, working families were in poverty
but, without the wives' earnings, that figure would have more than
doubled to 21.4 per cent. In addition, with continuous high unem-
ployment, more married women need to work in order to guarantee
a measure of family income security, particularly with the erosion of
male wages that has taken place over the last two decades. Between
1976 and 1997, according to Statistics Canada's Earnings of Men
and Women, 1997, male real average earnings declined by around
seven per cent, a decline which was just barely offset by the rise in
female average earnings. Finally, since much of our social security
benefits — pensions, dental plans, supplemental health plans, dis-
ability pensions — are tied to paid employment, many women need
to work as insurance against family breakup, or death, disablement
or unemployment of a spouse.
The second explanation frequently put forward is social. Increas-
ing numbers of married women want to enter the labour market either
because smaller families and labour-saving household appliances
have, for some, made household work less time-consuming or less
fulfilling, or because higher educational attainment by women has
led to higher expectations of income, of job satisfaction, and of
having a career.
Participation in the Workplace 43
Table 2-2
Participation Rates of Women with Husband/Partner
Present, by Husband's Income, 1985
Participation Rates (%)
Husband's Income
Under $10,000
$10,000-19,999
$20,000-29,999
$30,000-39,999
$40,000-49,999
$50,000-59,999
$60,000 and over
All incomes
Total
46.9
53.9
63.0
62.0
60.3
57.5
54.9
57.3
Children Present
56.8
61.6
64.6
61.6
60.4
58.3
56.8
61.2
No Children Present
38.2
45.4
60.1
62.9
60.0
55.1
50.2
50.8
Source: Patricia Connelly and Martha MacDonald, Women in the Labour Force,
Table 3.
A third, similar argument advanced by economists is that rising
real wages in the labour market make it more attractive for women
to leave the home for paid work even though part of their income
must be used for day care, cleaning services, fast foods, extra cloth-
ing, and other work-related expenses, and despite the fact that they
must work at two jobs, one paid and one unpaid. Unstated in these
explanations is the obvious possibility that women may want to enter
the labour force for the independence that an income and career can
provide. The recent abolition of universality in family allowances
only serves to increase this effect since women living in middle-
income families will now be forced into the labour market if they
wish to receive any income independent of their spouses.
What evidence can be marshalled in support of these three argu-
ments? Evidence for 1971, presented in the first edition of Women
and Work, showed that participation rates of married women de-
clined steadily as their husband's income rose, which strongly sug-
gested that many married women are induced into the labour market
because of the low income of their spouse. The evidence from the
1986 Census (Table 2-2) is less clear. Female participation did peak
in the lower, but not the lowest, husband's income class and declined
thereafter as the husband's income rose. What is perhaps more in-
44 Women and Work
Table 2-3
Female Participation Rates
by Educational Attainment, 1998
Education
0-8 years
Some High School
High School Graduation
Some Post-Secondary
Post-Secondary Certificate/Diploma
University Degree
All
%
17.4
41.3
61.9
65.3
71.2
80.2
58.1
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998.
dicative of need is that it peaked at a lower income and was substan-
tially higher overall for women with children, particularly preschool
children. (Comparable statistics are not available for the period after
1986.)
These figures underestimate the effect that low spouse income has
in propelling women into the labour market because, as Table 2-3
shows, women with higher levels of education have higher levels of
labour market participation and women with higher levels of educa-
tion tend to marry men with similar educational status and, hence,
higher incomes. This means that if all women had the same educa-
tional level, the effect of spouses' income on women's participation
would be much greater than that shown in Table 2-2.
The effect of spouses' income on participation should be expected:
if the husband makes a low income, is unemployed or disabled, there
is strong pressure on the wife to go out to work to supplement the
monthly paycheck. Thus the low participation rates of women with
the two lowest husband's incomes categories is perhaps surprising.
However, it is in large measure explained by the fact that these
categories include many older and retired people whose participation
rates, male and female, are very low, rather than the younger women
who have higher participation rates. For example, women with young
children and ahusband with income in the $10,000-$19,999 category
have the highest female participation rate of all groups, at 66 per cent.
But husband's income does not explain why married women's
participation rates are rising over time across all income categories.
If the husband's real income has been rising over time, logic suggests
Participation in the Workplace 45
that there has been less pressure, not more, on wives of men at the
lower end of the wage scale to go out to work to supplement family
income. Indeed, there is some evidence that the pressure of low
family income on women's participation is decreasing as all wages
rise, though the issue is complicated by the declining ability of other
family members to contribute to family income, a subject we have
explored in the historical context. Still, that does not answer the basic
question of why married women's participation rates were rising'
when men's wages were rising and continued to rise, albeit slowly,
in the 1980s and 1990s when male wages were falling. Part of the
answer lies in the fact that at least some of the increase before 1990
is illusory. The rapid rise in participation rates of married women in
the postwar period coincides in part with the rapid decline in the
importance of agriculture in the labour force. However, farm wives,
though not usually counted as "in the labour force," are part of the
family production unit. Increased urbanization, therefore, leads to the
counting of women in the labour market who were not counted
previously even if, in reality, they were part of the effective labour
force. Monica Boyd, Margrit Eichler and John Hofley make the point
that
while in an agricultural setting the spouses were economically
dependent on each other, the modern full-time housewife is
economically dependent on her husband. As a result, her bar-
gaining position vis-a-vis her husband has deteriorated. This loss
is recouped, however, when she has an independent income.
In other words, there is a psychological pressure as well as an
economic pressure on the wife to participate in order to regain her
sense of self-worth.
The rise in real wage levels is also partly illusory. This is because
of the way we count economic activity, a way that leads to an
overestimate of the rise in real family income. The value of house-
hold production is not counted in a family's income, but if that
household production is transferred to the market, it is counted. This
includes everything from food preparation to babysitting, mending
and washing clothes. At the same time the ability of family workers
to contribute significantly to real family income through unpaid
home work is decreasing. Where children were once considered an
economic asset, the cost of raising children has now made them a
financial liability. The Manitoba Department of Agriculture, Family
46 Women and Work
Resource Management Guide for 1998 estimates the cost of raising
a child to age eighteen at around $160,000. Other recent studies have
put the costs of raising and educating children even higher, in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars for each child when this includes a
university education. While these estimates are based on professional
families and are undoubtedly, therefore, on the high side, the basic
point remains true. As more and more family work is absorbed by
or transferred to the marketplace, measured income rises because we
measure market activity — but at the cost of lost, unmeasured income
in household production.
This is compounded by the fact that many social benefits (for
example, the Canada Pension Plan, dental and life insurance, supple-
mental medical insurance) are tied to participation in the labour
market and that taxes must be paid in money. Whether or not the
goods and services provided by the public sector are worth the taxes
paid, there is no discretion or choice as to whether they are paid or
not. This is particularly true of land and education taxes and, in those
provinces that levy them, of medicare premiums.
Added to these direct pecuniary costs, which considerably reduce
the buying power of nominally increasing incomes, is the social
pressure, heavily reinforced if not initiated by advertising, to increase
consumption and to purchase new consumer durables; that is, to
maintain consumption standards relative to rising community expec-
tations. Given this combination of overestimated real income, rising
pecuniary costs, and rising expectations, the economic pressure on
wives to enter the labour market and contribute to money income has
become enormous.
This whole discussion is predicated on the assumption that real
incomes of the majority of workers have, in fact, continued to rise.
This is not the case for the average worker since the mid-1970s,
particularly after we account for the rise in base unemployment in
the recessions of the early eighties and again in the early nineties;
the rise in housing prices, and the steady increase in taxation, par-
ticularly consumption based taxes such as the GST. Male earnings
for full-year, full-time workers were lower by 7 per cent (before
taxes) in 1997 than they were in 1976. Comparable female earnings
did rise by around 15 per cent over the same 21-year period though
they have stagnated since 1992. The Economic Council of Canada
and Statistics Canada reported no increase in individual real income
between 1973 and 1990 and only a marginal increase in average
family incomes as a result of increased female labour market partici-
Participation in the Workplace 47
pation and longer hours for part-time workers. Given the massive
increases in consumption and income taxes initiated by the Conser-
vatives in the 1980s, average disposable incomes can be concluded
to have declined significantly. Competition from low-wage regions
of the United States, Mexico and other low-wage Third World coun-
tries as a consequence of the neo-liberal North American Free Trade
Agreement and the World Trade Organization (WTO) has contrib-
uted to the wage stagnation of the 1990s and the continuing high
levels of unemployment — all factors that have added to the need
for wives to provide a second income in many, if not most, families.
Nevertheless, as we have seen, women's participation (although
not married women's) stopped rising during the nineties. Undoubt-
edly, this was in large part owing to the recession in the early years
of the decade and the "jobless recovery" (persisting high levels of
unemployment) through most of the rest of the decade, which left
many younger and older women pessimistic about their job pros-
pects. As a result, an unknown number who would have entered the
labour market were discouraged from doing so.
The argument that household appliances and smaller families have
made household work less demanding and fulfilling, while increased
education makes labour market activity more lucrative and appeal-
ing, would seem to be only partially true. As noted previously,
increased education does have a positive and strong effect on labour
market participation. On the other hand, most studies indicate that,
despite the introduction of a steady stream of improved household
appliances, the time required for housework has not decreased much
over the decades, though some of the physical drudgery may have
been reduced. An American study, for instance, indicated that house-
hold work for a non-employed woman required about fifty-two hours
per week in 1924 and fifty-five hours per week in 1968. This is
almost exactly the same time requirement found in a Canadian study
reported in 1981. Figures for Toronto in 1980 quoted by Gunderson,
Muszynski and Keck for a five-day work week suggest that 36 hours
of home work were typical for non-employed housewives. (If women
put in the same time on weekends as during the week, this would
amount to 51 hours per week.) Employed wives in these studies
typically spend about half the amount of time or a little less on
housework and child care. The Toronto study, for instance, reported
employed women spent 16 hours in housework and child care in a
five-day work week.
48 Women and Work
A 1986 Statistics Canada study based on the General Social Sur-
vey reported that women in dual-earner families did 17.5 hours of
housework per week compared with but 6 hours and 53 minutes for
men. A 1992 update indicated that wives in dual-earner families put
in from 3.3 to 6.9 hours per day in housework depending on the
number of children (though time spent in child care was not included
in housework). More detailed analysis is provided by Karen Duncan
in her study of "Balancing Employment and Household Work Ac-
tivities: The Role of Workplace Location" which reports on the
housework of women who work for pay in the home and those who
work outside the home in 1992. For those women who worked for
pay in their homes the average time spent on housework was 286
minutes (4.8 hours) per day while those who worked outside their
homes spent less than half that much time, 135 minutes (2.25) hours.
Still, this represents a significant double burden on women workers,
since these studies also indicate that most men do not significantly
increase their household work to compensate for their wives' partici-
pation in the labour market. The Toronto study reported that men
with wives in the labour market spent only one hour more per five-
day week on housework for a total of 6.6 hours — but reduced their
labour market work by over three hours. On the other hand, the 1983
study by Meg Luxton of wives in Flin Flon, Manitoba, indicated that
at least some men were beginning to take more responsibility for
work in the home, though with uncertain effects on the total time
required of the women. The Statistics Canada studies also indicate
that men are taking more responsibility for home work though, as the
1986 figures indicate, the burden is still very lopsided. Interestingly,
the work load tends to be more evenly shared by higher income and
higher educated men than by those with lower income and education.
The latest information on household work is contained in the 1992
General Social Survey and reported in Ronald Bodkin's 1999 paper
"Gender Differences in the Canadian Economy." Married women
with children and who are also working were reported to spend an
average of between 23 and 32 hours a week in combined domestic
work and child care depending on the age of the child. When no
children are present, housework drops to just under 20 hours per
week. Women who are not working but who have spouses typically
reported time spent in domestic work and child care at from half to
two-thirds more than women working outside the home — that is
from 32 hours for women without children to 38 hours with children
over 5; and 50 hours for women with children under 5 years. For
Participation in the Workplace 49
Table 2-4
Participation Rates of Women by Family Status
and Age of Youngest Child, 1998
Participation Rates (%)
Total, All Women
With preschool
children)
With school-age
child(ren)
Without children
under 16
Without children
under 16, age under
55 years
Total,
Alt Women
62.6
66.8
78.1
55.3
79.5
With Employed
Husband
76.3
71.1
80.1
76.3
83.0
With
Non-Employed
Husband
28.3
52.0
64.4
22.9
61.6
With No
Husband
61.5
53.9
76.4
55.4
79.7
(Note that the low participation rates of women without children is primarily a
reflection of their age. This can be seen by comparing the last two rows, all
women without children and women without children who were under age 55.)
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998.
men, the comparable figures are 7, 13 and 18 hours per week or
one-third of the time spent by women.
Employed wives in these studies typically spent about a half to
two-thirds the amount of time or a little less on housework and child
care as do full-time housewives. Perhaps the most important aspect
of work in the home and the one most likely to deter women from
participation in the work force is child rearing. The data from the
labour force survey strongly supports this contention for all types of
family status, particularly when the children were of preschool age
(Table 2-4). This is not surprising given the record in Canada in the
provision of day-care spaces. According to Connelly and MacDon-
ald, in 1986 there were over 1.17 million children under six years of
age of working mothers while day-care spaces reported in 1984
numbered only 172,000. This means that there were around seven
children for every child-care space. The other million children of
mothers working for pay were looked after by a combination of
unpaid family members and paid babysitters. Nevertheless, partici-
pation rates have continued to rise quite rapidly, particularly for
women with both preschool and school-age children (Table 2-4).
50 Women and Work
However, there is a significant decline in female participation as the
number of children, both preschool and school-age, increases. This
is particularly marked for single-parent families. For example, in
1986, the participation rate for lone parents with only one child was
56.2 per cent; with 4 or more children 44.1 per cent (Connelly and
MacDonald). Interestingly, however, the participation rates were
higher for all women with two children than with only one —
perhaps a reflection of financial need.
The National Council of Welfare has estimated that in 1988 there
were almost two million children of working parents who were under
the age of 13 and required some form of day care. However, there
were only sufficient licenced day-care spaces to accommodate 12.8
per cent of these children. The 1997 Canadian National Child Care
study, Shared Diversity, reported that in 1991 there was a need for
1.4 million day care spaces and only 350,000 (or around 22 per cent)
available. Infant care among preschoolers has the greatest deficiency
in available spaces. This suggests that despite the declining birth rate
(26 per 1,000 population in 1961, 17 per 1,000 in 1971, 15 per 1,000
in 1981, just marginally over 15 per 1,000 in 1991 and just over 12
per 1,000 in 1996), the resulting decline in family size and the
tendency for women to have their children closer together over a
smaller age range have contributed to rising participation rates. This
is only part of the answer, however, and raises a further question: is
participation rising because of falling fertility, or is fertility falling
because of rising participation? Observers who stress the former
explanation tend to argue that improved contraception bears major
responsibility. However, the bulk of the information above, we be-
lieve, supports the second; that is, that increased participation in the
labour market is one of the major contributing factors to falling
fertility rates and smaller families. From the perspective of potential
young parents, the difficulty and cost of raising a family, particularly
a large family, leads them to postpone parenthood and have fewer
children in order that the wives may work.
It would be useful here to elaborate on a number of factors that
induce women into paid work. First, there are the economic pressures
enumerated above, not least the rising costs of raising children —
both the direct costs and the "opportunity costs" (the income lost in
not going out to work) of foregone employment income. A second
factor, more difficult to document, is the rate of family dissolution
through widowhood, divorce and separation. But it is not only wid-
ows, divorcees and separated women who are affected. There have
Participation in the Workplace 51
been numerous accounts in the media, and in government and social-
agency reports, of the poverty problems encountered by single-
parent, female-headed families that result from their failure to earn
decent incomes; and by widows who fail to build up pension entitle-
ment rights or who have had careers interrupted by family rearing.
Thus, even for married women not as yet directly affected, the threat
of such poverty is a strong inducement to enter and remain in the
labour market as a form of insurance against the future quite apart
from the independence and satisfaction the work itself may provide.
Finally, we cannot ignore the conventional economic argument
that higher money wages, at least until the last decade or so, have
made the "opportunity cost" of leisure and work in the home pro-
hibitively high, pulling women into the labour market. This argument
has been taken up by more radical economists, though with a differ-
ent emphasis. Capitalist development, they contend, increases pro-
ductivity in the industrial sectors serving the market through the
mechanism of bringing a number of workers together in "cooperative
organization" (with division of labour) and applying increasing
amounts of capital equipment to the production process. The house-
hold, on the other hand, has remained backward, a backwater of low
productivity due to minimal capital accumulation and individual
production. One example frequently cited is the mass production of
clothing which has made it cheaper to purchase ready-made clothes
than to produce them in the home. This has been exacerbated in
recent years by the expansion of free trade and lowered trade barriers
that has allowed production of these household-competing goods to
be manufactured in Third World countries at wages upon which
Canadian women could not survive. Such being the case, it is only
rational (in the sense that orthodox economists use that term) for
women, if there is a choice, to enter into paid employment even
though it means a double workload of paid and unpaid work.
The evidence, therefore, is that economic need, social and indi-
vidual attitudes, and individual choice are all factors propelling
women into the labour market from the early sixties to the early
nineties at an accelerated pace though, as noted, the poor labour
market conditions of the 1990s seems to have stopped the growth in
participation. However, this stoppage was not universally the case.
In particular among younger, married women with children, partici-
pation rates continued to rise, although only by just over two per-
centage points between 1991 and 1998. The stereotype of the
housewife taking paid work as a temporary respite from the isolation
52 Women and Work
and boredom of the household or to earn a little extra to purchase a
car, some other appliance, or a family holiday, though it cannot be
dismissed entirely, does not explain either the pervasiveness nor the
magnitude of the movement of women, in particular married women,
into the labour market. Were it not for a lot of unrecorded paid work
in babysitting, house cleaning, home sewing and catering, the move-
ment may indeed have been larger. The reasons, as we have argued,
are much more fundamental and immediate. (Further, the results of
Gunderson's econometric study of women's participation on the
basis of data from the 1991 Census generally coincide with our
descriptive data presented above.)
Regardless of these factors pushing women into the market, how-
ever, the movement could not have been sustained without a corre-
sponding increase in employment opportunities for women. It is the
lack of increase in employment opportunities for women in the 1990s
— indeed a contraction in some traditional female occupations —
that has resulted, we would argue, in the stagnation of women's
participation in the 1990s.
The Demand for Women Workers
There is one overwhelming fact that has characterized the movement
of women into the labour market. They have been employed in a very
narrow range of occupations, a range that has changed negligibly
throughout this century. The vast majority of women have been and
continue to be employed in clerical, personal service and trade oc-
cupations, and in the teaching and nursing professions. This is clearly
evident in Table 2-5. What dominates this picture is the rise in, and
continuing importance of, clerical work until the 1980s. In 1986,
around one out of every three women workers in Canada was em-
ployed in a clerical occupation. One out of every four in 1986 was
employed in only five specific clerical occupations (The leading
occupations in the old four-digit Canadian Classification and Dic-
tionary of Occupations code). This constitutes a ghettoization of
women workers of formidable proportions, as illustrated in Table
2-6, that has only been slightly reduced in the last decade. (Readers
should be cautioned that the classification of occupations in 1990 and
1998 is on a different basis than earlier ones, meaning that the figures
are not readily comparable. Small changes, therefore, may not be
significant. Comparisons of 1990 and 1998 are, however, valid.)
Nevertheless, the growth of these traditional ghettos has provided
the opportunity for women to expand their market participation
Participation in the Workplace 53
Table 2-5
Distribution of the Female Labour Force
by Occupation Group, 1911-98
(%)
Occupational Group
Professional
Clerical
Sales (Commercial
and Financial)
Service
Total
1911
12.7
9.4
6.7
37.2
66.0
1931
17.8
17.7
8.4
33.9
77.8
1961"
15.1
28.8
6.1
22.4
72.7
1971
16.1
30.5
7.0
17.0
71.0
1980
18.2
33.9
10.3
18.5
80.9
199&
16.9
C
27.3
11.1
19.2
74.6
199$
19.4
e
22.9
11.1
19.9
73.3
a There is a change in occupational classification in 1961. Under the earlier
classification, the total figure would have been 76.9 rather than 72.7 per cent,
b The occupational classification in 1990 and 1998 differs quite substantially
from that in earlier years. Hence, the figures are not comparable with those in
1980 and before, although an attempt was made to make them as comparable
as possible. Trends between 1990 and 1998 are comparable,
c Of the professional classification, 77.2 per cent were made up of teachers,
medical and health employees in 1990. By 1998, this had fallen slightly to
72.3 per cent.
Sources: S. Ostry and M. Zaidi, Labour Economics in Canada; Manitoba
Department of Labour, Women in the Manitoba Labour Market; Statistics
Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998, 71F0004CXG.
greatly up to the present time although, as the figures for the 1990s
indicate, this growth is not continuing in the face of the new elec-
tronic technology that has invaded the office, and the retrenchment
of public administration and social services employment, a subject
taken up in Chapter 5.
Part-time work is another factor that has allowed, perhaps even
encouraged, some women to enter the labour market even when
bearing a double burden of household work and child rearing. As
Table 2-7 shows, in 1998 well over a quarter (28.6 per cent) of all
women employees were working part-time, a rate that has risen fairly
steadily since the mid-seventies, up from 20.3 per cent in 1975. (The
comparable figures for male workers are 10.5 per cent in 1998 and
5.1 per cent in 1975). Although young women comprised a dispro-
portionate share of the increase, over two-thirds of female part-time
workers are in the twenty-five years and older category compared
with half of male workers. (At that, the male figure for older workers
54 Women and Work
Table 2-6
Women as a Percentage of Total Labour Force
by Occupational Group, 1901-1998a
Occupational Group
Managerial
Professional
Clerical
Sales/commercial
Services
Primary and blue
collar
All occupations
1901
3.6
42.5
22.1
10.4
68.7
13.7
13.4
1931
4.9
49.5
45.1
26.0
62.1
10.4
17.0
1961
10.3
43.2
61.5
40.3
50.0
19.8
27.3
1971
15.7
48.1
68.4
30.4
46.2
28.4
34.3
1980
25.6
49.7
78.4
40.4
54.4
37.3
- 40.0
1990
33.8
50.9
72.8
56.2
55.7
15.2
44.4
1998
37.5
53.1b
74.3
56.6
57.9
16.2
45.4
Figures before 1971 are based on 1951 occupational classification; after 1971
and before 1990 on the CCDP classification; and 1990 and after on the 1991
occupational classification. Gunderson suggests that the rise in the female
percentage of managerial occupations from 1961 to 1971 and the corresponding
drop in female sales percentage are due in large measure to transferring of sales
managers, predominantly male, from managerial to sales classifications. In
teaching occupations, women constituted 62.4 per cent of the labour force; in
medicine and health, 76.3 per cent.
Sources: Morley Gunderson, "Work Patterns"; Manitoba Department of Labour,
Women in the Manitoba Labour Marker, Statistics Canada, Labour Force
Historical Review, 1998 (71F0004CXG).
is inflated by the effects of the recession and the jobless recovery.)
That is, half of the male part-time workers are young, probably
students, working to support their studies. In fact, just under 40 per
cent of male part-time workers in 1998 were in school compared with
less than 21 per cent of the women. The majority of women, how-
ever, are older — most likely wives supplementing family income
or single-parent mothers attempting to juggle family responsibilities
and avoid dependence on welfare.
Part-time work is not, in itself, a problem. Students and women
with small children frequently seek such work. Problems arise, how-
ever, if people are forced to work part-time because full-time work
is not available or if employers find it more profitable to employ
several people part-time rather than a smaller number full-time and
thus avoid paying fringe benefits such as pensions and insurance, or
because it allows them to pay lower wages, since part-time workers
are more frequently not covered by union contracts. Also, part-time
workers seldom have access to job security or to promotion ladders.
Participation in the Workplace 55
Table 2-7
Part-time Workers as a Percentage of all Workers
A$e and Sex
Women
15-24
25 +
15 +
Men
15-24
25 +
15 +
1975
22.1
19.4
20.3
17.1
1.7
5.1
1980
27.2
22.4
23.8
19.4
2.1
6.0
1991
43.3
21.3
25.5
35.2
3.9
8.8
1998
37.8
24.0
28.6
37.8
6.1
10.5
Source: Manitoba Department of Labour, Women in the Manitoba Labour
Market; Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998
(71F0004CXG).
Over a quarter of women worked part-time because only part-time
work was available while one half did so by choice and/or to accom-
modate family responsibilities. Involuntary part-time employment is
a growing problem as neo-liberal restructuring of the economy takes
place (described in Chapter 5).
Thus, a limited range of occupational choice and a high percentage
of part-time work are distinguishing characteristics of the expansion
of female labour market opportunities, characteristics that have not
proven conducive to economic equality for women and which do not
bode well for their economic position in the future. The pervasive
fact in this century is that more and more women have entered the
labour market, but in a narrow range of occupations and at inferior
pay to men. We will now turn to the question of the reasons for the
inferior economic position of women.
Wages and Inequality
The advertising industry, having discovered the "new working woman,"
has increasingly portrayed her as affluent, powerful and upwardly mo-
bile. While the overtly sexist advertisement of two decades ago,
"You've come a long way, Baby," is undoubtedly true of cigarette
consumption and the incidence of lung cancer in women, it is simply
wrong if the true measure is earnings, income and career opportunities.
In 1911 the average wage of employed women stood at 53 per cent of
the average of male wages. In 1931 it was 60 per cent. By 1990 the
average earned income of women who worked full-time the entire year
was 67.6 per cent of men's full-year earnings. In 1997 this had risen
further to 72.5 per cent, while the average earnings of all working
women, including those working part-time or part-year, was still only
63.8 per cent of those of all men (see Figure 3-1). The annual income
of women was similarly only 61.8 per cent of male incomes, though
this does constitute a gain of around 2.4 per cent over 1990.
For every occupation group, for every age group, for part-and full-
time workers, for every educational level and every region of Canada,
men received higher average earnings. Although there has been some
noticeable improvement in relative wages in the last three decades, it is
slow and uncertain. The dollar gap between men's and women's earn-
ings, which continued to grow until the 1990s, has since narrowed but
only slightly and not in all occupational categories. Table 3-1 gives a
comparison of statistics on incomes and earnings that indicates the
dimensions of male/female differentials. Only one conclusion can be
drawn from these figures. Over time, and across all characteristics: age,
education, occupation and weeks worked, women still have a long way
to go. The question we want to pursue in this chapter is why women's
relative economic position still lags so significantly despite three
decades of recognition that income inequality was a major problem.
Perhaps the most frequently mentioned explanation is outright discrimi-
nation. Employers pay men more than women for the same jobs because
they have a preference for male workers. Orthodox economists (admit-
Wages and Inequality 57
Figure 3-1
Women's Earnings as a Percentage of Men's
0
O)
B
c
0
o
Pen
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
»**"""™**^
Full-time, Full-year Worker Average Earnings
All Workers Average Earnings
76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97
Year
Source: Statistics Canada, Earnings of Men and Women, (13-217-XIB).
tedly mostly men) raise an important objection to this argument.
According to them, if this preference were the case, then a smart
employer would hire only lower-wage women, undercut the market,
and drive the higher-priced competition out of existence. Only if
there were a universal and all-inclusive conspiracy by employers to
discriminate would women's wages be held consistently below
men's. Although some feminists are prepared to argue for the exist-
ence of this conspiracy, the history of attempts to regulate markets
makes us skeptical of any explanation that relies on conspiracy to
maintain market control, particularly across the economy and over
long periods of time. This does not mean that discrimination does
not exist, but rather that the basis of the discrimination lies in factors
more complex than straightforward sexual preference.
58 Women and Work
Table 3-1
Female Earnings as a Percentage of Male, 1997
(Full-time, Full-year Workers)*
Axe
15-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55+
All Ages
80.8
76.3
73.4
69.8
66.4
72.5
Education
0-8 years
Some high school
High school graduation
Some post-secondary
Post-secondary
certificate/ diploma
University degree
69.6
64.6
73.0
75.0
70.6
73.6
Marital Status
Single
Married
Other
91.8
67.5
80.3
Work Activity
Full-time, full-year*
All others (i.e. not full-time,
full-year)
Part-time, part-year
Full-time, part-year
Part-time, part-year
72.5
78.6
92.2
66.3
62.4
Selected Occupational Groups**
Managerial and Administrative
Professional***
Clerical
Sales
Service
Processing
Fabrication
Transport
Materials Handling
Agriculture
Full-time, Full-Year*
65.5
73.2
80.8
73.1
64.8
66.1
64.0
78.8
63.7
73.1
All Workers
62.4
66.9
76.8
58.4
59.3
59.7
58.4
67.2
72.7
62.4
* Full-year equals 49-52 weeks per year; full-time equals 30 or more hours per
week.
** Occupations where the sample is inadequate for reliable estimates (other
primary, other crafts, machining and construction) are not reported.
*** "Professional" is a weighted average of five professional occupational
sub-groups.
Source: Statistics Canada, Earnings of Men and Women, 1997 (13-217).
Wages and Inequality 59
Many observers who note the inferior economic position of
women place the blame on women's labour market qualifications.
Indeed, some go even further and suggest (as a number of right-wing
economists and think tanks actually argue) that women are paid less
because they are not willing to work as hard as men. This view
represents the more extreme sexist version of this position. It is less
easy, however, to dismiss the explanation that women, on average,
have less education, training and work experience than men do and
that this is reflected in relative wages.
Also more persuasive is the argument that women's wages are low
because women are confined to low-wage occupations. This, of course,
does not explain why women enter these occupations or why these
occupations are poorly paid. Nevertheless, the concentration of women
in a small number of relatively low-paid occupations is easily demon-
strated. The relevant question is, Why? We have already established
that the average woman's earnings and income are approximately 60
per cent of that of an average man. It is important now to establish
whether this difference occurs because women are paid less for the same
work — which is wage discrimination — or because women are shunted
off into low-wage ghettos — which is job discrimination.
Wage Discrimination
The facts are that over the broad occupational classes, women make
considerably less than men and that the differentials are not declining
much over time. The figures speak for themselves (see Table 3-2).
The real question, however, is not as much in these broad occupation
aggregates as it is in individual occupations. Here the evidence is
neither quite so clear nor so dramatic. Table 3-3 gives ratios of
earnings of a selection of more detailed occupations in Canada in
1985. These ratios indicate that wage discrimination on an individual
occupation basis is considerably less than on the broader occupa-
tional aggregate basis. Even the earnings differentials demonstrated
in Table 3-3 exaggerate the difference in wages by occupation in that
women, even those working full-time, on average, work fewer hours
per week. In 1998 the average hours worked by women working
full-time was between 10 and 14 per cent less than those of men
(depending on what measure is used). The Ontario Green Paper on
Pay Equity, released in 1985, estimated that over 40 per cent of the
earnings differential of full-time, full-year workers in 1981 could be
accounted for by differences in hours worked. A study for the Eco-
nomic Council of Canada, based on data from the 1981 census,
60 Women and Work
Table 3-2
Women's Earnings as a Proportion of Men's
by Selected Occupational Group: 1990 and 1997
Average Earnings of Full-time, Full-year Workers
Managerial and Administrative
Professional
Clerical
Sales
Service
Processing
Fabrication
Transport
1990
%
60.9
70.9
72.7
60.2
60.5
58.6
60.6
60.7
3997
%
65.5
73.2
80.8
73.1
64.8
66.1
64.0
78.8
Absolute Difference
1997 ($)
19,584
13,569
6,7X2
10,632
11,709
13,769
13,727
8,143
Source: Statistics Canada, Earnings of Men and Women, 1990,1997 (13-217).
indicated that women worked only around three-quarters the number
of hours that men worked and that strict adherence to the principle
of equal pay for equal work — that is, abolishing explicit wage
discrimination — would improve women's relative incomes only
marginally. Both this study and the Ontario Green Paper estimate
that wage discrimination alone accounts for only four to five percent-
age points of the difference in male/female earnings. That means that
eliminating simple wage discrimination would reduce the earnings
differential of full-time, full-year workers by 15 per cent or less, in
1997 from 27.5 per cent to around 23 per cent, even if there has been
no reduction in wage discrimination in the last two decades. Given
the spread of pay equity (equal pay for work of equal value) legisla-
tion and programs since these studies were done, particularly in the
public sector, we would expect that the amount of wage discrimina-
tion would have decreased below the four percentage points found
in the earlier period. The most recent decomposition of the causes of
male/female income and earnings differentials is contained in Morley
Gunderson's 1998 study, Women and the Canadian Labour Market,
which was based on data from the 1991 Census. He found that, fairly
consistently over different age groups, female workers, on average,
worked approximately 80 per cent as long hours as male workers did.
This left unexplained a differential of around 16 per cent in earnings.
He also found that about half the earnings differential could be
Wages and Inequality 61
Table 3-3
Female/Male Earnings by Selected Occupation, 1995
Occupation
All Occupations
Clerical Workers
Sales
Service
Manufacturing Occup.
Number of
Occupational Groups
4
4
5
3
% of Female
Employment
100.0
26.0
11.2
19.7
4.6
Wage Ratio as
%
63.2
82.8
67.9
77.6
59.4
Specific Occupations
University teachers
Elementary school
teachers
Secondary school
teachers
Nurses
Health Assistants
Number of
Occupational Groups
1
1
1
1
1
% of Female
Employment
0.5
2,8
1.2
3.5
2.1
Wage Ratio as
%
56.0
80.0
78.3
86.3
81.6
Total of selected major female
occupations and occupational groups
71.6
Source: Statistics Canada, Census, 1996.
attributed to different "endowments of wage determining charac-
teristics" such as education and training, and half to discrimination,
"differences in pay for the same characteristics."
The most frequent explanations for the remaining wage and earn-
ings disparity not related to hours or simple wage discrimination are
a combination of job discrimination — segregation of women into
low-paying occupations — and a relative shortage among women of
income-enhancing characteristics — education, training, work expe-
rience and unionization. (Unionization does tend to reduce wage
disparities, a subject we take up in Chapter 7.) There is evidence to
support the argument that this relative shortage is a significant factor
in the earnings differential. Studies both in Canada and elsewhere
that try to standardize for training and work experience suggest that
about half the difference in earnings at the level of the broad occu-
pational categories is accounted for by these two factors. The Ontario
Green Paper's estimate is somewhat lower, a quarter or less of the
difference in full-time earnings. But whatever the actual figure, the
62 Women and Work
conclusion of a 1979 study for the Economic Council of Canada
remains:
In short, full-time native-born paid employees who are women
earn less than men because they do not benefit from the income
relevant characteristics (education, training and experience) in
the same manner as men.
Figures for professional workers with the same education and
work experience bear this conclusion out. Even after standardization,
women's earnings are less than men's though the differentials are
considerably reduced, especially in those areas, such as teaching, that
are highly unionized. Differentials between male and female teachers
with similar experience reported in the late seventies were 4 per cent
or less. Canadian Social Trends reported that in 1985-86 female
principals' salaries were 96 per cent of those of male principals in
elementary schools and 97 per cent in secondary schools, a marked
reduction in inequality from a decade earlier. However, women were
significantly underrepresented in these higher administrative ranks
which partially accounts for the much higher differential in earnings
at the broader occupational categories of elementary and secondary
school teachers reported in Table 3-3.
However, the fact that women may have less training and experi-
ence can be attributed, at least in part, to a broader form of discrimi-
nation in schools and in society generally which tends to downplay
women's career aspirations on the assumption that women will be
forced to withdraw from the labour force for a significant period of
time to act as home-maker, doing unpaid family work. Certainly,
such withdrawal does have a very significant and direct effect in
reducing continuous work experience. The evidence suggests that
this has a major negative impact on women's earnings. Single
women (full-time, full-year) received 91.8 per cent of the earnings
of single men in 1997, compared with 72.5 per cent for all women
and men. Also* women in the fifteen to twenty-four age bracket, most
of whom will have had uninterrupted work experience, earned 80.8
per cent of male earnings. But by the thirty-five to forty-four age
bracket, this ratio had fallen to 73.4 per cent. Although this is not
conclusive evidence that disruption of work experience for family
obligations is a major cause of low earnings, it certainly supports this
conclusion.
Wages and Inequality 63
The bulk of the evidence, nevertheless, leads us to conclude that
women receive significantly lower wages than men for the same type
of jobs even when an adjustment is made for education and experi-
ence. On the other hand, there is also evidence that the earnings
differential arises not just because they receive lower wages for the
same or similar jobs but because women have been channelled into
a number of low-wage job ghettos.
Job Discrimination
As pointed out previously, the majority of women enter a very few
occupational categories, and these in general have income levels well
below the average for all workers, male and female. Clerical earn-
ings, for example, were only 80.5 per cent of average earnings in
1995. Service incomes were even lower, for the largest service group
less than 50 per cent of average earnings, though women's wage and
salary incomes in a broad range of services were almost three quar-
ters of the male level. Average sales incomes for both male and
female workers together were closer to the average for all workers
(75 per cent), but there is a major difference between males and
females in this sector. Women's earnings in wholesale were less than
two-thirds of men's, although men's earnings were well above the
average for all male workers. Women retail sales clerks, in contrast,
had earnings just over half the average level for men in the same
occupation. What this suggests is that, while women make less than
men in virtually all occupational groups, a significant component of
the apparent wage discrimination against women is in occupational
selection rather than outright wage discrimination.
Of course, this only tells part of the story. Within these broad
categories are contained many specific occupations and women are
disproportionately represented in the lower paid of these. It is sig-
nificant that merely redistributing women among the broader occu-
pational classes so as to match the occupational distribution of men
would not in itself bring more income equality for women. The
reason is that in the male-dominated broad occupational categories
there is greater wage disparity between men and women than in
female-dominated categories. As Morley Gunderson noted in 1976:
Equalizing the occupational distribution would, to a large ex-
tent, transfer women from clerical and teaching occupations,
where the earnings differential is small, to primary and blue-
collar jobs, where the earnings gap is large.
64 Women and Work
Table 3-4
Ten Highest-Paid Occupations by Sex, 1995
Occupation
ludges
Physicians - Specialists
Physicians - General
Practitioners
Dentists
Sr. Managers - Goods
Sr. Managers - Finance
Sr. Managers - Trade
Lawyers
Primary Product Managers
Petroleum Engineers
All Occupations
Women as % of total
employment
20.0
28.3
30.4
21.9
9.9
19.2
16.6
30.8
6.6
7.4
46.9
Female/Male
income ratio
92.0
59.4
67.1
60.4
52.9
61.2
63.2
60.8
56.0
69.5
63.2
Source: Statistics Canada, Census, 1996.
What this means, on the other hand, is that if women received the
same wages and hours as men, even if they remained in the same
occupational sectors, as much as three-quarters of the earnings gap
would be eliminated.
However, once one starts to break down these broad occupational
categories into specific occupations, the picture begins to change. In a
study of retail food store wages in Winnipeg, for instance, it was shown
that in the larger, unionized firms there was little difference in the
male and female wage for any particular occupation. However, check-
out clerks, mostly women, had a lower wage rate than stock clerks,
mostly men. Similarly, elementary school teachers, 8 1 per cent of whom
are women, received incomes in 1995 that were 9 per cent less than
those of secondary school teachers, just under 50 per cent of whom
are men; and 27 per cent less than university professors, two-thirds
of whom are men. In the medical field, doctors, dentists and veteri-
narians — male-dominated professions (71 per cent male in 1995)
— receive incomes three times as high as the female-dominated
profession of nursing. Cashiers, a female-dominated occupation (71
per cent), received roughly half of the wages and salaries of shippers
and receivers, mainly (80 per cent) men; telephone operators, in
majority women, again received less than four-fifths of the employ-
ment income of the male-dominated occupation of mail carrier. In
Wages and Inequality 65
sales, men tend to dominate the "big ticket" fields like cars, real
estate and appliances where commissions are substantial, while
women are concentrated in low-price fields where commissions are
small or non-existent. In fact, all of the ten highest paid occupations
reported in the 1996 census were heavily male-dominated (Table
3-4). In contrast, of the ten lowest-paid (less than $15,000 per year)
specific occupations with over 100,000 employees reported in the
1996 census, seven were female-dominated, representing over 20 per
cent of all female employment. It is worth noting that one of the
lowest paid occupations of all was child-care workers, 94 per cent
of whom were women.
How can we explain this ghettoization of women not only in a
small range of occupation areas but also in the low-wage jobs within
these areas, where there is little apparent opportunity for promotion
to higher-wage jobs? It is apparent from earnings data, for instance,
that women's average earnings flatten out after they reach their mid-
to late-twenties, while male earnings continue to increase for around
ten years, until they reach their late thirties or early forties. We will
explore some of the possible reasons given for both the ghettoization
of women and low relative wages and job status of women.
Overcrowding and the Reserve Army
The overcrowding hypothesis argues that the supply of labour rela-
tive to demand has been much greater in female-dominated occupa-
tions than in male-dominated occupations. As a result of the relative
excess supply, wages in female occupations have been and remain
lower by the force of competitive labour supply. This represents a
form of discrimination which, some have argued, originates in the
preference of employers to hire either men or women for particular
jobs even though there is no inherent difference between the sexes
in potential productivity. As we have pointed out, however, this
would require a general consensus among all employers to discrimi-
nate, and while this is not impossible, it is improbable and unlikely
to account for such large and persistent differences in wage rates. On
the other hand, it is probable that some unions, particularly in the
skilled trades, have contributed to some occupational discrimination
by restricting supply to prevent entry, not specifically of women, but
of low-wage competition to high-wage occupations. We will return
to this question later.
It would seem more logical, however, to look at the supply side
of the market and the influence of general social attitudes and insti-
66 Women and Work
nations. Stereotypes about what are appropriate jobs for men and
women are ingrained early in life, reinforced by role models, the
education system, counselling and by the societal expectation that
women's primary commitment is to the household and reproduction
function. This is confirmed by attitudinal studies of what most
women themselves consider as appropriate female work. The effect
of this social discrimination is to channel women into a narrow range
of occupations, which not only keeps wages in these jobs low but
also tends to undercut female wage levels in all other occupations
even when they attempt to enter non-traditional jobs. This, in turn,
creates the spectre of low-wage competition which encourages pre-
dominantly male unions to adopt policies of exclusion. As long as
there remains a large reserve army of unemployed women in the
household but available for work when the opportunity presents itself
— or of underemployed women who work part-time or at low-level,
low-wage jobs, yet who are capable of and willing to move into other,
more productive areas — there will be considerable downward pres-
sure on women's wages. The rapid rise over the last three decades
in female participation rates is a graphic demonstration of the size of
the reserve army and remains a formidable barrier to improvement
in the economic position of women workers. It is interesting to note
in this regard that as unemployment and underemployment (involun-
tary part-time) for women rose and remained high in the early nine-
ties, participation rates for women stagnated and only began to rise
again in the latter years of the decade as new jobs began to reappear.
This suggests that there remains an as yet untapped reserve of women
in their homes able and willing to enter the market as jobs become
available.
Much has been made recently of the progress of women into
non-traditional job areas. This is particularly pronounced in the man-
agement area but, as the National Action Committee on the Status
of Women has noted, these advances have been largely restricted to
the lower levels, women supervising other women. In some other
areas, such as engineering, the percentage increase of women has
been quite significant. However, the initial representation of women
was so small that the numbers themselves remain relatively insignifi-
cant. This is illustrated in Table 3-5, which shows the change in
women's participation in some traditional male job sectors and spe-
cific occupations between the 1991 and 1996 censuses. Indeed, the
1990s have shown a retrogression of women's participation in quite
a significant number of traditional male occupations. In any case,
Wages and Inequality 67
Table 3-5
Growth of Female Participation in Some Traditional
Male Occupations: 1991-1996
Occupation
Natural and applied
scientists
Architects
Mathematicians, systems
analysts and computer
programmers
Forestry and logging
workers
Miners
Construction trades
Machinists
Mechanics
Locomotive operators
Truck drivers
All Occupations
Female Employment as
% of Total, 1996
%
19.8
17.8
28.1
4.9
1.8
2.6
5.6
1.4
1.1
7.0
45.9
Growth in Female
Employment, 1991-96
%
18.9
-2.1
15.2
4.4
-6.4
-4.1
-13.5
-4.4
-23.5
1.2
4.4
Source: Statistics Canada, Census, 1996.
it would take a massive change in women's participation in non-tra-
ditional work to have a significant impact in "de-ghettoizing" the
labour market. As Boulet and Lavallee note in their 1984 Economic
Council study "even if every woman entering the labour force over
the next 20 years were to choose a male occupation, the overall
representation of women in these occupations would only reach 35
per cent at best." This, of course, has been far from the case.
What is the empirical support for the argument that the overcrowd-
ing of traditional female job markets by a "reserve army" of women
is a contributing factor to the inequality in gender incomes? One
piece of evidence is the higher rates of unemployment among women
than among men — a rate differential that was in an upward trend
until the recessions of 1981 and 1990 and free-trade restructuring
devastated the male-dominated manufacturing sectors. Even despite
these countervailing effects, over the business cycle female unem-
ployment has remained significantly above that of males until the
1990s (Table 3-6). However, this is not the whole story. If we add
to the officially unemployed the part-time workers who want to work
68 Women and Work
Table 3-6
Male and Female Unemployment Rates, 1966-1998
Average of Unadjusted Data
Year
1966-70
1971-75
1976-80
1981-85
1986-90
1991-95
1996-98
1998
1998 adjusted for
involuntary
part-time*
Average Male
Unemployment Rate
4.3
5.5
6.9
10.3
8.1
1U
9.2
8.5
10.4
Average Female
Unemployment Rate
4.4
7.0
8.9
10.6
8.9
10.0
8.9
8.1
12.5
Female-Male
Differential
+.1
+1.5
+2.0
+.3
+.8
-1.1
-.3
-.4
+2.1
* Estimated on the basis that the average involuntary part-time worker worked
15.6 hours per week, the same as all part-time workers (i.e. one involuntary
part-timer equals .6 unemployed based on actual hours worked in 1998).
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998 (71-201).
full-time, then the female unemployment rate is much higher than
the reported rates, by more than four percentage points in 1998,
which would raise women's unemployment significantly above that
of men's.
Further evidence is found in the occupational distribution of un-
employment. Only in clerical and some service occupations is female
unemployment lower than male rates. The occupations given in
Table 3-7 are generally those with the highest percentage of women
employees. Thus, it appears that there is a reserve army of unem-
ployed and underemployed among women. This does not include
those women in the home, the latent pool, who might work if work
were available. The decline in female participation in the nineties
suggests that some women have become "discouraged workers" and
left the labour market. They are, therefore, not included as officially
unemployed.
Self-Employment
One feature of the Canadian labour market that has received little
notice until quite recently is the growth in self-employment. Whereas
one-quarter of all employment growth since the mid-seventies has
Wages and Inequality 69
Table 3-7
Male and Female Unemployment Rates
by Selected Occupational Groups, 1998
Unemployment Rate
Occupation
Teachers and Professors
Sales and Service Occupations
Wholesale and specialist sales
Retail Sales and Cashiers
Chefs and Cooks, Food and
Beverage Services
Occupations in Protective
Services
Child-care and Home Support
Workers
Sales and Service Occupations
n.e.c.
Clerical Occupations
Health Occupations
Professional Occupations in
Health including Nurses
Technical, Assisting and Related
Occupations in Health
Occupations in Processing,
Manufacturing and Utilities
Machine Operators and
Assemblers in Manufacturing
Labourers in Processing,
Manufacturing and Utilities
Females
%
3.3
6.4
3.2
6.5
8.8
5.0
6.0
6.5
4.7
1.7
0.9
2.5
9.5
8.7
11.6
Males
%
2.9
6.4
2.9
6.0
9.1
4.0
9.9
8.1
5.5
1.2
0
0
7.2
6.1
11.3
Female-Male
Difference
%
0.4
0
0.3
0.5
-0.3
1.0
-3.9
-1.6
-0.8
0.5
0.9
2.5
2.3
2.6
0.3
n.e.c: not elsewhere classified.
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998.
been self-employment, in the early and mid-nineties this proportion
ballooned to around three-quarters of all new jobs. While more men
are self-employed than women (20.9 per cent for men, 13.7 per cent
for women in 1998), the rate at which women have entered self-
employment has been increasing much faster than for men, particu-
larly in the nineties. Between 1990 and 1998, the number of
self-employed women increased by 51 per cent, almost double the
rate of increase for men.
70 Women and Work
There is, however, a very marked difference in the pattern of
men's and women's self-employment. Three-quarters of all self-
employed women were "own-account" workers and had no paid
employees in 1998. Only 25 per cent were employers. This compares
with 40 per cent of self-employed men who employed paid help.
Women are also self-employed in different sectors of the economy.
Karen Hughes in her 1999 Canadian Policy Research Network study,
"Gender and Self-employment in Canada," notes:
In 1997, for example, over 85 per cent of all female employers
were located in just three service industries — trade (50.2 per
cent), accommodation and food services (21.4 per cent), and
other services (15.1 per cent). Male employers, in contrast, had
a much stronger foothold in the goods sector, and were also
spread across a broader range of industries overall ... With
respect to own account workers, we again see some distinct
gender differences ... Over four-fifths of women worked in just
two key sectors — 64.1 per cent in other services and 20.0 per
cent within trade — and only 1.0 per cent of women were
employed in some type of goods sector.
As Hughes also notes, occupationally women are highly concen-
trated in "pink collar" ghettos and are much more likely to work
part-time and for shorter hours than comparable men. All of this
translates into much lower incomes for women than for men. Among
the self-employed in 1996, women earned just 56.4 per cent of what
men earned. Even for the full-time, full-year self-employed, the
situation was not that much better, with the ratio of women's earn-
ings to men's standing at 65.3 per cent. The comparable ratios for
employees in the same year were 66.5 per cent for all workers, 72.8
per cent for full-time, full-year employees. Further, self-employed
women on average earned only two-thirds or less of the incomes of
employees.
Why do women enter self-employment when there are such obvi-
ous disadvantages? There are three major reasons. During the reces-
sions of the early eighties and nineties and the slow, "jobless
recoveries" that followed, women who needed work were forced to
create their own jobs. Available evidence, however, suggests that this
was not the dominant reason. Hughes argues that it was in part an
attempt to escape the discrimination, rising insecurities and gender
segregation of the labour market and to seek more autonomy and
Wages and Inequality 71
expression for their rising educational attainment, though given the
concentration of female self-employment in traditional female ghet-
tos that resulted they can hardly be said to have succeeded very well.
What is perhaps the most important reason was the desire to adapt
work patterns to accommodate the double burden — paid work and
housework and child care. Working out of the home provided for
more flexible schedules, less stress, more time with children, and the
ability to integrate paid and unpaid work. But, as we have seen, the
price paid for such an accommodation was high in economic terms.
Systemic and Statistical Discrimination
The predominant forms of discrimination in the labour market are
not direct, specifically aimed at women because they are women.
Rather, women are discriminated against because they lack, or are
believed to lack, certain characteristics that employers seek. The
most recognized form of this type is systemic discrimination, the
setting of hiring standards or policies that exclude most members of
specific groups such as women from employment in specific occu-
pations or which relegates them to lower-pay job rungs even though
those hiring standards or policies are not necessarily required for the
job. Perhaps the classic case of this is weight and height requirements
for police and fire fighters, which on the surface appear neutral, but
in fact have the effect of discriminating against women and members
of ethnic groups mat are characteristically small in stature. (A recent
case of systemic discrimination involved a woman fire fighter in
British Columbia who was fired because she failed to meet the
male-based standard in a running test. However, she was eventually
reinstated in her job by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the
standard constituted discrimination against women.) Minimum edu-
cation requirements unrelated to job requirements are another exam-
ple, though of less discriminatory impact for women than for
aboriginal and immigrant people.
More pervasive than systemic discrimination is statistical dis-
crimination. Statistical discrimination occurs when employers resist
hiring any specific group of workers — women, racial or ethnic
minorities, young people — for a job or type of job because they
believe that members of that group are more likely to have certain
behavioural characteristics that reduce their long-term economic
benefit to the employer. To be more specific, an employer may incur
a considerable cost to hire and train a worker. In many firms, pro-
motion and upgrading is done through experience and training on the
72 Women and Work
job, not infrequently in situations involving expensive capital equip-
ment. Indeed, many studies indicate that as much as 60 per cent of
all job skills are learned on-the-job. To minimize the cost and maxi-
mize the benefit, the employer will prefer to hire someone who can
be expected to stay with the firm for an extended period of time and
hence repay the training costs at all levels as the worker moves up
the occupational ladder. Given the extensive capital equipment and
the cooperative nature of production, it is equally important that
employees be punctual, regular in attendance and disciplined. Work-
ers who are not believed to have these characteristics will be rele-
gated to short-term, dead-end jobs that require either few specific
skills or where the skills required are readily available as products
of our public education system. Thus, if women are statistically more
likely to quit a job or be absent from work, employers will tend to
discriminate against all women regardless of their individual charac-
teristics or patterns of behaviour and without regard to the societal
causes of these statistical differences.
What is the evidence? This is set out in Table 3-8. Statistics would
indicate that women voluntarily quit or leave the labour market or
deliberately work part-time more frequently than do men, often as a
consequence of family and personal reasons combined with the
streaming of women into dead-end jobs. On the other hand, differ-
ences in absence from work due to illness are hardly very significant
and almost certainly reflect the fact that when family members are
sick, women are much more likely to be expected to stay home to
act as nurse and report in sick themselves so as not to lose wages
when sick leave is available or to deflect employer criticism that the
family comes before work.
In most cases, women staying home when a family member is sick
or quitting their jobs for family reasons or when their spouse is
transferred or takes a new job in a different locality, is economically
rational even where the couple maintains an equalitarian relationship.
The reason is simple. Since most men earn more than their partners,
the economic cost of women taking time off or quitting is less than
if men do. This pattern tends to perpetuate a rather vicious circle.
However, it may be changing somewhat: recent statistics indicate
that in about one in five dual-income families, the woman makes a
higher income than does her spouse. In short, the statistics give some
support, albeit hardly very significant, to the explanation that women's
less stable work patterns are a basis for statistical discrimination.
Wages and Inequality 73
Table 3-8
Measures of Work Stability and Regularity, 1998
Characteristics
Percentage of persons not in the labour force
by reason of leaving last job:
Personal responsibilities
Illness
Percentage of persons unemployed by reason
of leaving last job:
Personal responsibilities
Illness
Percentage of persons becoming unemployed
by leaving (quitting) pb
Percentage of persons working part-time
by reason of leaving last job:
Personal or family
Wanted to work part-time
Could only find part-time work
School
Percentage of labour force working part-time
Percentage of employees who lost working time due to:
Illness
Personal responsibilities
Male
0.2
1.0
0.8
1.4
16.7
4.4
9.3
32.8
39.4
9.6
3.5
1.2
Female
1.3
0.7
2.5
1.7
19.4
22.3
27.7
28.0
20.8
26.3
4.5
3.3
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Historical Review, 1998.
This evidence and that in the previous section, however, are con-
sistent with a third and different interpretation — that women have
been channelled into low-income sectors for systemic reasons. They
provide a disposable or interruptable supply of low-wage labour for
marginal sectors of industry. But at the same time, women are kept
dependent, meaning that they have few alternatives but to fulfil their
role in the reproduction of the family and in providing unpaid home
work, which reduces the cost of the provision of male workers.
It is not easy to marshal specific statistical evidence in support of
this interpretation. However, there is historical evidence. As we
noted in the first chapter, during the wheat boom period of Canadian
development at the beginning of this century, federal ministers de-
fended the refusal of the government to grant homesteads to women
by the argument that homesteads would make women independent
and thus give them alternatives to marriage, in which case men would
be unable to develop their properties. The implication was that
74 Women and Work
women were needed in the home as unpaid workers to guarantee the
economic viability of the system.
Women and Poverty
Whatever the measure, whatever the cause, women do earn less than
men. Their wages and salaries are less, women are disproportionately
in low-wage occupations, and female unemployment rates have, in
general, been higher, except in recent years of recession with the
decimation of manufacturing jobs. Some of the reasons have been
touched on — lower training and work experience, statistical and
other forms of discrimination, overcrowding — all of which have
their roots in the sexual division of labour in the family, the historical
evolution of the market, and the laws of motion of the contemporary
capitalist economy in which discrimination plays an important func-
tional role in making the system work. Before we turn to these
broader questions, however, we should look at one of the human
consequences, the poverty and degradation of a significant propor-
tion of the population.
Poverty has been a growing fact facing Canadian women even as
more and more women enter the paid labour force. Between 1971
and 1996 the number of women below the poverty line (Statistics
Canada's "low income cut-offs") increased by 180.2 per cent, and
women went from being 46 per cent of the poor in Canada to 58 per
cent. Almost one out of every five women in Canada now lives in
poverty.
Women may be in poverty for a number of reasons. For many, it
will be the result of their own low incomes in the absence of a second
income in the family. According to the National Council of Welfare
in 1990, 84 per cent of women can expect to spend a significant part
of their life without a husband or "significant other." Thirteen per
cent of women never marry, and over a third of those who do marry
will end up divorced or separated while 41 per cent will spend their
older years in widowhood. Even if they are married and the spouse
present, family income (one or other or both working) may still be
below the poverty line, depending on wage levels, unemployment,
and size of the family. The Advisory Council on the Status of Women
study, Women and Labour Market Poverty, reported that in 1986,
over half a million two-earner couple families, 9 per cent of all
couple families, were below the poverty line. This represented just
under a third of all poor women in Canada. By 1996 the percentage
of coupled families who were in poverty had risen to 10.5 per cent.
Wages and Inequality 75
Table 3-9
Poverty Rates of Women by Age and Status, 1996
Age
16-18
25-44
45-64
All ages
All women
All men
Poverty Incidence,
Single Parent
Mothers (%)
91.3
61.2
41.1
61.4
18.8
Status
Single Parent
Unattached, 65+
Unattached, <65
Wives, with
children
Other wives
Wives >65
Poverty Incidence
(%)
61.4
45.4
39.5
11.9
10.3
8.6
14.1
Source: National Council of Welfare, Poverty Profile 1996.
Single women under 65 years fared considerably worse. In 1996,
39.5 per cent were poor. Single-parent mothers present possibly the
most visible case of poverty. In 1996, 61.4 per cent of female heads
of single-parent families were impoverished even though almost half
of them worked, at least part-time, and employment income com-
prised over half of their total income. The 1986 study reported that
single mothers working full-time had an incidence of poverty of 25.7
per cent. Those who worked only part-time had a poverty incidence
rate of 75 per cent while those who were not employed at all and had
young children had a rate in excess of 90 per cent. In all, single-parent
families constituted a third of all welfare recipients.
The characteristics of the poor family or individual are quite
different from the popular stereotypes of the welfare bum. Excluding
seniors, well over half of all the poor people in Canada in 1996
worked for pay. In fact, the incidence of poverty among working
people has been growing faster than the other categories of the poor.
What is disturbing is that the weak economy in the 1990s has resulted
in a decline in the percentage of some poor groups who have em-
ployment earnings. The National Council of Welfare notes in its
Poverty Profile 1996:
The percentage of poor people under 65 with income from
earnings has been declining fairly steadily since the last reces-
sion ... The most disturbing drops occurred among poor cou-
ples under 65 with children under 18 and among poor
76 Women and Work
single-parent mothers under 65. The percentage of poor couples
with children who had earnings was 89 percent in 1990 ...
[dropping steadily to] 80 percent in 1996. The percentage of
poor single-parent mothers with earnings was down from 55
percent in 1990 to 46 percent in 1995 and 1996.
In addition, by 1996, 57 per cent of all poor unattached women
were working an estimated full-time equivalent from approximately
4 to 9 months depending on their wage rate. Moreover, studies in
Canada and the United States have found that very few, less than 20
per cent of welfare recipients, remain on the social assistance rolls
for any length of time. The vast majority do find work and, as their
income situation improves, leave the welfare rolls. In any case,
except for single-parent mothers, only a little over a third of poor
women receive welfare and in all these cases, employment income
exceeds welfare income. For single-parent mothers, 68 per cent re-
ceived welfare but the average amount received was only just above
their average earnings, $9,218 compared to earnings of $7,629.
Nor does the stereotype of the family made poor by hordes of
children have any basis in fact. Low-income families do not have
significantly more children than do higher-income families. Single-
parent families had an average of 2.5 children in 1987 compared with
husband-wife families with an average of 2.6. Although the prob-
ability of poverty rises with the number of children, it falls dramati-
cally if the wife or single woman works, particularly full-time,
regardless of the number or age of the children. A contributing factor,
however, is that poor women have a lower participation rate than do
non-poor women. However, more important, poor women are much
more likely to be working part-time than the non-poor. The incidence
of part-time work among the working poor was three times that
among women generally. As Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck con-
clude, "this highlights the importance of part-time work as a deter-
minant of working poverty, especially for women."
The problem of female-headed, single-parent families is particu-
larly acute. In the first place, the incidence of single-parent families
has been increasing, a direct reflection of the rising rate of divorce
and separation and the increase in the number of single women
bearing and raising children. By 1998, single-parent families repre-
sented almost 17 per cent of all families, three quarters female-
headed. This is up almost 50 per cent over twenty years earlier. Table
Wages and Inequality 77
3-9 illustrates the extent of this problem by age and in comparison
with other groups of women.
Unattached women (living alone or with non-relatives) present a
different, but major, situation. First, the incidence of unattached
female households has also been rising, though not as quickly. A
significant portion, perhaps a quarter, are young, many of them
students, and they probably do not represent a significant poverty
problem even though they may temporarily have low incomes. In
fact, never-married, unattached women under 65 years of age have
a high rate of labour market participation. Single, separated and
divorced, and widowed women between the ages of 25 and 54 had
a combined participation rate of 79.2 per cent in 1998. The most
serious situation is with older women, particularly widows. As the
figures in the above table indicate, just under half (45.4 per cent) of
unattached women over 65 have incomes under the poverty line.
However, it should be noted that because of changes in old age
security provisions, this is a decline from about two-thirds two dec-
ades ago.
A great deal of female poverty is directly or indirectly related to
women's inferior status in the labour market combined with social
conditioning, sexual stereotyping, and their primary responsibility
for the maintenance and reproduction of the household. Why are so
many women poor? First, they are only about three-quarters as likely
as men to participate in paid work and even when they do they are
many times more likely to work part-time (and not be covered by a
pension plan or other income security benefits), a consequence of the
sexual division of labour that relegates women to unpaid work in the
household. Second, when women do work they receive much lower
wages than men, even for the same type of work. While the differ-
ences in male and female incomes among the working poor are
proportionately less than in the general population, they are still
substantial (Table 3-10). Social conditioning of women also tends to
shunt them into a small number of low-wage job ghettos which, with
some exceptions, lack job ladders or career paths. In 1986, for ex-
ample, two-thirds of working women who were poor were concen-
trated in clerical, service and sales occupations. Most of these jobs,
full-time and part-time, do not have private pension plans. In fact,
women are, in general, much less likely to be covered by pensions.
In 1992, for instance, only 35.3 per cent of women had employment
pension coverage compared to 41 per cent of men, and even when
they do have it, interrupted service for family rearing or the instabil-
78 Women and Work
Table 3-10
Male-Female Income Ratios, Poor and Non-Poor
by Work Force Status, 1986
Status
All Individuals
Full-time working poor
Part-time working poor
Other poor
Women's Income as % of Men's
55.3
77.9
79.4
102.3
Distribution of Poor, 1996
Unattached
Family heads
Working Full-time
<%)
15
23
Working Part-time
(%)
51
35
Not Working
(%)
34
41
Incidence of poverty in families with both partners working:
Incidence of poverty in families, both partners working, without
wives' income:
10.5 %
21.4 %
Source: Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck, Women and Labour Market Poverty,
1990.
ity of their jobs or part-time employment reduces, or even eliminates,
the possibility of women building up significant pension credits. In
fact, of course, many pension plans simply are not portable. Even
where service is continuous, full-time, and pension schemes exist,
the lower-income levels of women mean lower pensions, particularly
since women also tend to live longer than men.
The incidence of female poverty among older women makes the
pension issue an extremely important one, worth considering in
greater detail. It is not only a question of labour market discrimina-
tion but also legal discrimination. Most pension plans, including the
government's Canada Pension Plan (or its Quebec equivalent), are
income-related, both in terms of the annual income earned and in the
number of years worked, and though CPP/QPP is superior to private
pension plans in that it is universal, the level of benefits is designed
to be very low, just 25 per cent of previous average earnings. Women
suffer on all accounts, particularly since pension earnings are com-
pounded longer in the early employment years when women are most
likely to be out of the labour market and are frequently based on the
highest-earning years, which for career men are usually the last few
Wages and Inequality 79
years. For people without a career that involves upward mobility or
who start careers late, pension earnings are necessarily lower even
when they exist at all.
Far too many women, on the other hand, are forced to rely on their
husband's pensions. But this security can be devastated by early
widowhood or marriage breakdown. Legislation in most provinces
provides for the division of existing pension funds between the par-
ties on separation but according to family law lawyers, this fre-
quently does not happen, particularly when women are unaware that
their spouse may have secretly acquired a pension or RRSP. The
Canada Pension Plan does make provision for marriage breakdown
— CPP is supposed to be divided equally — but federal legislation
allows provinces to override this provision and permit the waiving
of automatic pension splitting. For widows there is a survivor benefit
but even with recent improvements, the maximum benefit, $436.25
per month in 1996, is obviously insufficient. Divorced women are
not entitled to survivor benefits. Of poor women over 65, only 64
per cent received CPP or Quebec Pension Plan payments and the
average amount received was only $3,546, or just under $300 per
month. Occupational pension plans and RRSPs provided an average
of a further $3,010 and $1,853 respectively to the tiny number— 13
per cent in the case of pension plans and 2 per cent for RRSPs — of
poor female seniors who received such payments. Obviously, with-
out legislation further improving both public and private pensions,
the welfare of older women is indeed precarious.
Third in the reasons for why so many women are poor, is that
socialization, the education system and sexual stereotyping of certain
types of work result in women getting less education or education in
areas with much lower economic returns. For example, even at the
university teacher level where salary differences between men and
women are relatively small (approximately 5 per cent or less in
1990-91, the last year when data is available, when standardized for
rank and professional degree), women are concentrated in those
academic areas where wages, even male wages, tend to be lowest.
They also tend to be in the lower ranks or have lesser degrees. This
is illustrated in Table 3-11. Women are poorly represented in the four
highest income teaching areas (except in health where over half were
in nursing) and relatively better represented in the four lowest. Even
within these broad categories, women tend to be in the more poorly
paid departments or disciplines or be in lower ranks. Women consti-
tuted only 8 per cent of full professors with PhDs, but 22 per cent of
80 Women and Work
Table 3-11
Female Participation in University Teaching
by Income Level of Teaching Area, 1990-91
Teaching Area
Engineering and applied sciences
Health professions and
occupations (includes nursing)
Math and physical sciences
Agricultural and biological
sciences (includes home
economics)
Humanities
Social sciences
Education
Fine and applied arts
Not reported
All areas
Rank by Male
Wane
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
% Female
Instructors
3.5
26.6
7.0
18.2
25.9
20.0
30.1
27.5
29.7
20.2
Female/Male
Wage Ratio
76.2
79.9
75.4
77.7
75.6
79.9
84.6
80.5
84.6
78.5
Source: Statistics Canada, Teachers in Universities, 1990-91 (Last Issue).
associate professors with doctorates and a full 43 per cent of similarly
educated assistant professors in 1990-91. Thus, though the average
wage difference when allowance is made for differences in rank and
degree obtained may be only 5 per cent, this rises to 21.5 per cent
when not standardized.
Statistics for university and other post-secondary graduates give
even more depressing evidence. This is readily evident in Tables
3-12 and 3-13. Although there has been some improvement in the
last couple of decades in the sense that more women are entering
non-traditional scientific and technical careers, progress is extremely
slow, while the concentration of women in the traditional professions
of education and nursing remains distressingly high. Even within the
social sciences, women are highly concentrated in two disciplines,
sociology and psychology.
The same pattern can be illustrated with graduates of the commu-
nity colleges. What is distressing is that after more than three decades
of agitation by feminists, the educational channelling of women into
traditional jobs that are not only lower paid but, with the exception
of clerical work, are an extension into the market of household
functions, continues virtually unabated. What is particularly disturb-
ing is the low participation of women in the area of computer science,
Wages and Inequality 81
Table 3-12
Percentage of University Degrees, Diplomas
and Certificates Granted to Women
by Field and Level, 1996
Field
Education
Fine Arts
Humanities
Social Sciences
Agricultural and biological sciences
Engineering and applied sciences
Engineering
Health
Medicine
Nursing
Math and physical sciences
Computer Science
Not reported
All Fields
Level
Diplomas and certificates
Bachelor degrees
Master degrees
Doctorate degrees
Total degrees, diplomas and certificates
% Female
70.8
65.8
63.0
57.4
58.3
20.0
22.6
73.4
50.8
94.1
31.2
22.2
67.2
57.9
64.7
58.6
50.9
34.0
57.9
Source: Statistics Canada, Education in Canada, 1998 (81-229 XIB)
which is the most rapidly expanding higher income occupational
group in the "new economy." The implications for the income in-
equality and the incidence of female poverty remain.
What is encouraging, however, is the increase in the percentage
of university and college graduates that are women — indeed, a
growing majority by 1996. However, this is not the case for the most
advanced degrees and emerging high technology disciplines. This
pattern is not confined to Canada. In fact, the fall in relative male
enrollment in universities is beginning to alarm some authorities in
the United States. The Daily Labor Report from the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, excerpted on the Internet, reported on November
22nd, 1990:
82 Women and Work
Table 3-13
Percentage Female Graduates of Community Colleges
and Related Institutions by Field, 1995-96
Field
Arts
Arts and Science
Humanities and related
Health sciences and related
Nursing
Engineering and technology
Computer Science
Natural sciences and primary industries
Social sciences
Education
Business and commerce
Secretarial
Managerial and administration
Not reported
All fields
% Female
56.6
56.5
67.2
80.4
87.8
16.8
29.7
39.2
73.8
92.7
67.0
94.2
61.7
59.5
57.5
Source: Statistics Canada, Education in Canada, 1998 (81-229 XIB).
At a time when women are making tremendous gains in higher
education, finding more support, and earning more advanced
diplomas than ever, a troubling phenomenon is occurring on
college campuses across the country. The men are vanishing.
An Iowa-based policy analyst is highlighting the trend, which
flips the age-old gender gap in higher education. Thomas G.
Mortenson told a gathering of regional college presidents and
deans at Goucher College that he believes it signals deeper
problems in society ... His research shows that, although men
earned nearly 57 percent of the 4-year degrees awarded at U.S.
institutions in 1970, women were claiming more than 55 per-
cent by 1996 ... The consequences, he argued, could be dire
for men, because college degree-holders typically earn far more
than high school graduates ... But while the gender gap may
seem dramatic, at least one professor says the rate of college
enrollment among men has slackened, but is still growing —
just not as fast as women's which tends to exaggerate the gap
... A director of research for the American Association of
University Women says statistics don't tell the whole story ...
Wages and Inequality 83
Men still dominate academic fields such as engineering and
business that lead to higher paying jobs, and women dominate
teaching and nursing programs. Women's increased presence
on campuses may be a matter of necessity rather than privilege:
"Women need a college degree to earn the same as a man with
a high school degree." (Washington Post, page B5).
Conclusion
We have tried to demonstrate in the last two chapters through the
medium of the statistical record the fact of the inferior economic
position of women in the labour market. In Chapter 1 we have also
described some of the historical origins. Description, however, is no
substitute for explanation. How did the inequality come about and
why has it persisted, however diminished, into the present despite
not inconsequential pressures by women's organizations and signifi-
cant legislative enactments by governments to promote equality?
A number of possible explanations have been mentioned at vari-
ous points in this survey of the historical and contemporary position
of women at work. The range of opinion is wide. Some critics place
the blame squarely on men for relegating women, whether intention-
ally or not, to a subordinate and dominated role in society. Many
among the more radical economists are likely to point the finger at
employers and the owners of capital for exploiting the lack of bar-
gaining power of women in the labour market and the competition
among subgroups of the working people whether defined by sex, race,
ethnicity or skill, for the pecuniary advantage of capital. Some soci-
ologists look to social institutions as a cause of sexual stereotyping
dating back to pre-industrial societies, indeed even to biological
bonding patterns of anthropoid animals. More conservative analysts
and orthodox economists are apt to place much of the blame on the
victim herself for not behaving more like a man in terms of educa-
tional attainment, work aspirations or even willingness to work as
hard as men, but even here opinions differ on the reasons for this
alleged behaviour. This list is not exhaustive, nor an attempt to
describe all of the analyses, but merely an outline of the range of
interpretations.
A problem with all these explanations is that they tend to be
partial, looking only at specific manifestations of a more general
phenomenon. In our view, it is necessary to look at the origins and
functions of inequality in our economic and social system generally.
The Economics of
Market Dualism
As a rule, orthodox textbooks in labour economics don't provide
much assistance in explaining the persistence of the low wages, job
ghettos and blocked advancement that have characterized women's
market work since the beginnings of capitalist development. We have
already noted some of the limitations of traditional economic theory
in understanding the persistence of inequality. Still, economists have
been reluctant to admit to the possibility that discrimination may be
profitable and not just an aberrant and irrational prejudice.
It follows from this and the normal economic assumption that
workers are paid and are hired in proportion to their productivity. If
wages and opportunities are significantly different between male and
female workers, it reflects the fact either that women's productivity
on average is less than men's, or that women choose to enter those
occupations where labour productivity is low, though real income
may be considered higher due to congenial working conditions, lack
of job stress, no travel, and little responsibility. This leads to the
conclusion that women are their own worst enemies, an example of
the blaming-the-victim syndrome.
However, not all economists accept this approach, in large measure
because of the experience with attempts to improve the economic
status of other disadvantaged economic groups in society, most nota-
bly with the blacks in the United States in the sixties. The "war on
poverty" initiated under the Kennedy administration began with the
orthodox economic assumptions and attempted to solve the persistent
low incomes and high unemployment in the racial ghettos largely by
education and training. Improve the potential productivity of these
groups, it was argued, and their market disadvantage would be removed.
What followed was a vast expansion in the educational and training
systems, not only in the United States, but also in Canada as it emulated
the American example. Billions of dollars later, some researchers
The Economics of Market Dualism 85
began to assess the results. Instead of untrained, uneducated, poor
and unemployed blacks, the expenditure had produced a whole new
population of trained, educated, poor and unemployed blacks. Per-
haps the best characterization of the failure was the imaginative title
of one assessment of the war on poverty — The Great Training
Robbery! Incidentally, the same arguments are again being heard as
a response to the unemployment and wage decreases initiated by
global restructuring and free trade. The Canadian government has
been blaming continuing high unemployment in Canada on the lack
of education and training among Canadian workers making them
unable them to compete in the new global market place. However,
this has been decisively refuted in a recent (1999) prize winning
study by David Livingstone, The Education-Jobs Gap, which dem-
onstrates that Canadians are overqualified rather than underqualified
for available jobs. In any case, the Canadian government has been
cutting the monies for education and training, further undermining
the credibility of the orthodox economic prescription.
The Segmented Labour Market
Out of the experience with the war on poverty there gradually
emerged an alternative explanation of the inferior labour market
position of racial and ethnic minorities and, most important for our
study, of women. There are a number of variants of this explanation
but they all share one common perception — the labour market is
divided into segments, with limited opportunity for upward mobility
among the segments. The first developed version of segmented la-
bour market theory was known as the dual labour market theory,
which postulated that the labour market could be divided into two
segments. At one end were jobs that paid relatively good wages,
where employment was comparatively secure, working conditions
reasonable, opportunities for advancement existed, and management
was constrained by customs and rules. At the other end were jobs
that paid poor wages, where employment was insecure, working
conditions poor, opportunities for advancement minimal, and man-
agement frequently arbitrary. The former was designated the primary
labour market, the latter the secondary labour market.
Furthermore, the primary and secondary labour markets had sig-
nificant additional different characteristics. The primary was domi-
nated by white males, many of them unionized. On the other hand,
the secondary had a preponderance of racial and ethnic minorities,
immigrants, young people and women. Unionization, if it existed at
86 Women and Work
all, was weak. Study after study in Canada and the United States
documented this basic division but most of the early studies merely
described the phenomenon without explaining it. What was not in-
itially understood is why this division existed, how it developed and
why it persisted.
In the three decades or so since these early studies there has been
considerable refinement and elaboration of segmented labour market
theory. One of the early refinements was the incorporation into the
analysis of post-Keynesian explanations of unemployment and infla-
tion and also some elements of more radical analyses. The simple
"good job-bad job" dichotomy of the early dual analysts was also
gradually refined with the identification of different types of labour
markets in what was previously considered the single primary labour
market. The lower or subordinate tier of the primary market was
designated to include all the relatively well paid but generally semi-
skilled blue collar workers; the upper or independent tier to designate
the technical, supervisory and professional ranks. Somewhat later,
some analysts also identified a skilled worker or craft tier with quite
different dynamics from either the lower or upper tiers. Thus the
"dual," or "split" as it was sometimes called, labour market analysis
evolved into a more sophisticated segmented labour market model.
Nevertheless, in attempting to develop the political economy of seg-
mentation, its function and its origins, a certain dualism of economic
structure keeps recurring. The starting point of our examination of
the reality of the contemporary North American economy, therefore,
is recognition of the readily apparent existence of two basic charac-
teristics: one, the domination of a small number of large and very
large corporations surrounded by a large number of very small com-
panies; and two, the pattern of both cyclical and seasonal instability
in employment and output.
As John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in The New Industrial
State more than three decades ago, large corporations require a high
degree of stability in the demand for their products. The reason is
that these firms are highly capital intensive — that is, their invest-
ment in buildings and machinery is very large, and secondly, their
machinery and the workers who run them are highly specialized.
With a large investment in highly specialized plants and workers and
with additional high investments in product development and design,
these firms cannot easily turn to producing other goods or services,
and if they can't sell their output, profits suffer greatly. Even though
they may be able to lay off workers, they can't unload the costs of
The Economics of Market Dualism 87
unemployed capital onto unemployment insurance. One look at the
automobile and steel companies and the airlines in Canada in the
early nineties gives stark evidence of what happens to such firms in
a situation of high fixed costs and depressed demand. Thus, the
automobile companies produced only about half or less of their parts
"in house" and contracted out the rest. In British Columbia the forest
product majors cut about half their own timber and contracted out
the remainder to small independents. A second strategy is to maintain
alternative facilities which are considerably more labour-intensive
that can be utilized to provide flexibility in levels of output without
tying up expensive capital.
A special case of this pattern arises in seasonal industries. Highly
specialized capital-intensive processes are rarely profitable for sea-
sonal operation, since the investment would be utilized for only a
portion of the year. As a result, firms tend to use labour-intensive
production techniques, since labour is a variable factor — that is, it
can be laid off without expense to the firm (though not without expense
to the worker and to society) — while capital is not, unless it can be
leased on a short-term basis. Where there are seasonal operations
ancillary to a large-scale, capital-intensive operation, it frequently
behooves the firm to subcontract all or part of the operation to
small-scale "independent" or, in some cases, individual operators.
The flux in the system, therefore, requires a dualistic capital struc-
ture between the large-scale, specialized, capital-intensive firms
mass producing for the mass market and the smaller-scale, less-
specialized and labour-intensive supplementary firms producing on
a smaller scale for the peak and niche markets. But the corollary of
this is that the smaller firms use less specialized, more flexible, and
more labour-intensive techniques, resulting in lower productivity
and, therefore, less ability to pay wages comparable with the concen-
trated sector.
Although this pattern may predominate in much of goods produc-
tion, it is much less applicable to services or to clerical work where
large-scale mechanization is generally not feasible — except, per-
haps, in some aspects of word and data processing. Therefore, work
in these sectors tends to be labour intensive, and the use of special-
ized capital equipment much less frequent. It is estimated, for in-
stance, that the average production worker has more than twelve
times the amount of capital equipment to work with than does the
clerical worker. In the large resource-based megaprojects the figure
88 Women and Work
would be more like one hundred to five hundred times as much
capital.
Nevertheless, some service and sales firms do have large and quite
massive investments in buildings, inventory and advertising. Think
of the major hotel, department store and supermarket chains. For
them, capital expenditures are also highly specialized and dedicated,
relatively inflexible to demand fluctuations by the time of the day,
week or season. To be competitive they rely on "flexibility" of labour
costs, depending on part-time or temporary labour and on subcon-
tracting.
The consequence of this basic market division is that the worker
in the capital-intensive production plant is not only very productive
by virtue of the amount and the specialized nature of the equipment
available to work with, but because the firms themselves are gener-
ally large enough to have a significant measure of market power such
that, except in very severe recessions or depressions, they can set
prices at production costs plus a profit markup. In contrast, the
worker in the seasonal or small plants or in services usually has more
limited productivity as a result of a small amount of less-specialized
equipment and is much more likely to be employed by small, or even
larger, competitive firms which lack market power and must accept
a market price, in many cases one set by the more efficient large-
scale operations.
There are, of course, exceptions to this general pattern. Some
small specialty businesses may be considered highly productive not
because of the physical capital used but because of the human capital,
specialized skill or ability employed — everything from the profes-
sions (doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects), to the skilled crafts,
even to the high-class restaurants where the chef's artistry is para-
mount. Nevertheless, the overall determinants of market productivity
are three — the physical capital employed, the human capital em-
ployed and the market power of the firm.
This description of the production structure needs to be related to
the labour market. Segmented labour market theorists describe the
labour market to correspond. The primary labour market is composed
of three tiers. The upper, or independent, tier is composed of those
workers who are "paid for what they know, not for what they do,"
— professional, technical and management workers. The knowledge
that gives these people their relative independence, command of
income and horizontal mobility is predominantly abstract, theoretical
knowledge obtained through formal post-secondary institutional
The Economics of Market Dualism 89
training, or in the case of upper management, frequently inherited from
family members or their friends. The craft, or middle, tier is com-
posed of those skilled workers who have, to this point, escaped the
deskilling effect of technology. The very nature of most maintenance
work means that it cannot be subdivided and deskiiled. In the smaller,
specialized firms such as those in tool and die manufacture, job
printing, repair shops and specialized electronics manufacture, flexi-
bility and versatility as well as skills are required. Perhaps the best
example is on-site construction. Because of the needed skills, which
can only be obtained through a combination of formal training and
work experience, wages tend to be relatively high. The boundaries
of the labour market are established by the total number of firms that
require the particular family of occupational skills, not by an indi-
vidual employer, and this gives the craft worker horizontal mobility
similar to that of the upper tier worker. The long-run threat to the
position of these workers is technological change. In the short run,
however, the problem is periodic unemployment due to cyclical and
seasonal fluctuations. Given high wages and an earnings-related un-
employment insurance scheme, however, much of the cost of these
fluctuations can be passed on to consumers or to taxpayers.
In the lower tier of the primary labour market, the characteristic
worker is generally considered to be the work-skilled production
worker, machine operator or machine tender. The stereotype would
be the automobile assembly worker employed on a production line.
The employee does not need the general skills of the crafts employee
or the abstract knowledge of the professional-technical employee but
requires specific, if limited, skills to perform the operation to which
he or she is assigned. Training is normally "on-the-job" and profi-
ciency is associated with experience gained through repetition. Be-
cause the production line or process is technologically a team concept
and correct operation of expensive capital is necessary to avoid costly
downtime or repairs, a premium is placed on regularity, punctuality
and consistency, characteristics that when practised day after day
become customary. Because training is mainly on-the-job and pro-
ductivity associated with work experience, turnover and absenteeism
are extremely expensive for this type of employer. Therefore, it is
efficient for employers to pay premium wages, known as efficiency
wages, to discourage such labour instability. Wages, benefits and
advancement are handled through institutions such as unions, senior-
ity systems, or customary differentials.
90 Women and Work
The primary strategy that management has practised toward this
segment of the market has been to make use of internal labour
markets — promotion up a job ladder within the firm — which give
workers a large degree of job security, subject to seniority, and a
chance at promotion, although normally the highest position a typical
blue-collar worker can aspire to is that of foreman. Thus, job mobility
is vertical rather than horizontal as in the craft and upper tiers. Here
we can see the scientific-management technique of job subdivision.
However, because of technical efficiency, capital intensity and mar-
ket power, these firms can afford to pay high or premium wages, and
although vulnerable to fluctuations in aggregate demand in the econ-
omy due to their capital intensity and their requirement to maintain
their work-skilled labour force, they can avoid much of the labour
costs through the state's provision of unemployment insurance and,
to the extent of their market power, they can raise prices in reces-
sionary periods to retain target levels of profitability.
But these job ladders, tied to increasing wage rates and other
benefits, can be expensive. Therefore, even those firms that have
high productivity and market power attempt to restrict them to as few
workers as possible. This they can do by the creation of labour-
intensive plants utilizing unskilled workers to serve marginal or
fluctuating demands, or by the creation of occupationally segregated
ghettos where the requirements of job continuity, work experience
or union pressures allow them to do so. Hence, large firms will, in
periods of peak demand, establish a subsidiary, labour-intensive opera-
tion in a rural area or, increasingly, in low-wage Third World countries.
Perhaps, more frequently, the large firm will subcontract peak de-
mand to a small contract shop. Many firms will subcontract out
ancillary services such as janitorial or food services where work
continuity is not important. In the case of occupational segregation,
large firms will separate their office staff from their production staff
both physically and in terms of systems of benefits, seniority and
promotion, and union jurisdiction in order to tap the female labour
market with its high supplies of labour and lowerwage levels. Thus,
even when women work for the big firms, their wages may be closer
to those in the secondary labour market.
The secondary labour market marches to a quite different drum-
mer than the primary market. The excess supply of labour, skilled
and unskilled, combined with routine tasks that do not require sig-
nificant on-the-job training, experience specific to the firm, or job
security and high wages to combat turnover, labour unrest or unioni-
The Economics of Market Dualism 91
zation, means that it pays employers to hire in the secondary market
where wages are low, where there are few internal promotion sys-
tems, and where labour is both easy to hire and easy to fire. Because
of the low productivity and large supplies of labour, wages are not
only low, but they appear to be determined largely by the level of
minimum wages, welfare levels or some community-accepted mini-
mum that is frequently related to some traditional non-wage or share-
cropping pursuit such as agriculture or fishing. Workers in this sector
are not protected by custom, union or scarcity of particular skills or
knowledge, which intensifies the problem of arbitrary management
and the potential for worker harassment, sexual and otherwise. More-
over, with the continuing decline of transportation and communica-
tion costs, and "globalization," these workers are also susceptible to
low-wage competition from labour in less developed countries and
regions.
The obvious question that arises from this description of the dual
(segmented) labour market is why the primary labour market is stocked
mainly from the majority male labour force, and the secondary from
minorities, women and youth. Most analysts of segmented labour
markets point to statistical discrimination for the primary explana-
tion. As we noted in the last chapter, statistical discrimination is
directed at the disadvantaged in the labour market. Women, youths,
and migrants from non-industrial societies are perceived by primary
employers to have, on average, a weaker attachment to the wage labour
force. For women, this is strongly reinforced by social attitudes. This
means that they are more likely to leave employment — youth to
continue education or to shop around for jobs; minorities because
they are not acculturated to the discipline and regularity of industrial
labour; and women because they periodically drop out of the labour
force for family reasons, particularly the raising of children. Because
primary employers believe these groups are less likely to participate
in an uninterrupted, unbroken, disciplined manner, they discriminate
against them in hiring for fear of losing their investment in on-the-job
training. If members of these groups are hired and subsequently leave
the labour force, even temporarily, they lose their rung on the job
ladder and are relegated to begin again at the bottom.
Furthermore, it is argued, the characteristics of the secondary
labour market provide little incentive for these groups to adopt more
stable work patterns when employed in this sector. Jobs are unstable
to begin with, but even where jobs are stable, wages are sufficiently
low, conditions sufficiently bad, and prospects of advancement so
92 Women and Work
limited that workers have little to gain from stable patterns of par-
ticipation and therefore participate at their convenience rather than
at the employer's. For some at the low end of the secondary market,
periodic bouts of welfare (or unemployment insurance if they have
accumulated sufficient entitlement) may be utilized to relieve the
drudgery of work. Employers, in turn, adjust their patterns of work
organization to accommodate turnover, absenteeism and other mani-
festations of instability with the result that productivity remains low
and there is no incentive to improve the work environment. Thus,
the job characteristics reinforce the work habits and work habits
reinforce the job characteristics in an unending circle.
The dual labour market analysis went a long way to explaining
the income and employment problems of the disadvantaged of urban
America. Its subsequent elaboration and refinement to fit the con-
tours of the dualistic structure of the modern economy has been a
valuable tool in analysing the problems of all disadvantaged groups.
But it still leaves unanswered many questions relating to women's
work. How do we explain the origins of this employment dualism?
Why has it persisted even as more and more women demonstrate a
primary commitment to the labour force? Why has clerical work,
even in the large corporations, failed to develop internal labour
markets comparable to those among production workers?
The answers to these questions are not immediately self-evident.
One must look at a number of factors: how job structures emerged,
the nature of women's work in the home, the latent pool of partly
employed and unemployed female workers, the response of male
workers to the evolution of industrial capitalism, and the response of
labour markets to the new era of global rationalization. It is only
possible to answer these questions through an historical perspective.
The Historical Roots of Labour Market Dualism
The historical sketch of women's work in Canada presented in Chap-
ter 1 provides the material record upon which we can draw in order
to attempt to understand the origins of contemporary labour market
dualism and, in particular, the specific position of women. As we
noted, until quite recently, the vast majority of the population were
engaged in agricultural production and subsistence craft production
for household consumption. Even when production was for the mar-
ket, the household remained the primary unit of production, and
within the household, the primary division of labour was based on
sex. Men were the hunters, the commercial farmers, the weavers;
The Economics of Market Dualism 93
women the gatherers, the producers of household consumption
goods, the spinners.
What was the basis of the sexual division of labour under house-
hold production? Physical strength may have played a part but was
probably not the most important factor. Rather, more fundamental
was the women's role in reproduction, not only in the simple bio-
logical sense but in the broader sense of reproduction and nurturing
of the family. In an era when large families were common as a
primitive form of social security to ensure the economic viability of
the family in case of illness, disability, old age or death of a parent,
and as a supply of household labour, and in a time when infant and
child mortality was high, women were frequently bearing or raising
children for two decades or more through the potentially most pro-
ductive years of their lives. Though it is common to assume that high
birth rates were the result of primitive birth control methods, most
recent research disputes this. High birth rates were a necessity for
the production and reproduction of the family. Research has also
tended to dispute the commonly held view that in earlier societies
the household unit was the extended family, comprised of several
generations and close relatives living together, with the older women
minding the children, thereby providing relief for the mother from
child care. As a consequence of high birth rates, therefore, women
were restricted, to a greater or lesser extent, to work in and around
the home.
The sexual division of labour centred on the reproduction of the
family, however, should not be construed as being the same thing as
the patriarchal or male-headed family in which women played a
subordinate role, a conception which has become a conservative
stereotype. The origins of patriarchy are still in dispute, although the
practice of passing the most important economic asset of any pre-
industrial society, land, through the male lineage was a powerful
force in perpetuating it. As in post-industrial societies, property own-
ership played a dominant role in determining power relations.
The advent of industrial capitalism marks a fundamental break
with the pattern of pre-industrial production. The family unit of
production gradually gave way to capitalist production. The signifi-
cant difference is not that production was for the market where
previously it was for self-sufficiency as is so often assumed, but that
the unit of production ceased to be the family unit and increasingly
became the capitalist firm. In the early stages, in the heyday of the
skilled craftsman or artisan and before the development of the large-
94 Women and Work
scale factory, in Canada between approximately 1840 and 1880, it
was the men who were most affected. The heavy drudgery of canal
and railway building and the work in the timber industry was carried
out primarily by the poor male immigrants from non-industrialized,
famine-ridden Ireland, though on numerous occasions they were
challenged for the work by the French Canadian habitant from the
base of his semi-subsistence-level farm. Whatever the working con-
ditions, however, if the contemporary descriptions of living condi-
tions are a true picture, many of the women must have led a dreadful
existence of household toil. For the skilled industrial worker, how-
ever, conditions were relatively prosperous, since, as one observer
has noted, in the early stages of the industrial revolution the knowl-
edge and technology that permitted industrialization was contained
in the minds and hands of the artisans.
The growth of the factory system changed all that. In fact it was
women and children who bore much of the brunt of the second phase
of industrialism, both directly and indirectly. The factory system was
destructive of skills. The knowledge and techniques that were pre-
viously in the hands of the artisan were incorporated into machines,
which in combination with large-scale production allowed for the
breaking up of skilled jobs into an increasing number of simpler tasks
where dexterity, work experience, and obedience were the main
prerequisites.
It was frequently women and children who were drawn or pushed
first into the factories. There are, no doubt, a number of reasons why
this happened. One was that, at least in the textile industry in Britain,
the first process to be converted to factory production was spinning,
which traditionally had been women and children's work in the
household division of labour. Secondly, it has also been suggested
that the smaller fingers of women and children made them superior
workers. Thirdly, the degradation of the skilled worker made it
imperative that other members of the family work in industry in order
to maintain a minimum standard of living. It has been suggested that
women's wages were set at a level that when added to a man's would
produce a family wage sufficient for reproduction of the family and
the labour force. But of all the reasons, two stand out above all others
in the historical record: women and children were cheaper and they
were more obedient, thus less likely to struggle against the wages
and working conditions of emerging industrial capitalism. Obviously
these reasons are not totally unrelated.
The Economics of Market Dualism 95
Why were women's wages so much less than men's? We have
already suggested the family wage argument, but the historical evi-
dence points to several other factors. Women were less skilled, or at
least less skilled in the occupations valued in the marketplace, for
they readily practised for pay the skills that were learned and prac-
tised in the home. Perhaps most important, women were considered
transitory workers (though "women's jobs" were not), for the most
typical pattern was for women to enter the labour market in their
teens, only to leave after a few years for marriage and family repro-
duction. At this point their work changed from full-time participation
in the labour force to a mixture of income-producing work (boarders,
household piecework, irregular work) and household subsistence
production, all designed to make the family wage a living wage, a
difficult task for the majority of the working class.
Women had few other opportunities, not only because of their
function as mothers. The peculiar morality of Victorian patriarchal
society decreed it to be so and decreed an inferior social and eco-
nomic role for females. In this, the governing male elite was aided
by reformers and by working-class men. Reformers accomplished
this by their zeal in attempting to combat the evils of industrial
capitalism by restricting and regulating women's participation in the
factory system. Working-class men aided the process by their strug-
gles against employers to prevent low-wage competition and to
maintain control of the high-wage sectors in order that they could
attain and retain a living wage.
Thus, women were not only paid less than men when in the same
factories, but increasingly certain jobs were identified as women's
work, most frequently those that were an extension into the market
of their traditional work in the home. The question remains as to why
women were willing to work under such wages and working condi-
tions. Again, there is no simple answer. The necessity occasioned by
poverty was perhaps the most pressing reason. Even the mildest form
of protest would usually bring instant dismissal for the great majority
unprotected by scarce skills and in a labour market deliberately
oversupplied not only by women but also by migrants of both sexes.
The economic consequences of job loss could be severe for the
family. On the other hand, the influence of social attitudes had much
the same effect. Within the patriarchal family, women were condi-
tioned to subservience and submission, ideal characteristics for their
function in the labour market.
96 Women and Work
We must still answer the question of why men, on average, were
able to maintain a superior position in the face of the reserve army
of unemployed or underemployed women and immigrants. Marx,
observing the deskilling and routinization of industrial work in Brit-
ain in the mid-nineteenth century, had predicted that competition
would reduce men, women and children to the same low level of
subsistence. This, however, did not happen. At least part of the
answer was that the workers fought back, and in response, employers
adopted a strategy that can best be described as "divide and conquer."
That is, management increasingly structured the work process in such
a way that groups of workers were separated into segmented markets
which redirected worker conflict with employers to conflict among
workers.
What was the basis of this segmentation? One division was at the
heart of the scientific management movement that coincided with the
emergence of big business at the end of the nineteenth century in
North America. This was the separation of the conceptual or thinking
part of work from the production worker—a major aspect of deskill-
ing — which created, on the one hand, an elite group of managers,
professionals and technical workers and, on the other, an increased
mass of unskilled or work-skilled labour. It should be remembered
that around the turn of the century the vast majority of clerical
workers were men. In the emerging industrial firm, where the ma-
jority of workers were production workers, the limited ranks of
white-collar staff were an integral part of management, very often
the training ground for those destined to take over the top manage-
ment positions. This separation of conceptual work from production
together with the growth in firm size, however, created a need for a
vast increase in clerical occupations, what are now called information
workers. It was this process that was accompanied by the opening
up of clerical occupations to women, but with a major new differ-
ence. Clerical workers were increasingly separated from manage-
ment as the principles of scientific management were applied to the
office as well as the shop floor. Conceptual work was retained by
male managers while routinized clerical work — bookkeeping, typ-
ing, filing, telephone routing — was separated off for the new class
of female worker. The technological innovation that shaped the
feminization of clerical work was the development of the typewriter
which became intimately associated with "women's work."
The reasons for this segmentation are obvious. The rising propor-
tion of clerical workers meant that there was intense competitive
The Economics of Market Dualism 97
pressure to hire the cheapest workers available — in short, women.
Though clerical work does require skills, they were easily taught
skills, generally provided free of charge to the employer by the public
school system. But from management's point of view, this segmen-
tation had another great benefit. It removed the threat of male work-
ers having access to information about the operations of the firm,
which could lead to demands for participation in both the process
and the spoils of management. Socially, women were considered not
to have any pretense at management aspirations, and indeed, very
few did have, conditioned as they were by their subsidiary role in the
patriarchal family and society. Furthermore, clerical work suited the
goals of the middle-class reformers and, indeed, of working-class
men and women as well. It began to open up just as the factory
reforms were contracting the opportunities for female industrial em-
ployment. It provided a segregated job ghetto for women, isolated
from the immoral influences of working men that so perturbed the
middle-class reformers, and it helped to restrict the low-wage com-
petition faced by men in many emerging industrial markets.
The growth of the large industrial and sales corporations (big
business or monopoly capitalism) also coincided with, indeed was
dependent on, two major social changes: the growth in literacy,
without which advertising could not be effective; and the growth in
sales organization and mass retailing. This was the beginning of the
heyday of daily newspapers, which were built on mass advertising
and which, in turn, spurred on mass production and mass retailing.
As a result, and for reasons similar to those regarding clerical work-
ers, opportunities for female employment in sales expanded likewise,
encouraged also by the fact that seasonal and daily fluctuations in
sales could be accommodated by the fact that women, given their
dual responsibilities of contributing to family income and working
in the home to ensure the reproduction of the family, were willing
to work part-time.
The growth in the demand for literacy and the consequent expan-
sion of public education also created an enormous demand for school
teachers. Because of the cost of the labour-intensive teaching profes-
sion there was intense pressure to employ the cheapest labour source
available — women — but this was considered both socially and
economically undesirable. It would put women in positions of
authority over young men. It would also require women to acquire
the conceptual and technical knowledge and skills jealously guarded
by skilled male workers and by male management. The compromise
98 Women and Work
was to restrict women teachers to elementary school with the respon-
sibility of teaching only basic literacy and socialization — the latter
including instilling the prevailing mores regarding the sexual divi-
sion of labour and function.
The advent of these new female job ghettos does not mean that
women were excluded from all industrial occupations, but the proc-
ess of change was complex. On the production floor, the deskilling
of craftsmen prompted an intense period of class conflict between
employers and workers led initially by unions such as the Knights of
Labor and increasingly after the 1880s by the craft unions. The result
can best be described as a compromise. Some skilled workers were
able to enforce an uneasy truce with employers that basically ex-
cluded the unskilled and which, given the sexual division of labour,
also excluded women. Among the unskilled and deskilled workers,
jobs were reduced to a structure of simple tasks, although many of
them involved the need for work experience—that is, the knowledge
and dexterity that comes from repeated operation of the same basic
task.
What prevented workers from rebelling at this degradation of
work? Indeed, employers were afraid of just such a workers' rebel-
lion, particularly with the periodic rise of movements for industrial
unions and of socialist doctrines from the 1880s on, culminating in
the rise and final triumph of the Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO) in the United States in the thirties and the Canadian Congress
of Labour (CCL) in the forties. The threat of worker radicalization
was known by the employers in the early years of this century as "the
labour problem." Management strategies to deal with this problem
ranged from direct, often violent, repression to the much more in-
genious and, in the long run, more effective strategy of labour market
segmentation, the creation of job ladders (which reduced insecurity
and raised the possibility of improved wages and working condi-
tions), the introduction of corporate welfare schemes (including
profit sharing and pension plans) — all designed to create a loyalty
to the firm, an interest in personal advancement and a reduction in
class interests. Yet there still remained many jobs and industries that
were not amenable to this structure, either because of the instability
of the market or the inability to devise a technical process to replace
the labour-intensive nature of production. These were the jobs and
industries that continued to demand a low wage and interruptable
labour supply. These were the jobs and industries that became the
preserve of women and immigrant workers.
The Economics of Market Dualism 99
What is striking is the extent to which women continued to occupy
the jobs that could be considered an extension of traditional house-
hold work — textiles and garments, food processing and other light
manufacturing industries. In the heavy industries and the new manu-
facturing industries using capital-intensive, mass-production tech-
nology — metal works, later chemicals, appliances and transportation
equipment — men predominated except in a limited number of light,
labour-intensive assembly operations. Only in electronics, where the
technology continued to require labour-intensive assembly not unlike
that in the garment industry (and therefore dependent on low wages),
did women make significant employment inroads. These jobs be-
came labelled women's jobs. The growth of female employment in
the service occupations is another graphic example of the transfer-
ence of the household division of labour to the labour market. As we
have noted, as late as the end of the nineteenth century the largest
single employer of women was domestic service. Within a decade or
so, domestic service was rapidly becoming an anachronism. The
reason was the penetration of capitalist production into significant
sectors of household work and the increasing availability of manu-
factured products previously fabricated in the home. Complementing
this was the reluctance of women to enter personal service if any
other employment opportunity was available.
The growth of female employment in services was merely a con-
tinuation of household work, only in the market — laundry workers,
hotel maids, waitresses, charwomen, indeed even nursing and child-
care workers. Whether in manufacturing or services, women's work
remained women's work in the marketplace as in the home. The
pattern established in this period of industrialization in North Amer-
ica has undergone little substantive change to date. As we have seen,
average female wages have shown only limited improvement vis-a-
vis male wages since before the First World War. Female employ-
ment is still concentrated in a small number of job ghettos, and
although their relative importance has changed, the ghettos them-
selves have not — senior management, the engineering and technical
professions, the skilled trades and all but light industry remain virtual
male preserves. Women continue to fill the expanding areas of retail
trade, clerical and financial low-level occupations; they still repre-
sent a high proportion of part-time workers and still lack extensive
promotion or job ladders. In short, the dualistic structure "discov-
ered" in the sixties and seventies and based in part on sex has its
roots firmly planted in the rise of industrial capitalism, the replication
100 Women and Work
in the labour market of the household division of labour, and the
response of employers to the working class's struggle to oppose or
at least to ameliorate the worst excess of industrial transformation
and the rise of monopoly capitalism.
Yet despite the apparent continuity in women's roles in the labour
market there has been the major change in the participation rates of
women since the Second World War, as documented in Chapter 2.
The forces propelling women into paid work and the changing struc-
ture of labour demand that has expanded employment opportunities
for women have been in sufficient balance that relative wages have
shown little movement. This tends to contradict some of the more
romantic myths of the twentieth-century working woman. One such
myth is that during the manpower shortage of the First World War
women were liberated from traditional pursuits. Women did replace
enlisted men in the factories, but even if they did acquire a taste for
the material benefits of such work, few remained after the war. The
myth was perpetuated through "Rosie the Riveter," the female indus-
trial worker in the Second World War. In fact, unions and employers,
even governments, tended to follow an exclusionist policy after the
emergencies to restore jobs to men on the traditional grounds that
men were the primary breadwinners. Particularly after the First
World War, what women there were in industry generally returned
to their pre-war pursuits, especially with the onslaught of depression
in 1920. During the depressed thirties, efforts were made to replace
women, where feasible, with men. In some cases, particularly in the
public sector, married women were excluded by law from employ-
ment. Though the utilization of women in wartime production was
more widespread during the Second World War, the occupational
structure of the female labour force afterwards gives scant evidence
of any social revolution in attitudes towards women in non-traditional
work. The phenomenon was largely transitory.
Analysis of the record of the last century, therefore, indicates that
the segmentation of the labour market that many economists found
in the recent period has strong historic roots and has become an
integral part of the contemporary economic structure. Class conflict
that contributed to the creation of an institutionally segmented labour
market guaranteed a measure of security and opportunity for ad-
vancement, insulating to some extent the primary labour market from
competition. The opposite side of this coin, however, was the barriers
to entry of women into this market, which made the secondary labour
The Economics of Market Dualism 101
market bear the full force of competition from rising numbers of
similar workers.
Women, Dualism and the Future
Women were not the only disadvantaged group to compete for low-
level jobs, those jobs that the male, majority workers will not accept
unless under duress because the wages and conditions have become
so degraded by easy access to cheap, unskilled labour. In Europe
there have been "guest workers" from the underdeveloped regions of
southern Europe and northern Africa; in America, legal and illegal
Hispanic immigrants; in Canada, Natives, Asian immigrants, and
migrants from the more depressed regions. These workers, along
with the rising participation of women, have filled the less desirable
jobs in the labour-intensive service, sales, manufacturing and agri-
cultural industries and provided the labour supply flexibility that has
allowed these areas to expand employment without placing excessive
upward pressure on wage levels, which would have occurred in the
absence of that steady increase in labour supply.
The growth in female participation has been particularly important
given the growth in clerical work and in the public sector, the latter
including the important health and education industries. Such an
expansion would not have been feasible without a much more sub-
stantial increase in government expenditures and, therefore, in taxes,
were it not for the latent reserve army of female labour. In this sense,
the contemporary welfare state is in large measure built upon low-
wage, female labour.
Nevertheless, if the primary labour market has been insulated to
some degree from direct competition with reserves of female labour
(and also by the tailoring of immigration policy to labour market
conditions), there is increasing evidence that employers, particularly
those facing world competition, are in the process of eroding the
security and conditions of the primary market. This can be done
through the use of women and other secondary workers as labour
market reserves in subcontracting, part-time and irregular work, as
well as through the automation of primary labour market jobs. But
perhaps the most dramatic example since the early eighties has been
the mobilization of the immense reserve army of unemployed and
underemployed in the Third World through the agency of the multi-
national (or global) corporation and "free trade." Recent stagnation,
falling real wages, and rising unemployment are reflections of this
crisis. The danger is that this tactic will feed racism and sexism as
102 Women and Work
high-wage workers attempt to protect their positions. As one observer
has noted, employers do not create racism or sexism but they do exploit
these pre-existing social divisions to their pecuniary advantage.
The feminist movement is challenging the caste system of female
job ghettos and unequal pay through demands for equal opportunity
(employment equity) and equal pay for work of equal value (pay
equity). The record of success is not entirely encouraging nor is it
entirely discouraging. The problem that must be faced is the threat
women pose to higher-priced labour, a problem difficult to solve —
and contemporary trends in the economy suggest it may become even
more so in the future.
Michael Piore, one of the most prominent American economists
developing the segmented labour market analysis, commented in the
seventies about what he saw as the "tilt" of the economy toward the
secondary labour market sector. The experience of the 1990s, we
would argue, suggests that he was correct. What he meant was that
technological change — mechanization, automation, robotics — was
rapidly eroding the employment potential of the high-wage sector.
In the resource area, job opportunities are indeed minimal and de-
clining. In the manufacturing sector, as the automobile industry ably
attests, the elimination of high-wage jobs is deemed imperative if
North America is to compete with industries in low-wage countries
or even in the higher-wage countries that themselves have adopted
highly automated techniques and parts-sourcing from the Third
World. Since Piore wrote, many North American analysts have com-
mented on the "disappearing middle," the decline in relatively well
paid jobs, mainly in manufacturing (the lower and craft tiers of the
primary labour market), the rise in high paid professional-technical
work (the upper tier of the primary labour market), and the even more
rapid expansion of low paid, unskilled work, particularly, but by no
means exclusively, in services. We will return to the experience of
the 1990s below.
In their struggle to maintain their existing economic and social
position, the male, majority workers were not easy to convince that
they should encourage the inclusion of large numbers of low-wage
workers, including women, into the primary labour market in com-
petition for a declining number of jobs. What is perhaps more likely
were demands for increased security, which would effectively ex-
clude people not then in the primary market from entry, thereby
excluding them from the market generally or continuing to restrict
them to low-wage job ghettos.
The Economics of Market Dualism 103
Technological change is not only a threat to the high-wage, male-
dominated sector, however. As we will discuss in the next chapter,
new technologies pose an equal or perhaps even greater threat to the
reasonably secure and relatively better paid female job ghetto, cleri-
cal work. If the projections of the impact of electronic technology on
information workers are near the mark, the eventual effect on this
major area of traditionally women's work could be devastating, thus
creating even more pressure on the high-wage workers to fight for
exclusion.
Finally, we should recognize the rising problem created by the
fiscal crisis of the state. Without attempting to describe the origins
and causes of this crisis, we can note its symptoms — the inability
(or unwillingness) of governments to maintain the levels of welfare
state services without incurring massive and, to the business and
financial sector, unacceptable budget deficits. Since it has been the
public sector with its disproportionately high female employment
that has provided the largest proportion of new jobs in the sixties and
seventies and even into the eighties, any further retrenchment in
employment in the public sector undermines good, existing female
jobs and wage levels. This threat is exacerbated by another govern-
ment retrenchment policy, the tightening up of unemployment insur-
ance eligibility requirements and payments, which has a
discriminatory impact on women because they are more apt to be
employed in short-term, casual and part-time work. This is a topic
we will take up in chapter 6. This has the further effect of undermin-
ing the community standard that underpins the wage level in the
secondary labour market. To the extent that it does, secondary wages
will be eroded, at least in relative terms, especially if women con-
tinue to be the majority (57 per cent between 1990 and 1998) of new
entrants into the labour market.
The Nineties/ Globalization and the Labour
Market for Women
The previous, labour market segmentation analysis was developed in
the 1970s and 1980s, before the effects of globalization had been
really felt or appreciated by analysts, including ourselves. What has
happened during the nineties to either support or undermine this
analysis? Our conclusion is that Piore's contention of a "tilt" to the
secondary sector is not only correct, but that increasingly it is en-
compassing the male labour force such that there is considerable
support for the "feminization of the (male) labour force" thesis that
104 Women and Work
has been put forward. That thesis requires a degree of elaboration.
Put simply, globalization has exposed North American manufactur-
ing to new competitive pressures, the response to which has been to
export jobs to low-wage countries and to intensify and cheapen the
extraction of labour from workers. This has been achieved through
automation, "lean production," downsizing of domestic corporations
with increased reliance on outsourcing and sub-contracting, just-
in-time sourcing not just of inputs and components but also of labour,
and increased exploitation of core skilled labour in the form of excess
hours of work while at the same time increasing the utilization of
part-time, casual and unskilled, labour. The code name for this kind
of labour market organization is "labour flexibility" and the labour
employed referred to as "contingent workers." This implies that
increasing numbers of men are being relegated to the secondary
labour market, which is defined precisely by this kind of flexibility.
Put another way, the lower tier of the primary labour market has been
contracting, relegating more men to the secondary labour market in
competition with women. This change, of course, will result in an
apparent contraction in the earnings gap between men and women
as a higher proportion of men become employed in the secondary
market. At the top end of the labour market, in the professional-
managerial tier (though not, as far as we can see, in the craft tier),
women are holding their own, perhaps even improving their position
as they increase their relative participation in higher education. The
problem is that these women form a distinct minority in the labour
market.
However, it is not just the relative decline of manufacturing and
resource industries as primary labour market employers in response
to global competitive pressures that explains the growth of the sec-
ondary labour market. Nor does it explain why, at the same time that
overall inequality in the labour market is increasing, that there has
been a decrease in inequality between men's and women's earnings.
The corollary of the relative decline of the goods-producing indus-
tries as employers of labour has been the expansion of the service
economy to become by far the major employer in the economy. Of
course, not all workers in the service economy belong in the secon-
dary labour market, particularly those employed in the business serv-
ices sector (which includes transportation, communications and
finance) and the social services sector (which includes health and
education). However, the very nature of much of the service sector
means that a disproportionate number of jobs created will have
The Economics of Market Dualism 105
secondary labour market characteristics. An article in the Washing-
ton Post, 22 November 1999, made this point very clearly. It used
Bureau of Labor Statistics data to support its contention that the
"surge in the technology sector [was] creating service and low-skill
jobs as well as high-paying tech jobs," with the result that 60 per
cent of projected job growth in the United States by 2006 was
expected to be in occupations that pay, in their words, "poverty-level
wages." This process of secondary labour market job creation has
been further intensified by neo-liberal policies of deregulation, pri-
vatization, and downsizing of social programs, all of which reduce
directly the number or primary market jobs. We will explore this
whole question of technology, neo-liberalism and globalism and its
effects on women's work in the next chapter.
Conclusion
In order to comprehend the economic realities of labour market dis-
crimination against females, it is necessary to understand both its func-
tion and its origins. Functionally, labour market segmentation serves
a number of purposes. It provides a variable labour supply to accom-
modate the anarchy of the market while reducing the risks to capital;
it divides labour into antagonistic groups based on pre-existing social
divisions, which prevents the recognition of the common conflict of
all labour with employers; it allows employers to divide up the
market and pay the minimum necessary price for each group of
workers (just as the airlines divide up the passenger market among
business travellers, youth, families, pensioners, vacationers, so as to
extract the maximum revenue from each group); and it provides the
employer with the different sets of labour characteristics that are
desired by different types and levels of operation.
The origin of this labour market segmentation lies in the transition
from household production, with its sexual division of labour which
recognizes the woman's pivotal role in the reproduction of labour
power and of the family, to the industrial capitalist form of produc-
tion. Women as a group have never totally escaped from household
production, either economically or socially. The result is the relega-
tion of women to those unskilled (in the sense of marketable creden-
tials) job ghettos that are a market extension of home production or,
given the low productivity of home work, to the emerging labour-
intensive occupations that rely on low wages, such as clerical work.
The women's role in reproduction has also encouraged a broken
pattern of labour market participation that has traditionally blocked
106 Women and Work
access to job ladders. Nor can we ignore the adaptation of employers
to the class struggle put up primarily by male workers in response to
the degradation of work under industrial capitalism, which led to the
capture of high-productivity, high-wage jobs for the primary male
worker.
Understanding the function and origins of labour market segmen-
tation provides no easy answer to its elimination. The problem is an
integral part of the contemporary system. In Chapter 5 we will look
at some of the current developments which threaten even the progress
made to date. In Chapter 8 we will discuss some of the programs,
achieved and proposed, designed to promote reform now and into
the future.
Technology, Free Trade
and Economic
Restructuring: Women and
the New Economic Order
It has become commonplace to describe the contemporary era as one
of rapid and fundamental economic change, in the number and qual-
ity of goods and services we produce, and where and how we produce
them. In the first edition of Women and Work, we concentrated on
the microcomputer revolution that was raising new and formidable
obstacles to the equality of women in the marketplace. A decade later
it had already become obvious that technological change was only
one dimension of a profound economic and political restructuring
that threatened to undermine the welfare of working people, both
men and women. This restructuring put into particular jeopardy the
public programs designed to improve the relative economic position
of women. New electronic, bio, and material technologies may have
been necessary to make this restructuring possible, but they are not
sufficient in themselves to cause it.
What was also required was a revamping of the rules of the game.
In the eighties and nineties, since the first and second editions of this
book were published, such a revamping has taken place. The liberal
socio-economic agenda that guided policy in the first three decades
after the Second World War in North America and western Europe
was replaced by what is now popularly known as the neo-liberal
agenda (but in the 1980s was more frequently referred to as the
neo-conservative agenda) — free trade and the "new global distribu-
tion of labour," deregulation and privatization, and retrenchment of
government and of social benefits. As we noted in the introduction,
Heather Menzies, in her most recent book on the impact of new
technology, argues that all these elements of the neoliberal agenda
108 Women and Work
are related and are "geared to the interests and needs not of people,
but of corporate economic renewal and global expansion," with the
ultimate result being the "disintegration of society."
The result generally has been a profound increase in income in-
equality, a rise in base unemployment, slow economic growth through
most of the last couple of decades, widespread degradation of work,
and a progressive polarization of the labour market. As noted in the last
chapter, restructuring and technological change has been eliminating
jobs in the lower tier of the primary sector in favour of new jobs in
the upper tier and, more significantly, in the low-wage secondary
sector. While this process appears to be gender non-discriminatory
in that "men's jobs" are even more jeopardized than "women's" (at
least in manufacturing), in terms of opening up new opportunities for
women its effect on the general labour market and on the potential
for women to enter non-traditional blue-collar and skilled craft oc-
cupations is clearly negative.
While the various elements of the restructuring agenda are inter-
related, it is perhaps easier to deal with their particular impacts on the
labour market separately. There are three essential elements: tech-
nology, deregulation of markets and other economic activity (includ-
ing free trade), and privatization of economic and social affairs
(including retrenchment of the welfare state). Technological change,
though not a cause of restructuring, is a necessary precondition.
Women and the Challenge of the Chip
Many people, perhaps most, are aware only as consumers of the new
products made possible by the silicon chip — video games, pocket
calculators, digital watches, car ignition systems, VCRs and compact
disk players, the visual display terminals in banks, credit unions, and
airline reservation offices, telecommunication and fax services, and
increasingly, the home computer. On the surface, at least, we have
come to terms with this new technology. But on much more impor-
tant levels, we have not only not come to terms with it, we are barely
even aware of the enormous challenge it poses — not to our con-
sumption patterns but to production and employment.
The alteration of production made possible by the chip is revolu-
tionary, comparable to the other great engineering breakthroughs
such as the steam engine or the internal combustion engine. They
changed the face of civilization — the way we live, the size and shape
of cities, the supply of goods and services, and the way we work.
With all the wonders and material benefits that they brought, they
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 109
also brought misery, even starvation, to some. Technological change
inevitably brings dislocations in production and employment. The
important issue is how we deal with the problems created and how
we utilize the technology. Historically, a common initial response
has been to oppose the introduction of new technology. Early in the
Canadian industrial revolution when an employer introduced a sew-
ing machine to his works, the tailors' union was sufficiently strong
to have it returned to its supplier. The most famous example of this
response was in Britain in the early nineteenth century: workers
across the textile regions organized secretly under the banner of the
mythical King Lud and smashed the frames and equipment of the
masters.
Nevertheless, we must be careful to recognize that opposition to
the introduction of new production technology has rarely been di-
rected at the technology itself but rather at the unemployment and
degradation of work, wages and working conditions threatened by
the new technology. This is a major reason why, up until recently,
automation and mechanization have largely been considered "male"
issues. Women were not widely employed in the skilled crafts and
therefore did not face the destruction of their skills. Most women
who entered the factories in the industrialization period entered an
already degraded workplace. The nature of most services and retail
sales positions was such that personal contact and adaptation to
individual needs made mechanization unfeasible.
In the growing clerical occupations, mechanization had limited
scope. The demand for clerical workers was growing steadily as
firms grew in size and sales and marketing became increasingly
important, so job loss was not an important issue. Since new business
machines as often as not reduced the drudgery of many office tasks,
opposition to mechanization and automation in the office was muted.
In fact, changes in much of the technology of the office were small,
except perhaps in some areas of data processing. A typist before the
First World War would find little difficulty in adjusting to most
offices of the 1970s. The machinery would be recognizable and their
functions similar though increasingly powered by electricity rather
than by hand. The slowness of technical change is indicated by the
fact that during the seventies productivity growth in the offices was
only 4 per cent as compared with almost 100 per cent on the produc-
tion floor.
The same cannot be said of mechanization in the workplace of
many male workers. Mechanization meant that the tools ceased to be
110 Women and Work
the extension of the skills of the individual and that the workers
increasingly became machine operators, a transformation that per-
mitted the employers to command increasing control over work and
the worker and to employ lower-paid and less-skilled workers. Auto-
mation meant that the workers ceased to be machine operators and
increasingly became machine tenders. While this transformation
probably had less effect in degrading work other than increasing the
element of boredom, it meant that many fewer workers were re-
quired. The spectre that haunted the worker, particularly in the six-
ties, was that of unemployment and/or of job loss, which would
destroy the individual's rung on the job ladder, the source of the
worker's security and his expectation of income progression.
The eighties turned that spectre into reality. Manufacturing and
resource-processing, according to Heather Menzies in her earlier
study of technology, Fast Forward and Out of Control, were becom-
ing "a subset of the information sector." By this she meant that
because of the revolution in information flows made possible by new
electronic technology, the great manufacturing and resource firms
were now able to produce wherever and whenever they had the
advantage in labour, resources, taxes, energy, managerial or technical
expertise. It became much easier for them to restructure, outsource,
shutdown and relocate, or subcontract to low-wage regions or coun-
tries — encouraged by the spreading doctrine of free trade. This, of
course, was in addition to the deskilling made possible by computer-
controlled machinery and the direct replacement of workers with
computer-controlled robots, electronic sensors and programmable
tools. The result has been the "hollowing out" of the middle-income
male working class and the polarization of the labour market that we
have already referred to.
But perhaps for the first time, the spectre has also come to haunt
women in a major way. Automation and robotization have now come
to many of the deskilled but labour-intensive assembly and process-
ing jobs that have traditionally been major employers of women such
as the garment industry, fish packing and electronic assembly. For
example, as early as a decade ago, robots did 85 per cent of the
circuit-board assembly at Northern Telecom's Brampton plant. Be-
tween 1991 and 1996, the female labour force increased by 4.4 per
cent but the number of women employed in manufacturing occupa-
tions fell by 1.2 per cent, and the number in primary industry occu-
pations by a whopping 21.3 per cent. Sales work also became
threatened by the spread of checkout laser scanners and universal
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 111
product codes and now, by home shopping by computer. Ama-
zon.com, the Internet bookseller, may be the harbinger of things to
come. Also rumoured to come is the "clerkless" supermarket, where
customers will pass their own purchases over a scanner and pay by
debit card, requiring no clerical help. Julie White in her 1985 study
for Labour Canada, Trouble in Store? The Impact of Microelectron-
ics in the Retail Trade, noted that jobs in trade in the decade
1966-1975 rose at a rate of 4 per cent per year but from 1976to 1981
by only 2 per cent. In the following year jobs began to actually
disappear, in 1981-82 by 36,000 or 2 per cent. Again, between 1991
and 1996, the number of women employed in retail sales occupations
declined by a hefty 7.8 per cent.
However, the most threatened workers are clerical, and since they
comprise almost a third of all women in the labour force, the mag-
nitude of this threat looms large. Between the census years 1991 and
1996, the number of female secretaries declined by 21.6 per cent, the
number of female clerical supervisors by 19.7 per cent, the number of
women in general clerical office work by 8.7 per cent, the number
of office equipment operators by 8.6 per cent, the number of tele-
phone operators by 18.7 per cent, and the number of tellers by 4.6
per cent, to list some of the major female-dominated clerical occu-
pations which have suffered substantial job losses. The technology
that makes this possible is the silicon chip, but the motivation for its
introduction is primarily economic — the profits of firms or the
budget lines of public agencies.
The Bottom Line
Microelectronic technology developed at a propitious time for busi-
ness. While production work has been steadily mechanized and auto-
mated since industrialization, office and clerical work has not, at least
until quite recently. At the turn of the century, production workers
comprised 90 per cent of the manufacturing labour force; by the nineties
only three-quarters. (See Table 5-1 for 1997 figures.) By 1997, ad-
ministrative salaries represented over 12 per cent of the total value
added in all manufacturing, almost 15 per cent in electrical and elec-
tronic manufacturing and 23 per cent in printing and publishing, all
industries where women represent a third or more of the total em-
ployees. Office costs now run from around 50 per cent of total
operating costs for major U.S. corporations, and up to 75 per cent of
costs for the financial industry, education and government. Wages
account for 80 per cent of these office costs. What these figures
112 Women and Work
Table 5-1
Administrative Costs in Canadian Manufacturing:
Selected Industries, 1997
Total Employees Administrative Employees Administrative Salaries
Industry
All Industries
Transportation
Equipment
Electrical and
Electronic
Chemicals
Clothing
Food Processing
Printing and
Publishing
Metal Fabrication
% Women*
28.9
20.0
32.9
32.8
74.7
37.1
43.9
16.3
% of Total
Employees
23.4
19.5
29.8
40.2
15.0
22.0
43.6
17.2
% of Total
Wages &
Salaries
31.3
25.0
39.3
49.7
27.7
31.1
47.6
25.0
% of Value
Added
12.2
8.8
14.8
12.5
13.5
10.9
23.0
12.8
* 1996 Census. Statistics Canada does not publish the gender distribution of
employees in its publications on manufacturing.
Value Added is the difference between the value of the output of the industry
and the cost of purchased materials, services, and intermediate inputs (i.e. it is
composed of labour income, property income and profits).
Sources: Statistics Canada, Manufacturing Statistics of Canada, 1997 (31-203);
Census, 1996.
amount to is an enormous financial incentive for firms and for gov-
ernment to reduce office costs and the administrative wage bill.
There are only two ways this can be done: reducing wages or increas-
ing productivity.
In the past, cost pressures were not so great partly because of the
availability of an elastic stream of low-paid female workers willing
and, thanks to the public school system, able to staff the expanding
offices. However, the growth of white-collar employment, which tradi-
tionally has been a fixed cost to firms (unlike blue-collar workers
who can be laid off in periods of depressed business), the impracticality
of attempting to lower wages significantly, and a small but neverthe-
less real threat of unionization have all placed pressure on business
to automate the office. The goal is to produce the same amount of work
with fewer workers, more work with the same number of workers,
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 113
or the same or more work with cheaper (deskilled) workers. That is,
the employer's goal is to increase the productivity of office workers
by the replacement of labour or of skills with machines, as has been
done progressively in production work. This is indicated by the fact
that the average investment in equipment per worker in production
was approximately twelve times the investment per worker in the
office ($25,000 to $2,000) in the early eighties in Canada. This
difference may have narrowed slightly with the cost of early com-
puterization of the office, but since then there has been a rapid and
sizeable decline in the price of computers and the cost of computing
power, which serves to make it even more profitable for employers
to replace office workers with electronic machinery. The barrier to
replacing labour and skill with machinery had been the lack of an
appropriate technology or, even after the introduction of the original
mainframe computers, the extremely high cost of these machines, so
that only a few, very large firms and governments could afford to
install them. Advancements in the technology, miniaturization and
the development of mini-and microcomputers, however, have turned
the economics upside down. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
ratio of administrative to total employees declined between 1988 and
1997 in four of the seven industrial sectors listed in Table 5-1 and in
manufacturing industries generally. The industries where the ratio
actually rose were those where major technological changes were
taking place in production, replacing production workers with com-
puters — clothing, printing and publishing, and metal fabricating.
The Chip and its Uses
Prophetically, the origin of the word "computers" was in the name
given to a group of 200 women hired by the U.S. Army during the
Second World War to calculate tables of artillery trajectories. Be-
cause of the time involved for the women to do the calculations, the
development of the first non-human electronic computer was begun
in 1943 and completed in 1946. These early computers were enor-
mous in size, filling rooms, and required large amounts of energy.
Their vacuum tubes were expensive to manufacture, large in size,
unreliable, required energy for amplification, and needed an expen-
sive temperature- and humidity-control system. Given these limita-
tions, there was little scope for the widespread use of computers.
However, shortly afterwards the transistor was invented. It could do
what the tubes did, but was small, cheap and used little power.
114 Women and Work
Essentially transistors were on-off switches that could be arranged
in a pattern that gave the machine built-in computational logic.
Although transistors were small compared with tubes, computers
were still very large machines and demanded the close environmental
control of temperature and humidity. Military and space exploration
demand for miniaturized computers, however, provided the impetus
for further refinement. This was accomplished by the placing of more
and more switches on a single piece of silicon until an entire circuit
was constructed. Since this was first accomplished at the end of the
fifties, the complexity of these circuits has increased by many hun-
dreds of thousands of times, so that now the microprocessor or chip,
the essential logic component of the computer, is smaller than a
fingernail. Not only is it small, fast, and utilizes only microscopic
amounts of energy, it is also inexpensive to produce in mass quanti-
ties. Moreover, the microprocessor can be designed for a wide variety
of tasks and can be programmed to carry out different logical proc-
esses. The stage was set for the application of the computer to a wide
variety of tasks of computation, of memory storage, and of instruc-
tion, including the ability to control other machines and monitor the
results. It can also turn sounds and images into electronic bits of
information that can be transmitted by line, microwave or satellite
over vast distances and then reconstituted at the receiving end. Faxes
and electronic mail are the most commonly experienced examples.
The computer, of course, cannot think — at least so far. Artificial
intelligence still eludes us. The thinking content of computers is
installed in the design of the chip (the hardware) and the instructions
given it by the computer programmer (the software). Once this ca-
pacity is installed, however, the computer is capable of complicated
and refined tasks at very high speed. What is most significant, how-
ever, is that the intelligence required to perform much of the work
is built into the machine by technical and scientific workers, while
the operators of the machine need only know the rudimentary instruc-
tions to activate this intelligence. Thus, although the "hardware" has
become cheap, the "software" remains relatively expensive — except
where the task to be performed is routinized and standardized pack-
ages can be purchased. In the organization of work, the implications
are clear. Machine operators or tenders are deskilled, while concep-
tual and challenging work is concentrated in a small group of well-
paid, technically trained workers and in the managers that control the
designs of these systems. Interestingly, Graham Lowe's recent study
of computers in the Canadian workplace indicates that very few
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 115
workers affected by the introduction of computers claim that the
change has reduced skill requirements or made their jobs less inter-
esting, although almost one in five workers so affected in 1994 felt
that technological change had negatively affected their job security.
The conclusion, that the introduction of computer based technol-
ogy has not degraded jobs, however, conflicts with other Canadian
studies and many in other countries. Menzies, in Whose Brave New
World?, reports on a British Columbia study:
[S]ome administrative work was being enriched through a
trickling down of tasks from the professional and management
ranks as these sections were simplified through computeriza-
tion. But much of the work was being eroded and deskilled
through computerization ... [T]he main effect was a pervasive
computer-simplification of work, with no compensating oppor-
tunities for more enriched knowledge work in return.
Menzies also refers to a 1993 Industry Canada report that new
technology was creating job polarization such that "an overall
'deskilling' is becoming a permanent feature of the labour force."
She goes on to quote study after study that report deskilling, an
increase in management control, reductions in the range of tasks,
intensification of work, increased stress, and job loss — in offices,
hospitals, garment factories, telecommunications, and other sectors
where women work. Deskilling also allows companies to replace
skilled workers with part-time and temporary workers. As Menzies
notes, Northern Telecom was a pioneer in splitting its labour force
into two segments, using "temps" (temporary workers) and part-time
workers, mainly women, in small-batch assembly.
For other countries — a U.S. study referred to by Lowe, for
instance — concluded that automation had contributed to clerical
deskilling. Summing up the European experience, Juliet Webster has
written:
Overall, feminist studies present a very different picture [to the
upskilling reported in a 1988 OECD study], of a marked trend
towards the degradation of women's jobs, and in particular jobs
which inherently have a distinctly routine aspect to them: cleri-
cal jobs, typing jobs, supermarket jobs and semi-skilled manu-
facturing jobs. And, after all, these are the jobs in which the
116 Women and Work
bulk of women in non-agrarian work are employed — are still
employed.
To some extent, new occupations have been opened up to
women in areas from which they were previously excluded ...
But this is not so much an indication of the potential of com-
puter technologies to create equal opportunities in the work-
place; rather it is a signal of the deskilling of these jobs, and
the consequent lowering of the barriers to feminisation ... in-
variably when women move into new areas of skilled work,
these areas themselves become redefined as non-skilled, no
matter what the technical content of the work is.
The microprocessor can be utilized in a wide variety of processes
that affect the workplace of both men and women. Women, however,
must be concerned not only with the effects on what has traditionally
been women's work but also with the effects on traditional male
work. There are several reasons for such concern. The disappearance
or degradation of skilled male work will severely limit the opportu-
nities for women to break out of their occupational ghettos and enter
non-traditional jobs. Secondly, male workers faced with diminishing
job opportunities, particularly in the better-paid, skilled occupations, can
be expected to attempt to monopolize the remaining openings and
the higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs created by the new technology.
In short, there is a danger that the impact of the new technology on
male work will contribute to the crowding out of women from
higher-order jobs in the future. Thirdly, the destruction of middle-in-
come jobs threatens to destroy the entry ports and job ladders that
are integral to entry into, and to the security and material benefits
provided within, the primary labour market. For this reason, we will
first review the potential impact of microelectronic technology on
essentially blue-collar or production work.
The uses of the chip in conjunction with mechanical devices
(robots) or with numerical-controlled, sensor-controlled or program-
mable machines, with information transmission, storage and retrieval
equipment (data processing and electronic communications) or with
automated materials-handling, testing and inventory management
systems are virtually limitless. For the blue-collar worker involved
in routinized assembly-line operations, the threat from robots and
other computer-controlled machinery and tools has already been
realized. The rapid decline in the cost of computers in the last three
decades means that the price of industrial robots has fallen drasti-
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 117
cally, in some cases well below the equivalent of an employee's
yearly salary even in relatively low-wage sectors, although it may
have a working life of up to ten years or more. Moreover, robots have
none of the human frailties, can work faster, are readily retrainable
— and never go on strike.
Nor is chip technology only applicable to mass production, low-
skilled assembly work. Even small-batch manufacturing, engineering
and drafting are affected. Rather than replacing the drudgery of
production-line labour, however, these applications of the technology
threaten the skills and jobs of occupations such as machinists and
draftsmen. Computers aided by electronic sensors can economically
operate metal-working equipment such as drills, lathes and milling
equipment and are now readily programmable to accommodate short
product or model lines. The skill of the machinist in converting
blueprints to parts and in guiding the machine can be completely
replaced, reducing the machinist to the status of a semiskilled ma-
chine tender. Computer-Aided Design/Computer Assisted Manufac-
ture (CAD/CAM) allows an engineer to design products on a visual
display terminal, transmit that design to a drafting machine and
produce as many copies of the finished blueprint as are wanted. The
draftsman becomes redundant.
What are the implications of this for women workers? As indi-
cated above, women will be indirectly affected by the drying up of
opportunities to enter better-paying non-traditional occupations. In
addition, women employed in certain types of assembly occupations
will be directly affected. Ironically perhaps, electronics and electrical
assembly industries, where women represent approximately a third
of production workers, have been one of the first industries hit. As
already mentioned, in fish-packing — a female-dominated occupa-
tion — automatic gutting, filleting and packing machinery has seri-
ously cut into seasonal employment. In the printing industry, where
women also comprise around a third of the workers, computers have
had a major impact. Even in the garment industry, where low wages
and a flexible labour force might have been thought sufficient to
protect the heavily female and immigrant workforce, automation has
become quite pronounced, in the form of automated cutting and
sewing machines and materials-handling systems. Indeed, some gar-
ment production that went to Third World countries to take advan-
tage of low wages has returned to North America to be closer and
more responsive to the market and has remained cost competitive by
employing computer technology in place of cheap labour. The po-
118 Women and Work
tential for much more worker-replacing automation in the industry
remains very great.
The Electronic Office and Shop
Far more directly significant for women are the applications of elec-
tronic technology to office work, to services, particularly in commu-
nications and finance, and to retail trade. These are the sectors that
employed almost 60 per cent of all women workers in 1998 but which
absorbed less than a third of all the increase in female employment
in the decade between 1988 and 1998. While sales and service
occupations continued to expand, by almost 19 per cent over the
decade compared with a total increase in female employment of close
to 17 per cent, clerical, administrative and finance jobs actually
declined by 1.7 per cent, and by 8 per cent for clerical occupations
alone. The major applications of the computer and electronics in the
office are in data and word processing and in communications, col-
lectively referred to as information technology. The ubiquitous mani-
festation of this technology in the office is the visual display terminal
or VDT.
The promise of this new technology is a dramatic rise in office
productivity and the integration of information and decision-making
within corporations, between corporations, regionally and interna-
tionally. A typist on a word processor can produce approximately
twice the output that can be produced on a conventional typewriter
through the virtual elimination of retyping, correcting errors and
paper handling. In any office where customized variants of standard
documents are produced, such as law and insurance offices, comput-
ers allow for instantaneous retrieval of selected text (sometimes
referred to as "boilerplate") for inclusion in the document without
the necessity of any typing. (Between the 1991 and 1995 censuses,
the number of legal secretaries dropped by 17.3 per cent; the number
of medical secretaries by 2.1 per cent.) Similarly, with the integration
of word and data processing and communications programs, com-
posite documents complete with graphics can be produced and trans-
mitted with minimal secretarial input. Filing and sorting, memo
distribution, long-distance mail (through e-mail or facsimile trans-
mission), can be done electronically. Computers can even correct
spelling and, to a degree, grammatical errors.
The common attribute of this new technology is that it reduces the
time necessary to do office work, if not immediately, then after the
technology has become established in the office and integrated into
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 119
network systems. The result can be manifested in one of a number
of ways, most of which have negative implications for women. The
most obvious result is a reduction in the number of clerical jobs,
relatively and absolutely. Menzies, in Fast Forward and Out of
Control, reports on a Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
survey in 1985 that showed a close correlation between the introduc-
tion of computers and job loss. Perhaps the best evidence is the
relative decline in clerical work as an employer of women (34.3 per
cent in 1981; 30.8 per cent in 1986; 29.3 per cent in 1991; and 25.8
per cent in 1998; though again, care should be taken in interpreting
the drop between the 1991 and 1998 figures because of the change
in occupational classification); and, in the late eighties and nineties,
a fall in the absolute number of clerical jobs in the economy (a drop
of almost 7 per cent between 1988 and 1998 when professional
occupations in business and finance are excluded). Cohen also notes
in her 1994 study that up to 40 per cent of the increase in managerial
and administrative jobs for women (the majority of which the Cana-
dian Labour Congress reports are part-time positions) really only
represents a renaming of clerical work, thus over-emphasizing both
the decline in clerical workers but, equally, the growth of female
managerial and administrative occupations. Studies in the United
States of projected employment growth also predict clerical employ-
ment falling relative to total employment through the nineties. In fact,
one study by the late, eminent econometrician Wassily Leontief
predicted a significant decline in the actual number of clerical work-
ers by 1995 in the United States.
Decreasing numbers of clerical workers is one manifestation of
"jobless economic and employment growth." By this is meant two
things: though output has increased in the office, it is being produced
by the same or fewer numbers of employees; and second, that office
jobs are being widened to include new tasks without the creation of
new jobs. Almost all studies report a marked intensification of work
and increased work loads as a consequence of the introduction of
computers into the office. However, what the CUPE and other studies
have also found is that the most pervasive result of the introduction
of the new technology has been the conversion of full-time and
regular jobs to part-time, "temporary," contracted-out work — or
home work, with the obvious negative implications for women's
income and career employment. In the 1988-1998 decade the number
of female clerical and administrative workers declined by almost
seven per cent while the number that worked part-time rose by five
120 Women and Work
per cent. This rise in what is known as "contingent" or "just-in-time"
employment is not restricted to Canada. For example, the largest
single employer in the United States in 1998 was a "temporary help"
firm.
The expansion of part-time work at the expense of full-time jobs
is the same result that has accompanied computerization of sales
occupations, particularly cashiers. White notes that 56 per cent of
sales jobs created between 1975 and 1982 were part-time, up from
37 per cent in the previous decade. In 1988-1998, a full 94 per cent
of the total increase in retail sales, sales clerks and cashier jobs were
part-time. Moreover, part-time hours are frequently reported to have
been reduced. Stores are able to reduce the number of staff required
to the minimum at any point in the day or the week through the
information provided by computer monitoring and the flexibility
provided by many part-timers all eager for more hours.
Other results widely reported are that the new technology frequently
deskills, fragments and degrades clerical work and impedes career
advancement. It deskills and degrades because it removes decision-
making from the worker and imbeds it in the computer program,
which is controlled by technical and management personnel removed
from the main body of clerical workers. At the extreme, the word-
processing or data-entry pools become little different from manufac-
turing assembly lines, both with repetitious and mind-destroying
menial work — "Taylorism with a vengeance" as Menzies has char-
acterized it, referring to the deskilling strategy of F.W. Taylor, the
late nineteenth century architect of "scientific management." Menzies,
for instance, reports the impact on secretarial work in law offices.
In the initial stage of stand-alone equipment, they organized
clerical workers into word-processing pools where their typing
was by rote and anonymous. It was classic scientific manage-
ment, with work divided into standardized functions, and the
execution or performance of it de-skilled accordingly. But as
many standardized operations became automated, and when data-
and word-processing were integrated, the work of document
preparation was reorganized again. Standard word-processing
is still done in the word-processing pool, often by a night shift
employed on a part-time basis. Trained legal secretaries, on the
other hand, have gained more scope and responsibility through
the sophisticated software available to them.
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 121
This raises another consequence of the new technology. Certainly,
there are cases of reskilling, the creation of new tasks that widen and
deepen the responsibilities of some clerical workers. However, for
the most part, the new conceptual and technical tasks are transferred
up to senior managerial and technical staff, dominated by men, rather
than down among the mainly female clerical workers. Or, as Webster
has reported, when women do take over the new tasks they are then
reclassified as unskilled work. This has the effect of hollowing out
job hierarchies. As Lowe concludes in his 1997 study, "the diffusion
of information technology in Canadian workplaces is contributing to
the increasing labour market polarization documented since the early
1980s." The deskilling of certain jobs and the upgrading of others
widens the gap between the clerical occupations and the technical,
administrative, professional and management occupations, which
makes it increasingly difficult for clerical workers to gain access to
higher-level jobs. Menzies, reporting on four case studies in an ear-
lier book, Women and the Chip (1980) concluded that, not only did
newly available upgraded jobs "move beyond the skills reach of the
average clerical worker," but there was also a tendency toward in-
creased isolation of female job ghettos "with few access points that
would allow them at least a chance for upward mobility." Further-
more, deskilled work also encouraged part-time work — more bar-
riers to career advancement, already impeded by employment
stagnation and the ghettoization of clerical work and all contributing
to the growing polarization of the labour market and of society.
The other common effect of office computerization reported in
most studies (and which clerical workers share with similar workers
in telecommunications and sales), is the dehumanization and stress
caused by electronic employee monitoring — how many keystrokes
a typist makes in an hour or day, how many calls a telephone operator
handles, how many sales a cashier transacts, how many times a
worker goes to the washroom, how long she takes for coffee or lunch
breaks — all become individually recordable for the purposes of
managers who can remain anonymous. The intent of this is twofold,
to increase the intensity of work for all employees and to identify,
discipline or eliminate slower employees. This is reflected in the
general response of workers that workloads increase with office
automation and that the social and human character of the work is
reduced. This, in turn, has led to the rise in stress-related illnesses
among women subject to computer pacing and monitoring.
122 Women and Work
Perhaps one of the most reported recent cases was the "shocking"
story of the Manitoba Telephone System in the 1980s. Telephone
operators over an extended period of time reported problems with
unexplained electrical shocks which eventually resulted in labour
unrest and the shutting down of some facilities. Extensive testing was
done of the facilities and equipment but without success in identify-
ing the problem. Eventually, in consultation with the union, a new work
organization was tested that reduced the stress level caused by close
monitoring and routinization of the work and the problem seemed to
largely disappear. This is not surprising. A statistical study by Julie
Polle of illness and related medical and visual problems among
clerical and telecommunications workers in Manitoba concluded that
illness among these workers was unrelated to such things as the
amount of time spent working at a computer or the physical (ergo-
nomic) features of the work, but rather was directly related to the
organization of the work — how little control the employee had of
her work, the degree of monitoring, and the routinization and deskill-
ing of the work. The question of the medical hazards from radiation
emissions from VDTs, particularly for pregnant women, is still hotly
debated (and as with asbestos, we may only find out the answer in
cancer epidemiology studies twenty or thirty years down the line).
For the moment, many union contracts do provide that pregnant
women can refuse work at a VDT without penalty. However, even
if it is eventually proved that emissions do not pose a threat, it is readily
apparent that the stress produced by the electronic office does.
Stress and occupational health problems have also been some of
the outcomes of the introduction of electronic checkout stations in
supermarkets. White, for instance, reports on the back, shoulder
elbow and hand problems that resulted from the "ring-and-bag" sys-
tem introduced with electronic registers in the mid-1970s and on the
decline in work satisfaction that accompanied the reduced interaction
with customers demanded by the need to concentrate on continuous
keying-in with electronic registers. Individual monitoring of the
number of items checked through per minute is perhaps the most
stressful effect of computerization, particularly in non-unionized
stores where workers have no protection from discipline or discharge
for not achieving manager-imposed norms.
Obviously, this technology is a major contributing factor to the
rising rate of workplace injury suffered by women. The CLC reports
that in 1992, one in four women were injured on the job, and that the
number of injuries was increasing at twice the rate the female labour
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 123
force was rising at a time when male injuries were declining. The
rates of injury were highest in health and social services, finance and
insurance, accommodation, food and beverage services and educa-
tion — all areas of female job concentration.
The foregoing picture of the implications of the microelectronic
revolution is hardly one to inspire great expectations on the part of
women. However, it must be emphasized that few of these results
are technologically determined. They are the result of how owners
and managers choose to organize their work places. They are the
result of how unregulated labour markets and traditional social atti-
tudes discriminate against women, channelling them into low wage,
dead-end job ghettos. Perhaps the picture painted is too bleak. The
new technology also opens up a host of exciting possibilities. Like
the last industrial revolution, in the long run the new revolution may
open up as many new jobs as it destroys. But that was scant comfort
to the hand-loom weavers of nineteenth-century Britain, the harness
makers of twentieth-century North America, or the women of early
industrial Canada forced off the land and into the mills and urban
squalor. It is also scant comfort to the office worker, bank teller or
production-line worker made redundant by the micro-processor.
The challenge of the new technology is to the quantity and quality
of jobs for both women and men. This, we repeat, is not determined
by the technology but by how we choose to utilize that technology
and by who has control over the terms and conditions of its intro-
duction. The design and control of this new technology, however, is
increasingly in the hands of private interests responding to the mone-
tary rewards of an unregulated market and not to social needs. The
new set of neo-liberal rules, largely implemented during the last two
decades, has created an environment that makes controlling the de-
sign and utilization of electronic technology in the interests of gender
equality and quality of work life a much more difficult task.
Free Trade, Privatization and Women's Work
The 1980s, as we have noted, witnessed the emergence of a new
political economy, an ideological policy agenda designed to achieve
two goals, the deregulation of markets and the privatization of eco-
nomic activity and decision making. The deregulation of markets
included such things as the deregulation of the airline and trucking
industries, and of the banking and finance industry (with the conse-
quent loss of many companies and thousands of jobs). It also pre-
cipitated the crisis in the airline sector in the nineties, which resulted
124 Women and Work
in the takeover of Canadian Airlines by Air Canada. But it is epito-
mized by the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA),
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the creation
of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the proposed Free Trade
Area of the Americas and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI). Despite their names, all of these agreements and organiza-
tions are more about deregulating and privatizing international mar-
kets for capital, technology and services than they are about reducing
tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Nevertheless, the trade liberali-
zation that is involved does have significant, and largely harmful,
implications for the female labour market in Canada. The deregula-
tion of international financial markets, on the other hand, has played
a major role in destabilizing the international economy — witness
the Asian economic meltdown, the Mexican and Latin American
crises, and the collapse of the Russian economy.
The privatization of economic activity and decision-making, how-
ever, extends beyond the deregulation of markets. It also includes the
sale of publicly owned enterprises, the transfer of public programs
to the private sector, and the retrenchment of government services
and cuts in public spending generally. Most of these actions also have
a detrimental labour market impact for women.
The most comprehensive study of the impact of the FTA on
women's work in Canada is Free Trade and the Future of Women's
Work by Marjorie Cohen. The book was published some time before
a North American free trade area was under active consideration, so
it does not include an assessment of the potential impact of NAFTA.
However, since NAFTA extended the same principles as contained
in the FTA, the same effects on women can be expected though,
perhaps, magnified. Cohen first looked at five manufacturing indus-
tries that account for over 60 per cent of women's manufacturing
jobs: clothing, textiles, food processing, electrical and electronic prod-
ucts, and leather products. Her conclusion is worth quoting in full:
[F]ree trade will increase women's unemployment, will confine
women's work to an even more narrow range of occupations,
and will adversely affect the ability of women to pursue better
working conditions through unionization. It is also likely that
the wage gap between males and females will grow and that
competitive pressures will inhibit the effective use of social
policies to correct the labour market inequalities between males
and females.
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 125
Table 5-2
Changes in Employment in Female Intensive
Manufacturing Industries
1987-1997
Industry
Food
Primary Textiles
Textile Products
Clothing
Leather
Tobacco
Electrical and Electronic Products
% Chanxe
0
-22
-19
-25
-49
-29
-13
Source: Statistics Canada, Manufacturing in Canada, 1997.
The evidence generally supports this conclusion although, as we
have seen, the overall wage gap between men and women has nar-
rowed and it is male wages that have suffered rather than women's,
but the decline in factory jobs in these industries over the last decade
has been considerable. (See Table 5-2. Unfortunately, figures of job
loss by sex are not available from the Statistics Canada annual report
on manufacturing.) In all cases but food, job loss has been substantial
and in food, no new jobs have been added. Cohen and Pat Armstrong,
however, both report on job losses in manufacturing in the aftermath
of the trade agreements. Armstrong notes that, although comprising
less than a third of those employed in manufacturing, women ac-
counted for 53 per cent of the job loss in that sector between 1990
and 1992. Nor could this loss be attributed to the differential effects
of the recession only. As Cohen notes, "These are changes that
appear to be permanent because they are associated with plant clo-
sures rather than lay-offs. In the first three years of the FTA,
women's employment in manufacturing decreased by over 11 per cent
or 66,400 jobs." The important factor contributing to the loss of these
already low-wage jobs and to the inability to upgrade working con-
ditions is competition from the low-wage, low-working-conditions
standards and anti-union, "right-to-work" laws in the sunbelt (south
and south-western) states in the United States, the Maquiladora cor-
ridor of Mexico and other Third World countries.
Furthermore, women have a much more difficult problem adjust-
ing to the unemployment caused by the "economic restructuring"
126 Women and Work
initiated by free trade. They have more difficulty finding new jobs,
remain unemployed longer and more frequently become "discour-
aged workers" and leave the labour force because they believe there
is no work available to them. This is consistent with the fall in female
participation in the nineties that we have already noted. Even when
they do find new jobs, many do so only at reduced wages, at lowered
wages relative to men's, and in traditional female occupational ghet-
tos. Gabriel and MacDonald quote a 1993 Ontario Ministry of La-
bour study that reports that, when displaced, women take an average
$2,283 greater pay cut than do men. This confirms an earlier 1980-82
Ontario study that reported that women took a 42 per cent cut in pay
after displacement compared with only 25 per cent of men. Further,
many of the displaced women in sectors such as the garment indus-
tries — disproportionately immigrants and visible minorities — are
forced to resort to homework which is characterized by "sweat shop"
conditions — less than minimum wages, no benefits and little or no
protection from labour standards. Women are usually less mobile,
due to family ties, and are woefully underrepresented in training and
retraining programs tied to the labour market.
Cohen goes on to analyze the impact of free trade in services. Her
conclusions are generally similar, especially given the importance of
services as a generator of employment for women. Particularly at risk
are jobs in computer-related services and data processing. One esti-
mate that she quotes puts the loss of Canadian jobs in data processing
between 1977 and 1984 at 180,000, and this was forecasted to in-
crease markedly with free trade as multinational corporations con-
centrated their information services — and the "good jobs" that they
represent — in their U.S. head offices. At that time American em-
ployment per dollar of sales was already almost twice that of Cana-
dian employment per dollar of sales in major U.S. corporations with
Canadian subsidiaries. Even more jobs are threatened by the deregu-
lation of telecommunications and their potential centralization in the
United States.
But the bigger threat to female workers that Cohen saw was the
pressure put on Canada by the FTA and NAFTA to "harmonize" its
tax system, social services and public programs with those of the
United States. This means a further retrenchment — more privatiza-
tion, contracting out, part-time employment, cutbacks in social serv-
ices — in a public sector already shrinking due to government
measures to stem deficits and cut corporate taxes. The percentage of
women employed in public administration has actually declined
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 127
since the FTA came into effect. Between 1988 and 1998, the per-
centage of women employed in public administration declined from
5.8 to 5.4 per cent of total female employment because the growth
of public administration employment was only slightly over half of
the rate of growth of female employment in all industries. Female
employment growth in health and education fared considerably bet-
ter, but in all three public sector industries, the rates of growth of
part-time jobs exceeded those in full-time jobs, in education by a
factor of almost two to one, in public administration by a factor of
almost five to one. In addition, there has been a major increase in
temporary workers in the public sector as well as in the privatized
public sector and in the private sector. They now comprise around
ten per cent of the labour force.
Nevertheless, the facts are that there is less wage and employment
discrimination in the public sector and that education, health and
social services are the largest employer of better paid female profes-
sional and technical employees of any industrial sector. In addition,
most existing employment and pay equity programs are restricted to
the public or quasi-public sector or to firms supplying the public
sector. (The notable exception was Ontario under the NDP, but its
private sector employment equity program did not survive the elec-
tion of a Conservative government in the mid-nineties. Quebec also
extended pay equity to the private sector in 1995.) Therefore, any
relative decline in public sector or related employment represents a
further move away from equality with men. Furthermore, recent cuts
in family allowance, unemployment insurance, and in the projected
national day care program disproportionately affect women. Cohen
concludes:
The strength of the service sector is of vital importance to
women workers in Canada since the majority of women are
employed in this sector. Free trade in services will cause job
loss and downward pressures on wages and working conditions
in many areas which have traditionally been growth areas for
women's employment: data processing, transportation, and
public service occupations.
So far, the effect of free trade on public social programs has been
limited by government restrictions on the funding of medical care
and education. However, recent moves by Conservative governments
in Alberta to introduce private hospitals and Ontario to welcome
128 Women and Work
private multinational education institutions, combined with pressure
(mainly emanating from the United States) to force the opening up
of trade in services through the agency of the WTO (though tempo-
rarily derailed by the failure of the Seattle WTO meetings) means
that there is no guarantee that protection of these social programs,
and the "good" female jobs they embody, can or will continue.
But the disappearance of jobs in the relatively non-discriminatory
public sector is not the only threat to women posed by the neo-liberal
attack on public services and social programs. Women have been the
biggest losers in the recent cutbacks in unemployment insurance,
including the abolition of benefits for those that "voluntarily" quit
their jobs. This makes women workers particularly vulnerable to
sexual harassment, since, if they are forced to quit in response, they
stand to lose all future benefits unless they can prove the existence
of such harassment, frequently a very difficult task. Moreover,
women are more likely than men to quit their jobs to assume tempo-
rary family responsibilities. This imposes a double burden on such
women — loss of employment and loss of unemployment benefits.
We will return to the gender discrimination embodied in recent
changes in unemployment insurance in the next chapter.
As already mentioned, one of the biggest blows to women from
social program cutbacks was the abolition of family allowances, the
only independent source of income many women were entitled to. It
was particularly cruel for welfare mothers who faced having their
provincial welfare allowances cut by provincial governments in order
to "claw back" the amount of the previous family allowance that the
federal government had converted into benefits for poor children. In
the longer run, however, it is perhaps the reneging of the Mulroney
and, to date, the Chretien governments on their promises to introduce
a national day care program that will be the most costly to working
women since, as we will demonstrate in Chapter 8, affordable, reli-
able day care is essential to the equality of women in the labour
market. Furthermore, all of these cutbacks tend to undermine the
social wage that both supplements and supports wages in the secon-
dary labour market already depressed by falling minimum real wages
and rising unemployment. Again, as we have repeatedly demon-
strated, this disproportionately affects and harms women in, and out
of, the labour market.
Thus, free trade, market deregulation, privatization and public
sector retrenchment combine with the new technology to present a
daunting challenge to improving the status of women in the contem-
Technology, Free Trade and Economic Restructuring 129
porary labour market. As Menzies concludes, "Just as a lot of the
talk about free trade didn't make sense in terms of how trade in goods
and services really works, the cutbacks don't make sense in the
context of public debt and the real sources of the problem. But they
do make a lot of sense in the context of technological restructuring."
The question is, can anything be done about it? Can this "challenge
of the chip" be met and, if so, how?
Unemployment Insurance
and Labour Market
Evolution:
A Women's Issue
During the depressed 1930s, Canada faced a crisis. The underlying
cause, of course, was unemployment, but the manifestation of this
problem that ultimately led to the introduction of a national unem-
ployment insurance scheme was the bankruptcy, or threat of bank-
ruptcy, of Alberta, Saskatchewan and many municipalities in
Western Canada. The reason for this financial crisis was the need to
provide relief for the unemployed, a responsibility which under the
British North America Act lay with the provincial and municipal
governments and local charity. This was within the tradition inherited
from the British poor law which assigned responsibility for the relief
of poverty and unemployment to the local or parish level. However,
given the level of unemployment and the devastation of their resource-
based economies, the provincial and local governments and agencies
simply didn't have the financial resources to meet relief needs. Nei-
ther the Conservative government of R. B. Bennett nor its successor,
the Liberals under W. L. McKenzie King, were willing to accept
federal responsibility for the unemployed. But both were caught in
a dilemma. Though local and provincial governments were constitu-
tionally responsible for unemployment relief, they were increasingly
fiscally incapable of providing such relief and they were repeatedly
forced to appeal to the federal government for grants and loans.
Moreover, because some regions and municipalities were more se-
verely affected by the depression, the ability to fund relief was very
uneven, resulting in what historian James Struthers called a "verita-
ble patchwork quilt of aid," which produced wide disparities and
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 131
inequalities in the levels of relief and taxation among the municipali-
ties and provinces.
The opposition parties, led by the newly founded social demo-
cratic party (the CCF), labour, the unemployed, numerous munici-
palities, some of the provinces, and many business leaders, called on
the federal government to establish a national system of unemploy-
ment insurance based on the British plan that had been first enacted
in 1911. Indeed, Bennett did introduce a plan in 1935 but made no
effort to settle the constitutional issue. As a result, the Employment
and Social Insurance Act was declared ultra vires of federal juris-
diction on appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in
1937.
King's response to the crisis and the demands for relief funds was
to establish a National Employment Commission and the Royal
Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (the Rowell-Sirois
Commission). The final report of the NEC was presented to King in
1937 and recommended that Ottawa assume complete responsibility
for unemployment aid, both unemployment insurance and unemploy-
ment assistance (welfare or "the dole") for those not eligible for
insurance benefits. While the Rowell-Sirois Commission's report
was not tabled until 1940 (after King had drafted an unemployment
insurance act and had begun the process of constitutional change to
make unemployment insurance a federal responsibility), the Com-
mission's support for a federal unemployment insurance system was
known to the government. However, despite all of this advice and
pressure, the decisive impulse that moved King to act was the Second
World War. For one thing, it cleared the way for provincial accep-
tance of the constitutional amendment, since King had made the
introduction of unemployment insurance a "war effort imperative,"
as well as a necessary program to deal with postwar reconstruction.
It was clear that King also feared a renewal of depression after the
war, as had occurred after the First World War, particularly when
the unemployed would be comprised of young war veterans, trained
to kill, and factory workers, trained in making munitions. Further-
more, the high employment levels created by the war meant that the
cost of the plan would be negligible, while the premiums charged
would act as a form of "forced savings," taking a portion of workers'
earnings out of consumption and thereby contributing to reducing the
inflationary threat while simultaneously making funds available to
government to finance the war effort.
132 Women and Work
It should be noted that the UI scheme that was finally introduced
in 1940 was a response to a crisis of male unemployment, particularly
among young men, and, therefore, was designed primarily to protect
males with a full-time commitment to steady industrial employment
— those that we have defined in Chapter 4 as being in the lower tier
of the primary labour market. This is evident in the debates surround-
ing the design that preceded the introduction of UI and in the final
structure adopted in the legislation.
A number of principles were involved in UI. The first, inherited
from the British poor law tradition, was the principle of "less eligi-
bility," the doctrine that the level of relief must be based, not on need,
but on a rate lower than the wages for the meanest work available.
This principle would reinforce the work ethic and provide an income
that would not permit the unemployed to refuse the worst jobs of-
fered. However, taken strictly, this principle would be in conflict
with the income replacing needs of the unemployed. Higher-waged
workers were considered to have higher replacement needs to protect
their normal standard of living during periods of short term unem-
ployment. A flat rate dole based on need and supplemented by
dependent allowances, the design of the original British act, would
almost inevitably result in benefits for the poorer paid workers that
were higher than the wages they normally received while, at the same
time, they would be too low to maintain the normal standard of living
for the higher waged workers. The solution to this problem was to
tie the level of benefits to regular wages, initially at a rate that
averaged around fifty per cent. However, this created a further prob-
lem — the benefits were inadequate to meet the basic needs of lower
wage families, particularly those with dependants. Therefore, a 15
per cent supplement was provided for wives of the married unem-
ployed, although nothing was provided for dependent children. One
of the main designers of the postwar social security system, Leonard
Marsh, proposed that the dependent children problem could be re-
lieved without distorting work incentives through a system of uni-
versal family allowances. These were introduced in 1944.
The second principle adopted was that the scheme should be
"actuarially sound." This resulted in two features of the original UI
plan. The first feature was that benefits, both by size and duration,
be tied to contributions. Premiums were to be shared, 40 per cent
each from employees and employers, and the remainder from gov-
ernment — in large measure to cover the administration costs of the
plan and those of the national system of employment offices. The
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 133
second feature was that coverage was not extended to those who had
a low probability of unemployment (generally the professional and
managerial tier of the primary labour market) nor to those that had
a very high probability of unemployment (generally those in the
secondary labour market, including seasonal workers.) Excluded in-
itially were seasonal workers, mainly in the primary industries and
mostly rural; domestic servants; government employees including
police, nurses, teachers, and hospital workers; workers in charitable
institutions; and those earning $2,000 or more a year. The result was
that just over 40 per cent of the labour force was covered. Thus,
outside of seasonal workers, a disproportion of excluded occupations
were those occupied by women. At the time, approximately 90 per
cent of women workers were employed in clerical, domestic service,
teaching, nursing, and garment and textile occupations. Most of these
jobs were also of an intermittent or irregular nature, fluctuating to
suit the needs of employers.
The system, in short, was designed for a male, industrial labour
force in a social system where the vast majority of families were
male-headed, one-earner unions. That the act was tailored to a male
labour force is hardly surprising. In 1941 only one in five women
was in the labour force and most were young, single and waiting to
get married and leave the labour market. Among married women, the
participation rate in the labour market was only around one in eight.
While there was no explicit discrimination against women in the
act, eligibility and the "ratio rule" formula, which tied benefit dura-
tion to the duration of premium payments, had a discriminatory effect
as did systemic lower female wages. Minimum eligibility require-
ments depended on the worker having been in insurable employment
for at least 180 days (or thirty 6-day weeks) during the two years
immediate preceding the claim. There were substantial penalties for
repeat claimants as the plan sharply limited benefits for intermittent
workers. The maximum benefit period of one year required five years
of continuous insurable employment. It is obvious that few single
women would acquire maximum entitlement before getting married
and leaving the labour force. Those married women who left the
labour force to bear or raise children, even if only for a limited
period, would have reduced entitlement on returning to the labour
market. While the graded-rate system which based benefits on earn-
ings treated men and women alike, it ignored the inequality embed-
ded in the wage structure which meant that the new scheme would
134 Women and Work
fail to provide a living wage for single, wage-earning women or for
women supporting dependent children or adults.
A key premise at this time was that of female economic depend-
ency. It was assumed that married women would be provided for by
the earnings or benefits of their husbands. The prime government
concern, therefore, was with a "family wage" for men. This, then,
was the justification for the dependent wives' supplement. Clearly,
the concern with dependency in the design of the UI system was to
disassociate unemployment from relief or welfare. It was an attempt
to prevent the unemployed with dependents from being forced to rely
on welfare or needs-based relief, which was widely perceived to be
degrading to its recipients.
Shortly after the war, UI was expanded to include nurses, hospital
workers, employees in charitable institutions and public service em-
ployees, as well as to some workers in seasonal industries, although
the scheme still only covered around half of Canadian workers.
Sickness benefits and Korean War veterans benefits were added in
1953, by which time UI coverage extended to 79 per cent of the "paid
labour force" — wage and salary earners — although to only just
over 60 per cent of the total labour force. In 1955 coverage was further
extended for seasonal workers and a year later to self-employed fish-
ers. At the same time, the required weeks of work to gain entitlement
was reduced from 30 to 24 and eligibility was extended to some
part-time workers.
However, as the coverage expanded, new regulations and admin-
istrative practices were introduced that explicitly discriminated
against women. In the decade of continuing program expansion,
particularly to the male-dominated seasonal industries, the issue of
extending coverage to married women was raised. During the Second
World War, large numbers of women had been enticed into the
labour force. But in the aftermath of the war and the need to reabsorb
large numbers of demobilized men without undermining the financial
viability of the UI program, new conditions were put on women in
the form of "married women's regulations." The new eligibility rules
applied to women who terminated their employment within two
years of becoming married, in which they had to show by their
employment record that they had worked for at least 90 days after
marriage, if not employed at the time of marriage. If employed at the
time of marriage, a women who subsequently quit her job had to work
for 90 days at a new job in order to re-establish eligibility. Further, a
recently married woman faced a two-year disqualification if she left
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 135
a job voluntarily to follow her husband to another city. Reflecting
the attitudes of the day, the UI Commission rejected the concept that
married women should be entitled to equal access to income security
and questioned their commitment to the labour market.
Ann Porter, in her study of the gendering of the UI system in the
postwar era, argues that the real intent behind married women's
regulations was an economic stabilization strategy directed at male
unemployment. The state used the new administrative rules of dis-
entitlement to get women out of the labour force to make room for
male employment. Nor were these regulations the only method used
by the Commission to get women out of the labour market, or at least
out of competition for the higher wage "men's jobs" and into the
lower-wage sectors with "women's jobs" such as store clerks or
housekeepers. Women who refused to accept low-wage work were
simply disqualified from receiving UI benefits. In the Commission's
mind, the regulations were a great success. In 1951, within a four-
month period, the Commission boasted that it had disqualified almost
nine thousand women from benefits and 77 per cent of these women
had dropped out of the labour force. Eventually, however, in late
1957, growing opposition from women's groups and organized la-
bour to such gender-based discrimination as embodied in the married
women's regulations forced their repeal. Times were beginning to
change.
Female Participation and Maternity Leave
One reason for the change was the strong upward trend in the par-
ticipation of married women that we have previously noted, a trend
that sharply accelerated in the 1960s, impelled in part by financial
need. Between 1957 and 1967, women's participation rate in the
child-bearing years had risen from 47 to 57 per cent in the 20-24 age
group, and from 26 to 34 per cent in the 25-34 age group. Married
women were increasingly no longer being viewed primarily as "de-
pendents." Michael Starr, Minister of Labour in the Diefenbaker
government of the late 1950s, justified the repeal of the regulations
on "a dislike for discrimination, and the continually increasing im-
portance and permanence of married women as working women,"
particularly in the growing service sector.
However, while recognizing the importance of married women to
the labour market, unemployment insurance still did not recognize
that women, and only women, could bear children. Childbearing
forced women to leave the labour market, however briefly, thereby
136 Women and Work
disadvantaging them. In addition, women taking maternity leave not
only received no income during the leave period, but also when they
returned to the labour market and had to requalify for benefits usually
had to start again at the bottom of the job ladder. However, the
growing need for married women to work added to the pressures
from women's groups to include maternity benefits in the UI system
which, it was argued, was the most efficient vehicle to administer
such benefits. The key issue was whether social security policy
would offer equal opportunities to women, or whether it would
sustain them in a dependency relationship.
By the 1960s, it was evident that the government was interested
in the issue. In 1968 the Department of Labour conducted a survey
of the extent of employer-provided maternity leave benefits that
revealed that only a very small minority of employers provided any
wage loss payments. While women covered by a union collective
agreement did much better than their non-unionized co-workers,
female unionists were a distinct minority, comprising only 23 per
cent of union membership. Employers, on the other hand, opposed
the inclusion of maternity benefits in UI, arguing that such benefits
were social payments, not insurance against unemployment. They
ignored the fact that, from its inception, UI included elements of
social insurance involving redistribution between economic sectors
and regions, and that the social insurance and economic stabilization
elements of UI had expanded along with the the scheme when it
began to include sickness insurance and seasonal and some self-
employed workers.
The issue was resolved in part with the major overhaul of the
Unemployment Insurance Act in 1971. The amendments introduced
at that time were comprehensive and expansive, including a profound
attempt to deal with the employment discrimination inherent in the
maternity leave question. Women who were deemed to have an
attachment to the labour force became entitled to 15 weeks of ma-
ternity benefits. While this was a breakthrough of sorts, it was a
deeply flawed breakthrough. The qualifying period for maternity
benefits was set at a minimum of 20 weeks while the requirement
for normal benefits was only 8 weeks. Further, the government de-
liberately set conditions which required women to be in the labour
force at the time of conception so that they could not take a job after
conception in order to receive the maternity benefit. The regulation
that implemented this became known as the "magic rule of ten." It
required that 10 of the 20 entitlement weeks be worked between the
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 137
31st and 50th weeks before birth. If one considers that the normal
gestation period for a foetus is 39 or 40 weeks, this means that
women would have had to conceive approximately 1 or more weeks
after taking a job to be eligible for maternity benefits. (For a dia-
grammatic representation of the "magic rule of ten," see Figure 6-1.)
It was clear that the government assumed that women would attempt
to exploit the system by deliberately getting jobs after becoming
pregnant.
But the act's discrimination against women went further. Women
had to access their benefits within a period of eight weeks before the
expected birth and ending seven weeks after the birth, although this
period was extended and made more flexible in the mid-seventies.
Moreover, many women who did not qualify for maternity benefits
under these rules were also disentitled from regular or sickness
benefits since they were perceived as being physically incapacitated,
and therefore unavailable for work, for the period between eight
weeks before and seven weeks after childbirth.
Although the inclusion of maternity benefits was a major achieve-
ment of the 1971 revisions to the act, flawed as the provision may
have been, it was only a small part of the overhaul that the govern-
ment conducted to UI. Reacting to a number of reports on unemploy-
ment insurance and social security, the government introduced
several provisions that moved away from strict insurance principles
in favour of redistributive measures, both individual and regional,
and blended UI with employment policy and macroeconomic stabi-
lization. The focus of these provisions was on regional unemploy-
ment, universal coverage, the adequacy of benefits, the extension of
maternity, sickness and retirement benefits, taxability of benefits and
premiums, and the state's responsibility for the level of unemploy-
ment. With these amendments, 96 per cent of the paid labour force
became covered. Benefit levels were set at 75 per cent of previous
insured wages for those with dependents and two-thirds for those
without dependents. Moreover, the duration of benefits became tied
to the level and regional distribution of unemployment. The social
insurance provisions for maternity, sickness and retirement were
made available to all workers, although with a significantly higher
entrance requirement than that for regular benefits — 20 weeks as
compared with 8 weeks.
The timing of the 1971 amendments could not have been more
unfortunate for UI. As the act was being passed, the economy slid
into a recession which threatened the financial basis of the scheme.
138 Women and Work
Figure 6-1
1971: The Magic Rule of Ten System
I II
Week 1 Week 11
50h week Pregnancy
before expected begins
date of birth
Week 20
31st week before
expected birth
Week 50
week of
birth
Ten insurable weeks were required in the 20-week period between the 31st and 50'h week
before conception. This meant that a woman would have to be employed in week 11, the
week of conception.
1984: The Minimum Entry Requirement System
I I
Weekl Week 11
Pregnancy
begins
Week 31
To qualify for benefits
20 insurable weeks was
required beginning in
week 31
Week 50
week of
birth
A woman would have to be employed starting in week 31
1986: Employment Insurance: The Hours-Based System
I I I I
Weekl
14 work hours
required per
week in order
to qualify for
El benefits
Week 11
18 work hours
required per
week in order
to qualify for
El benefits
Week 21
23.5 work hours
required per
week in order
to qualify for
El benefits
Week 31
35 work hours
required per
week in order
to qualify for
El benefits
Week 50
week of
birth
Source: Linda DeRiviere, "The Historical Gendering of Canadian (Un)Employment
Insurance."
But perhaps more importantly in the long run, the recession allowed
opponents of unemployment insurance to claim that the extension of
benefits caused the unemployment, which of course was clearly
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 139
nonsense. Nevertheless, this claim became the basis of attacks on the
UI scheme and the neo-liberal justification for its gutting in the 1980s
and 1990s. Actually, ammendments to UI contained in Bill C-69,
introduced in Parliament in 1975, marked the beginning of much
tighter provisions in terms of coverage, eligibility and benefits. It
also coincided with the adoption of monetarism in Canada, the re-
strictive monetary policy doctrine that contributed to rising unem-
ployment and the consequent increase in UI payments. This increase,
in turn, was a factor in the string of federal deficits that lasted into
the 1990s, even though in the late 1970s UI was actually running a
surplus. This tightening response was a classic case of "blaming the
victim." Workers who quit or were fired were disqualified for six
weeks instead of three, benefits were reduced for workers over 65
years, dependant benefits were eliminated and the benefit rate for the
unemployed with dependents was reduced from 75 per cent to 66.7
per cent. Two years later, eligibility was again reduced as the pre-
vious eight week qualifying period was extended to 10 to 14 weeks
depending on the regional unemployment rate.
From then on, it seemed that almost a continual stream of new
restrictions, clawbacks, increased entrance requirements for new en-
trants, re-entrants, and repeat users, reductions in benefits levels, and
withdrawals from government funding of UI were introduced.
Throughout the 1980s no less than four task forces, commissions,
and royal commissions were established to report on unemployment
insurance, and although ail reflected a neo-liberal bias, only the
labour-supported Minority Report of the Forget Commission was
endorsed by the Canadian House of Commons Committee in 1987.
The report advocated strengthening the system, but had little effect.
Significant contractions to the UI system, however, began in the
1990s with three successive stages of restrictive program changes, in
1990,1993-4 and 1996. The 1990 changes were not entirely negative
and did include additional maternity, parental and sickness benefits.
The most drastic cuts to the program were introduced by the new
Liberal government in 1993-4 and 1996 which, as the result of the
disentitlement of many claimants and reductions in benefits, gener-
ated huge surpluses for the federal government. In 1998, these re-
sulted in an accumulated surplus in the UI fund in excess of 19 billion
dollars, money which the government used to eliminate its deficit.
Further, in 1990 the federal government completely withdrew from
contributing to the fund, which became financed solely by employer
and employee contributions.
140 Women and Work
The 1993 legislation reduced the benefit rate, the percentage of
insurable earnings paid out in benefits, from 60 per cent to 57 per cent,
and further reduced it to 55 per cent in 1994. Furthermore, the variable
entrance requirements were increased to from 10 to 20 weeks rather
than the previous requirement of 10 to 14 weeks (depending on the rate
of regional unemployment). Entrance requirements were now longer in
low unemployment regions and for new entrants than they were in 1940
when the scheme was launched. In addition, a complex formula of
increasingly restrictive maximum benefit phases related to the unem-
ployment rate was introduced in 1990, and further refined in 1994,
providing for a maximum benefit period of only 50 weeks and reduced
to 45 weeks in 1996. The disqualification penalty for quits and firings
was raised from 7 to 12 weeks in 1990, with a 50 per cent benefits rate,
while in 1993 all those who quit their jobs or were fired for cause were
completely disqualified from receiving any UI benefits.
Not all of the changes that took place after 1975 were negative,
particularly for women and maternity benefits. During the 1980s the
longer qualifying period for maternity than that required for regular
benefits and the "magic rule of ten" raised concerns by the govern-
ment and the various commissions that they constituted sex discrimi-
nation, since only women could get pregnant, which was counter to
section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 1984 the
"magic rule" was repealed, although longer qualifying periods for
special benefits remained.
In 1996 the most draconian changes were made to the UI system
to date. In a perfect example of Orwellian newspeak, the name of the
system was changed from unemployment insurance, which it was, to
employment insurance (EI), which it was not. Benefits and entitle-
ment were again cut but the most singularly restrictive change for
women was that of basing entitlement, not on weeks of work, but on
hours of work. The government argued that this would make more
part-time workers, mainly women, eligible for benefits. Instead of
women requiring 12 to 20 weeks of work with a minimum of 15
hours per week to be eligible for regular benefits, or 20 weeks for
re-entrants and for special benefits — which translated into a mini-
mum of 180 to a maximum of 300 hours — the new requirement was
for the equivalent number of weeks at full-time work of 35 hours per
week — or a minimum of 420 to 700 hours. Part-time workers had
to work more than twice as long to become eligible for benefits.
Since the majority of part-time workers are women, the new hours-
based system had a clearly discriminatory effect.
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 141
Further, with the changes in entitlement periods in the 1996 EI
legislation, all special benefit claimants were required to have 700
hours of insurable employment irrespective of economic region (un-
like regular benefits). That means a woman in a high unemployment
region is considered to be a "major attachment" claimant for regular
benefits if she has worked 420 hours in the previous year, but for
maternity leave she is considered to be a "minor attachment" claim-
ant requiring a minimum of 700 hours — despite the fact that she
will have contributed premiums on a "major attachment" basis. Of
course, women from high unemployment regions find it much more
difficult to find jobs in the first place in order to gain work credits.
For part-timers in particular, the 700-hour rule for maternity benefits
has effectively resurrected the 1971 "magic rule of ten" by forcing
women working part-time to be employed prior to conception in order
to be eligible for maternity benefits. (See Figure 6-1 which sets out the
effects of the 1971, the 1984 and the 1996 legislation.) Currently, a
15-hour part-timer requires a labour force attachment of 6 weeks prior
to conception in order to fulfill the "major attachment" requirement of
700 hours. To be eligible for maternity benefits, a woman working 15
hours per week would need 46 weeks of work prior to taking maternity
leave. Since the normal gestation period is considered to be 40 weeks,
this means that these women would have to be employed for 6 weeks
prior to conception, a more draconian requirement than that imposed by
the "magic rule of ten." In short, the new magic rule, which applies to
all women who work less than 18 hours a week, requires employment
before conception, and all those with less than 22 hours a week require
employment hours between the 31st and 50th weeks before the expected
date of birth. Prior to the 1996 legislation, a pregnant woman could enter
the labour force in her fourth month and still qualify for benefits.
This discrimination in qualifying periods between women based
on their number of hours of regular work and between regular and
special (or social) benefits raises the question of what is the appro-
priate definition of a "reasonable attachment" to the labour force for
purposes of employment insurance entitlements. By defining it as
longer weekly work hours, the 1996 EI revisions serve to dispropor-
tionately disadvantage women.
But the discrimination is not limited to access to maternity benefits.
In 1996, it was estimated than an additional 270,000 female part-time
workers would be potentially insurable under the revised employment
insurance program — but that fewer than 40,000 would be able to meet
the eligibility requirements given their current hours. Jane Pulkingham
142 Women and Work
Table 6-1
Impact of Hours-based Extension of
Employment Insurance to Part-time Workers
Number of Newly Insured Part-time Workers
Paying Premiums
Total
'500,000
Female
270,000
% Female
54
Male
230,000
% Male
46
Number of Newly Insured Part-time Workers
Who Do Not Receive Refunds
Total
120,000
Female
66,000
% Female
55
Male
54,000
% Male
45
Number of Newly Insured Part-time Workers
Who Do Not Qualify for Benefits
Total
90,000
Female
47,000
% Female
52
Male
43,000
% Male
48
Percentage of Newly Covered Part-time Workers
Who Receive Neither Refunds Nor Qualify for Benefits
Total (%)
18
Female (%)
17.4
Male (%)
18.7
Percentage of Newly Covered Part-time Workers
Who Qualify to Receive Benefits
Total (%)
6
Female (%)
7.6
Male (%)
4.7
Source: Pulkingham, "Remaking the Social Divisions of Welfare," Studies in
Political Economy, 56, Summer, 1998.
in her article "Remaking the Social Divisions of Welfare" has calculated
how many workers, male and female, would be forced to pay unem-
ployment insurance premiums but would neither be entitled to receive
benefits or to be refunded their premiums back. (Those earning less than
$2,000 per year are entitled to have their premiums refunded. However,
this figure is not indexed, such that the real value of the $2,000 limit
will decline each year, reducing the number of workers who qualify for
the refund.) Her figures are reproduced in part in Table 6-1.
Note that only a tiny fraction of newly covered part-time workers
have become eligible to receive benefits — indeed only a small
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 143
fraction of those who pay premiums but whom are not eligible either
for benefits or premium rebates. It should also be noted that the
hours-based system has actually decreased eligibility for workers in
retail trade — predominantly female — who had a high incidence of
low hours worked. Indeed, in 1997 the average Canadian part-timer
worked 16.5 hours per week. This means the qualifying period for
eligibility for regular benefits averaged from 25 weeks in high un-
employment regions to 42 weeks in low unemployment regions, 42
weeks for special and maternity benefits, and 55 weeks for re-entrants
in all regions. This compares with the number of insurable weeks
that the average woman worked in 1994, reported by HRDC, of only
37. Simply put, if the average part-time woman worked the average
number of weeks, she would not be eligible for any benefits except
in high unemployment regions.
One result of this has been that maternity leave has become less
available to women. Recently, the Canadian Labour Congress has
reported that in 1997 maternity claims fell by 7.3 per cent after
increasing steadily during the 1980s as the rules had become more
flexible. Also accompanying this decline has been a drop in parental
benefits. Only 39 per cent of births in the 1990s resulted in maternity
claims. During this period, while claims for sickness and accident
rose, those for maternity fell. This has been partly attributed to the
new hours-based entitlement system for part-time workers.
This system and the longer entrance requirement for re-entrants
(910 days or six months of full-time work; a year of half-time work)
also disproportionately disadvantage women. Firstly, women are the
most likely to leave the labour market for a period to raise a family.
In 1995, 62 per cent of all re-entrants were women, of which 50 per
cent were re-entrants over the age of 24. Only 10 per cent of re-entrants
were men in the prime-age group, while the remaining 28 per cent
were men under 25, the latter group reflecting the student pattern of
alternating study with work. Secondly, when women attempt to re-
enter they are more likely than men to either voluntarily accept
part-time work to adapt to their second job in the home, or be forced
to take part-time work because full-time work is not available. In
either case, they are required to have between six months and a year
of work before becoming eligible for EI benefits. Even the govern-
ment department which is responsible for administering the scheme,
Human Resources Development Canada (HDRC), admits that the
re-entry provisions are a major cause for the falling proportion of
unemployed women who are receiving benefits.
144 Women and Work
This situation is exacerbated by a recent trend in women's labour
market participation: self-employment. Self-employment is one of the
fastest growing sectors of the Canadian labour market; it reached almost
18 per cent of the labour force in 1997. Female self-employment has
been expanding at a much faster rate than male, at triple the rate from
1975 to 1986, although women still lag in absolute numbers, repre-
senting a third of all the self-employed. This is a sector where the vast
majority (90 per cent of the newly self-employed during the 1990s)
work on their own ("own account" self-employed), more than half of
whom operate home-based businesses. As we noted previously, there
are several possible reasons for this trend. There is some evidence that
this is, in part, involuntary self-employment or personal "make-work"
due to the lack of waged work. When full-time paid employment
increases by 1 per cent there is a 0.69 per cent exit of women from
self-employment, indicating the waged jobs are a preferred option. For
other women, self-employment may reflect a coping strategy — work-
ing out of the home in order to be able to look after children. To some
extent this has been facilitated both by technology — the advent of
personal computers linked through communications systems (tele-
commuting) — and corporate and government reorganizing and down-
sizing, which increases outsourcing and contracting out. In any case,
women's earnings among the self-employed tend to be only a fraction
of female employee's earnings. The median self-employed female earn-
ings in 1994 were less than half that of female employees, although their
hours of work were the same. Their median earnings were just over half
of those of self-employed men, although in this case the men worked
considerably more (the median, 37 per cent more) hours. At the same
time, self-employed women receive no employer-funded benefits, have
little work security and, under UI and EI, have never been eligible to
receive unemployment, or maternity or sickness benefits, with the ex-
ception of self-employed fishers. To conclude, the expansion in female
self-employment is also responsible for an increase in the number of
unemployed women or expectant or new mothers who are ineligible to
receive benefits under our income security system. Self-employed
women are also detrimentally impacted by the long entrance require-
ment set for re-entrants if and when they give up self-employment and
attempt to find paid employment.
Indeed, the proportion of the unemployed, both male and female,
who receive benefits (the Beneficiaries/Unemployed or B/U ratio)
has plummeted in recent years, from 74 per cent in 1989 before the
cutbacks in UI, to 36 per cent in 1997, according to a recent study
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 145
Table 6-2
Decline in B/U Ratios, 1989-1997 by Age and Sex
Age
15-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55+
All ages
Male
(% decline)
69
49
41
43
37
49
Female
(% decline)
78
53
47
46
44
55
Total
f % decline)
72
50
44
44
42
52
Source: Canadian Labour Congress, Left out in the Cold, 1999.
by the Canadian Labour Congress. (HRDC B/U figures are a little
higher, 41.7 per cent in 1997 and 42.2 per cent in 1998, but they
include in the beneficiaries those who receive benefits but are not
unemployed.) In short, by 1997 only a little over one third of all the
unemployed — or, even accepting HRDC's figures, a little over 40
per cent of all the unemployed are receiving benefits. For women,
the figures are much worse. While the B/U ratio for women has
always been below men's, it has fallen farther and faster and in all
age groups since the rollbacks in UI (see Table 6-2). By 1997 less
than one in three unemployed women (31 per cent) received unem-
ployment benefits (or by HRDC's figures, only 38 per cent in 1998).
A good part of this can be attributed to the hours-based system and
the new, more stringent, entry and re-entry requirements since 1990.
All of these factors have led many women, and men, who have
been unable to find full-time jobs to take on more than one part-time
job. These people are classed as multiple job holders. Around half
of them (a total of 653,000 in 1996) are women. Multiple job holding
works to increase their eligibility for maternity and sickness benefits
but may actually worsen their eligibility for regular benefits. If a
multiple job holder faces unemployment in only one job, he or she
is allowed an "extra earnings threshold" of 25 per cent of his or her
weekly employment insurance benefits, beyond which El benefits
are clawed-back on a dollar-for-dollar basis. This effectively dis-
qualifies most multiple job holders because their earnings from the
other jobs would normally breach the 25 per cent limit. They pay
premiums on their earnings in all their jobs but are only entitled to
regular benefits if they have been laid-off from all their jobs simul-
taneously.
146 Women and Work
The Adequacy of the Level of Replacement Income
It is not only in access to benefits where recent changes to unem-
ployment insurance have hurt workers, women in particular. The
changes in the 1990s have reduced benefits to a replacement rate of
55 per cent of insured earnings, with additional reductions for repeat
users. The 1994 changes maintained a 60 per cent rate for those
low-income claimants with dependents. In 1996 a low-income top-up
was introduced but it was based on family income such that most
unemployed women in a two-earner family would not qualify for the
top-up. This change, in effect, reintroduced the concept of female
dependency on the male partner. It again assumes a "natural depend-
ency" or "secondary earner" status on married women. It also as-
sumes that women have full access to their partner's income without
regard for the loss of dignity and empowerment of women who are
forced to rely on a partner's benevolence.
This reversion is only one aspect of the impact of the reduction in
wage replacement rates. To start with, because women's earnings are
already well below men's, any reduction in the replacement rate is
going to put a much higher proportion of women into poverty than
men when they become unemployed or take maternity leave. Those
worst affected, of course, are in single-eamer units — single, di-
vorced or separated, widowed and most especially, single-parent
families — the majority, as we have seen, headed by women. Even
when working, women represent a disproportion of the working
poor, but in the case of unemployment, the lower the replacement
rate, the higher the likelihood that women will be thrown into pov-
erty. This is not just true of single women. Even in families with two
wage earners, as the replacement rate falls, the likelihood of the
family entering poverty will increase whichever member becomes
unemployed. In 1996, estimated average UI/EI benefits based on
male earnings were just 110 per cent of the poverty line (defined as
the Statistics Canada Low Income Cut Off or LICO) while benefits
based on female earnings were just 72 per cent of the poverty line.
This situation then impacts on the welfare system when the poverty-
stricken unemployed are forced to rely on social assistance, food
banks, and other forms of charity.
Unemployment, cutbacks to UI and increased reliance on welfare
are all closely related. One report of the Canadian Council on Social
Development found that as the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 per
cent in 1990 to over 10 per cent in 1994 and UI eligibility fell from
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market Evolution 147
70 to 60 per cent of the unemployed, the proportion of the population
on social assistance increased by almost a half, from 7 to 10 per cent.
A second study of the impacts of the 1993 changes came to the
conclusion that the "welfare take-up" increased by the same amount
as the "UI take-up" fell. A further effect of these changes has been
to shift the cost of income maintenance from the federal UI/EI system
to the provinces, thereby reintroducing a patchwork quilt of relief—
with all its debasing, work disincentive and inefficiency effects —
to our income security system.
Conclusions
What can we conclude from this discussion? First, that changes in
the nineties have rendered the unemployment insurance system in-
capable of providing either a reasonable level of income support or
of accessibility to benefits; nor is it capable of providing an effective
stabilizer to the Canadian economy. While it remains a necessary
social program in our modern economy, it is hard to accept that it is
now an "essential public service of reasonable quality" as the gov-
ernment is required to ensure in Section 36 of the Canadian Consti-
tution.
While the UI system has been "gendered" from its inception as
insurance for the male, industrial labour force, the relaxation of
regulations, the inclusion of more occupational groups and part-time
work, the introduction of maternity leave and some other changes
had moved the system much closer to treating men and women alike.
The changes introduced also reduced the disadvantage women faced
in the labour market due to their childbearing role, though it could
do little to offset the disadvantage of systemically lower women's
wages within a system where unemployment benefits are tied to
existing wage rates. The changes over the last decade, as we have
shown, have disproportionately disadvantaged women to the extent
that we believe EI no longer meets the standards set in Sections 15
(equal benefit of the law without discrimination) and 28 (equality of
treatment of male and female persons) of the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. This is just one price that women have paid for the
neo-liberal-driven rollback of the social security system in Canada
over the last decade.
7
Women and the Labour
Movement
Until fairly recently, Canadian women have not been well repre-
sented among the ranks of organized labour. We will be exploring at
some length in this chapter the historical, social and economic rea-
sons for this historic low participation, but perhaps the first question
that must be asked is, does it matter to their economic position that
women are underrepresented in unions? The answer is that it does
— if unions matter, if unions have a significant effect on wages, wage
differentials, job security, fringe benefits, seniority and promotions,
pensions and all the other terms of employment.
The consensus of most studies of the impact of unions on wages
in Canada and the United States is that unions do matter. Although
there is a fairly wide range in estimates of union-non-union differ-
entials, the most common finding is that union wages average 10 to
25 per cent above non-union wages. Furthermore, as one recent
Canadian study has also noted, unemployment is also considerably
lower among unionized workers than it is among non-union workers.
However, interpreting these results is not easy. There is a dispropor-
tionate concentration of union organization in the large, capital-
intensive, big business sector and in the government sector. Both sectors
tend to pay higher wages than the smaller, competitive, labour-intensive
firms, whether unionized or not. Furthermore, it can be argued that
large non-union firms pay high wages to prevent unionization. On
the other hand, among smaller, competitive firms or firms that must
compete with imports from low-wage countries, unions have limited
scope for raising wages before they "price themselves out of the
market." Nevertheless, there is ample evidence to support the argu-
ment that unionization and the subsequent demands for higher wages
force firms to become more efficient, to introduce productivity-
increasing machinery and techniques, in order to survive. This evi-
dence leads to the argument that unionized firms, by being forced to
Women and the Labour Movement 149
Table 7-1
Average Hourly Earnings of Unionized Workers
as a Percentage of Non-union Workers,
by Status (1998) and Occupation (1994)
By Status (1998)
Total
Pull-time
Part-time
Women
141.4
132.3
169.7
Men
121.8
116.2
170.5
Both Sexes
130.5
122.7
171.2
Source: Ernest Akyeampong, "The rise of unionization among women,"
Perspectives, Winter 1998.
By Occupation Group (1994)
Managerial and administrative
Teaching
Medical
Clerical
Sales
Services
Processing
Machining
Fabricating
Transportation and Communications
Materials Handling
All Occupations
Women
120.3
156.3
135.5
132.2
129.2
174.9
147.3
91.5
150.5
135.3
155.6
150.7
Men
107.3
124.0
106.5
135.2
110.6
169.7
110.0
163.5
141.7
148.9
187.6
127.5
Both Sexes
112.7
146.8
131.8
135.2
114.5
190.0
112.6
163.9
143.1
148.7
185.7
138.3
Source: Statistics Canada, Longitudinal Job File, Survey of Labour and Income
Dynamics, 1994.
pay higher wages, mechanize and reorganize production so that they
are able to pay higher wages. This argument is supported by the
empirical evidence that unionized workers, on average, have higher
productivity than do non-unionized workers. Whatever the cause-
and-effect mechanism, however, a union member is likely to be paid
more than a non-union member. This is demonstrated in Table 7-1
which sets out union wages as a percentage of non-union wages by
status and occupation.
What is indicated is that, with a few exceptions, women in Canada
seem to benefit more from being unionized than do men (though this
conclusion must be accepted with caution because all categories are
a mix of different occupational levels — some unionized, some not
— where men and women are unequally represented). The categories
150 Women and Work
where women do not benefit as much are concentrated in machining
and materials-handling occupations in manufacturing, and in trans-
portation and communications. In manufacturing, the advantage is
largely determined by the industry mix since women tend to be
concentrated in competitive industries (such as garments and textiles
and food and beverage processing) where unionism probably has
limited benefits for most workers, male or female. This fact may also
explain why in the United States, where there is less unionization
outside the manufacturing sector, women appear to benefit less than
men. This table also shows that men, concentrated in the managerial
and professional levels in occupations, do not benefit very signifi-
cantly since many senior administrators and managers are above the
status level covered by unions. We can also see this concentration
indicated in occupational groups such as medicine, and management
and administration, where the average union wage is only slightly
higher than the non-union wage. Notice that this is not the case for
women, which would suggest a higher concentration of women in
the lower occupational ranks.
The case for sales occupations, where the union advantage is small
for men but still quite significant for women whose average wage
rates are, nevertheless, quite low, is not so clear. However, in sales
the male premium over female wages is much greater than the aver-
age for both union and non-union workers in all occupations. Sales
being a relatively competitive industry, there may be limited scope
for unions to raise male wages but more scope to raise women's
where wage discrimination on the basis of sex exists. In addition, in
the major supermarket chains, where the employers have a degree of
monopoly power and where the clerks are primarily women, there is
the opportunity for unions to raise women's wages.
The impact of unions is not uniform. Some types of workers
benefit more than others. Both Canadian and American studies gen-
erally suggest that unskilled, lower educated workers gain more from
unionization than skilled, higher educated workers. A study of the
Canadian 1974 wage structure by Wayne Simpson, published in
1985, showed that the union benefit of the lowest skilled workers
was over 33 per cent but in the higher skilled levels it dwindled to
12 to 13 per cent and in the highest of his seven skill categories it
actually became negative. American studies indicate that blacks find
it difficult to get into unionized sectors, but that when they do, they
benefit more than whites. The evidence is pretty clear that whatever
other effects unions have on wages, one overriding effect is to reduce
Women and the Labour Movement 151
wage dispersion and wage discrimination and, thereby, income in-
equality within the union sector.
In her 1980 study Women and Unions, Julie White reported on
male and female wages for both organized and unorganized office
occupations. For the twenty occupations for which information was
available for both sexes and both union statuses, the average differ-
ential between male and female wages was 10 per cent for unionized
workers, 17 per cent for non-unionized workers. Organized women
received an average of 14 per cent more than unorganized women,
organized men 8 per cent more than unorganized. Similarly, in their
1989 study Gender Difference in Union Membership Status, Pradeep
Kumar and David Cowan conclude that "there is unambiguous em-
pirical evidence that the earnings gap by gender tends to be smaller
in unionized establishments than in non-unionized industries."
One problem is, however, that women are slightly less likely to
be unionized than men, particularly in the private sector. As the
previous table indicates, in some occupations and industries unioni-
zation is very effective in raising female wages; in others it seems to
make little difference. The pattern, however, is suggestive. In the
primary labour market, unionism tends to have particular benefits for
the less skilled, for women and for minority workers. In the secon-
dary labour market, however, unionism probably has limited benefits
for most workers and is also less likely to exist in the first place.
Since women are overrepresented in the secondary labour market,
this will tend to limit the benefit some women may expect from
unionism and to limit the number of female union members. Wages,
however, are not the only, perhaps not even the most important,
benefit that accrues to the worker from unionization. Fringe benefits
represent a significant part, perhaps near a quarter, of the workers'
real employment income. According to Gunderson and Riddell's and
Julie White's figures for 1978, the union to non-union wage differ-
ential was 30 per cent, the fringe benefit differential 75 per cent.
Since that time, in response to the recession and high unemployment
and to a rising consciousness of women's special labour market
needs, the labour movement has stressed fringe benefits even more,
so this differential may have widened even further.
Of particular interest in Women and Work are the contract provi-
sions with regard to what have become known as "women's issues,"
those related to maternity and family benefits. These have been
reported by Julie White in Sisters and Solidarity for 1992 and are
summarized in Table 7-2.
752 Women and Work
Table 7-2
Percentage of Workers in Major Collective
Agreements Covered by Contract Provisions on
Parental Responsibilities, January 1992
Maternity Leave
Extended Parental Leave
Extended Paternity Leave
Adoption Leave
Paid Maternity Leave
Paid Adoption Leave
Family Illness Leave
Paid Family Illness leave
Personal Reasons Leave
Paid Personal Reasons Leave
Day Care
78.5
31.9
35.4
63.9
49.1
22.9
39.8
29.4
58.0
5.3
3.0
Source: Julie White, Sisters and Solidarity, p. 88.
In addition, a collective agreement places a severe constraint on
the arbitrary powers of management, particularly on the right to hire
and fire, on disciplining, on fringe benefits, hours and overtime and
— most important for many workers — on security and promotion
up the job ladder without discrimination. Arbitrary management is
replaced by rule by contractual agreement, greatly limiting the dan-
ger of a worker being victimized or discriminated against either for
personal reasons or for reasons of race, ethnicity or gender.
It is true, of course, that unions themselves have not always lived
up to the altruistic goal of non-discriminatory treatment implied
above. Union contracts in Canada in the past have contained provi-
sions for lower wage rates for women, Orientals and other minority
groups. Some unions have deliberately tried to keep blacks and
women out of certain occupations, particularly in the skilled building
trades. But in general, the union maxim of strength in unity has
encouraged a more even treatment of most workers within the organ-
ized sector. The fact that a large majority (71 per cent in 1999) of
female workers are outside union ranks, therefore, is cause for some
concern even though there was a substantial increase in the percent-
age of women workers in unions up until the early 1990s, at which
time it reached around 30 per cent. Since 1992, union density among
women workers appears to have stabilized, or even fallen slightly, at
Women and the Labour Movement 153
a level a couple of percentage points below the union density figure
for males. The figure for the percentage of workers who were union
members in 1999 was 29.3 for women and 30.9 for men, down
slightly from 1998 when the comparable figures were 29.8 for
women and 31.6 for men. (The percentage covered by union con-
tracts is slightly higher — by about 2.5 per cent — since not all
workers covered by unions choose to become union members.) Why
has female union density stagnated through the nineties? One Statis-
tics Canada study, "The Rise of Unionization among Women," pub-
lished in Perspectives in 1998, suggests two offsetting trends.
Declines in public sector employment in recent years may have
resulted in reduced membership. On the other hand, increased
activity in formerly non- or less-organized workplaces or work
groups, such as part-timers, and the increasing movement of
women into some heavily unionized areas, may have produced
offsetting increases.
Traditional arguments for the lower participation of women in
unions include the following. First, women are antithetical to union-
ism because of their "petty bourgeois" attitudes within the individu-
alistic family and because they are influenced by social attitudes
towards working women, predominantly held by men. Second, re-
lated to this is the argument that women, because they periodically
tend to move out of the labour force for family reasons and do not
have the same career aspirations, see little benefit in unions while
recognizing the costs of participation in organizing. Third, some
suggest that female subordination to men originating in the patriar-
chal family is transferred to the employer, who is, with few excep-
tions, male and opposed to unionism.
Feminists are more prone to place the onus on men's attitudes,
suggesting that traditional unions have not only ignored women's
issues but have actively discriminated against women and have made
little or no effort to organize them. They also tend to stress the dual
work role of women, in the labour force and in the home, which
leaves little time for such consuming activities as union organization
and activities.
Whatever substance these arguments may have had in the past,
there is little evidence that they are significant factors today, except
perhaps in terms of women's participation in union executive posi-
tions. The overwhelming evidence points to the fact that women have
154 Women and Work
a lower level of unionization because the industries and the job
ghettos they inhabit have proven difficult to organize, due to eco-
nomic factors and the attitudes of their employers, not the attitudes
of the women or the unions. This has been clearly demonstrated in
several recent studies published by the Queen's University Industrial
Relations Centre. Pradeep Kumar, in a 1991 econometric study of
union beliefs of Canadian workers, shows conclusively that gender
has no influence on the likelihood of a worker being a union member
once the independent effects of worker age, public or private sector
employment, firm size, employment status and blue or white collar
status are controlled for. Furthermore, gender had no influence on
respondents' attitudes toward the necessity for unions. Indeed, in
response to a question about the benefits of unions, women were
significantly more favourable toward unions than were the male
respondents. This tends to confirm the conclusion of Kumar and
Cowan's earlier study that it is labour market segmentation, not
gender, that is the primary determinant of union membership. "Con-
trolling for age, marital status, education, nature of employment
(part-time or full-time), job tenure and province of residence, the
industry and occupation of employment account for more than four-
fifths of the differential in the male-female unionization rate."
Furthermore, whatever its validity in the past, the feminist criti-
cism that unions have tended to ignore women's issues in bargaining
and in the political lobbying arena can no longer be maintained. This
is one of the unmistakable conclusions of Julie White's 1990 study
of the "consciousness raising" of the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW), Mail and Female, which traces the evolution of
the union from one that opposed women workers, to one that is in
the vanguard with respect to bargaining and campaigning for
"women's issues." In 1962 only 4.9 per cent of the union's member-
ship were women. By 1986 this had risen to 40.1 per cent. But this
change alone does not explain the rise of a feminist consciousness
within the union. What began the process was the threat to male
workers, and to the union, of the post office's increasing use of
part-time workers, predominantly women, which the CUPW did not
include in its ranks. By 1966, 20 per cent of postal workers were
part-time, and with the Public Service Alliance and CUPE threaten-
ing to organize them, the Postal Workers reluctantly took them in.
Somewhat to its surprise, they proved to be good and militant union-
ists. Attitudes began to change.
Women and the Labour Movement 155
During the 1970s technological change in the form of the new
postal code machinery was introduced- The majority of new hirees
for the full-time coding positions were women who were paid 50
cents an hour less than the men who sorted mail manually, thereby
creating "a predominantly female full-time occupational category,
with a lower classification and lower rate of pay than the full-time
occupational categories dominated by men." The union opposed this
undercutting of the wages of all of its other workers. They also
continued to oppose the expansion of part-time employees, an in-
creasing number of whom were men, seeing in part-timers a source
of cheap labour for the post office, again undercutting the wages of
all the other workers. Thus the full-time/part-time division in the
union began to cut across gender lines.
In 1981, the post office became a Crown corporation and the
whole bargaining position was changed as CUPW now came under
the Canada Labour Code, and was no longer under the Public Service
Staff Relations Act. At the same time, the post office became more
profit- and less service-oriented, resulting in cutbacks and increased
use of casual and part-time workers. But even before the post office
became a Crown corporation and opened up new areas for negotia-
tion, the union had broadened its bargaining mandate to include
women's issues. As far back as 1977, the union had demanded paid
maternity leave, but the turning point was the 1981 strike where it
was among the union's main demands. Though not initially a central
strike issue, maternity leave seized the public and media interest.
Over the strong opposition of the post office and the federal Treasury
Board, paid maternity leave was won, in part because of the public
support for the union that the issue engendered. Solidarity, militancy,
enlightened leadership — and a popular women's issue — had paid
off for all the workers.
Since then, the bargaining agenda of items of particular impor-
tance to women has been broadened, continuing the theme of achiev-
ing an equality for male and female members which recognizes that
men and women have different family responsibilities and that
women may require special treatment in order to achieve equality.
As a result, White reports that women members have recognized that
the union has done a good job in protecting and furthering their
interests — without women's committees, conferences or special
female organizations within the union and despite underrepresenta-
tion of women in CUPW's executive ranks. This is not to say, of
course, that there are no gender-related differences among the mem-
156 Women and Work
bership, particularly over issues such as sexual harassment, discrimi-
nation and access to the union hierarchy, where men do not share the
same problems. But in general, the union culture of struggle, of
unified working-class consciousness, of working for the interests of
all members, male and female, has paid off both for the union and
for its female members.
The wider change in union attitudes generally is also demonstrated
in a 1991 study by Pradeep Kumar and Lynn Acri, Women's Issues
and Collective Bargaining, which shows clearly that women's issues
have become "an integral part" of the Canadian labour movement's
bargaining and lobbying agenda. Their conclusion is that the problem
in achieving redress from discrimination is not the responsibility of
the unions but of the employers.
The limited success of unions also reflects resistance on the part
of employers to create an environment of equality in the work-
place, apparently because for many years they have enjoyed a
cheap source of labour at the expense of women.
Given a favourable economic environment, therefore, women
have unionized and proven to be as dedicated and militant as men.
Some male union organizers claim that women may be more reluc-
tant to strike in the first instance but once on the picket line they
prove to be more tenacious and uncompromising than men. Perhaps
this is also a stereotype, but nevertheless it tends to contravene a
widely held perception of women. Other evidence comes from the
history of women's involvement in Canadian unionism and the cur-
rent structure of union membership.
Women and Unions: The Early Years
Prior to 1900, unionized women in Canada were few and far be-
tween. Only the Knights of Labor seems to have made any consistent
effort to include women in its organization, although such organiza-
tions as the Knights of St. Crispin (shoemakers) did promote a
Daughters of St. Crispin organization for women workers in the boot
and shoe industry. This followed from the principle maintained by
the Knights of Labor that to protect even the craft workers, all
workers had to be unionized, and therefore they organized across
national, sex and craft lines, skilled and unskilled. During the union's
heyday in the 1880s, women joined the Knights, forming their own
assemblies as well as joining in the men's, particularly in Ontario.
Women and the Labour Movement 157
One attraction for the women was the position held by the Knights
of equal pay for equal work, regardless of sex.
However, as Ruth Frager has reported, "the male Knights were
not as progressive as their rhetoric suggests ... Thus Leonora Barry,
[the head] of the Knights' women's department, maintained that the
'selfishness' of the male Knights was partly to blame for the prob-
lems in organizing women." Still, there is other evidence that male
workers did on occasion come to the defence of these early women
unionists, such as in 1882 when male shoemakers in a Toronto union
which later affiliated with the Knights of Labor went on a sympathy
strike and provided material and moral support for their striking
sisters, with the strong backing of other Toronto unionists. In her
study of printers' unions, however, Christina Burr has argued that
the Knights of Labour were the exception and not the rule. Other
unions adopted a variety of strategies to defend traditional gender
divisions within their craft in order to protect male jobs.
In the early days of unions women were always a small minority
and unionization was frequently transitory. Rather than unionizing,
some women established benevolent societies, such as the Young
Women's Christian Guild of Toronto, founded in 1886. These socie-
ties were not perceived as unions nor were they in fact. They were
supposed to offer opportunities to young female workers for mutual
improvement and social intercourse, as well as offer financial aid to
their members in times of illness.
There are several reasons why women did not unionize more
readily. To some degree the problems they encountered were the
same as those met by men, but women experienced particular prob-
lems because of fragmentation of employment among many isolated
workplaces. The royal commission of 1896 investigating the sweat-
ing system in Canada revealed that the greatest proportion of work
was being done in homes, where factory laws were not applicable
and where women had little contact with other workers. Fragmenta-
tion was also the norm for domestics, clerical, and shop workers,
presenting a formidable barrier to any organization attempt, while
employers were frequently small and none too economically secure.
In addition, the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and
Capital in 1889 gave evidence that organizing attempts by women
were strenuously resisted by employers. When the Cropton Corset
Company decided to start up a factory in Berlin (now Kitchener),
Ontario, they took twenty or twenty-five expert women along to
teach the beginners. One day while Cropton was away the women
158 Women and Work
walked out as a group, demanding equal pay with the imported
experts. The company responded by giving the women ten days to
reconsider, and when they refused, the factory was shut down, an
indication of how far employers would go to avoid giving in to
women's organization.
Other industries employing significant numbers of women were
also affected by organizations of their women workers. As Ferland
has recounted, "the female weavers and spinners of the Hochelaga
and St. Anne Mills (east of Montreal), and of Saint-Henri, Valley-
field, and Cornwall, Ontario, got involved massively and openly in
labour conflicts between 1880 and 1891," including the first-ever
work stoppage in Quebec's cotton industry in 1880 — though once
again the strike ended in failure.
Where women were working alongside men as a regular compo-
nent of the work force, they would frequently have the opportunity
to join the unions organized by men, though they were often not
treated as equals within the union. But the evidence is that they were
more vulnerable to employer intimidation. One cigar manufacturer
testified that he preferred to hire women because they would not
strike. This tendency of women to conform to the expectation of their
employers is more understandable in light of later evidence that
women joining the union were automatically fired. Whether the
difficulties of organization were a consequence of their fragmented
work situation or the opposition of the bosses, or even of the luke-
warm support of male unionists and of a society generally that held
to an ideology of domesticity, the net result was that few women
were organized at the turn of the century.
However, with the exception of some of the skilled trades and the
running trades on the railways, very few male workers were union-
ized as well. The initial burst of organization by the Knights in the
emerging factories, spurred on by the National Policy Tariffs and the
CPR construction boom, was petering out in the depression of the
1890s. Only the skilled workers, almost exclusively men, were able
to withstand the dual forces of economic slack and employer oppo-
sition.
The factors that made unionization difficult for women in the
nineteenth century were still present in the early years of the twen-
tieth. Wayne Roberts in Honest Womanhood identifies several rea-
sons why women did not organize as quickly or easily as men.
Women were still scattered over many establishments and so did not
have the contact with each other necessary to organize. They also
Women and the Labour Movement 159
entered the work force for a brief period, usually only for a few years,
until they married. This high turnover of women meant that the
experience and continuity necessary for organization was lacking,
while at the same time it fuelled employers' opposition to employing
women at equal pay to that of the more stable male workers. Even
when they were in the work force, women changed jobs frequently
because of boredom or dissatisfaction with degraded working condi-
tions. When women did unionize, they lacked bargaining power,
since with mechanization they had been shunted into unskilled work
and, being easily replaced, were readily fired.
Despite these obstacles, women did make attempts to organize in
various occupations. Although without a formal union, several small
groups of sewing women struck in this period when piece rates were
reduced, when immigrants were hired, or when they were fired for
minor infractions of arbitrary management rules. Attempts from
1902 to 1904 to organize domestic servants, waitresses and clerical
workers failed. Teachers were somewhat more successful in organ-
izing though they never achieved a formal union. Roberts points out
that although 90 per cent of teachers were women, the Ontario
Educational Association had no women on its executive. Neverthe-
less, they were sufficiently organized and militant that in 1901, 500
teachers demonstrated at Toronto's city hall for a raise. Protests
continued to be mounted in 1903, 1904, 1907, 1909 and 1910, and
in 1910 they formed the Women Teachers Franchise Club.
In the printing shops women were somewhat more successful.
Though working with men, they were not in direct competition for
jobs. In 1901, 50 women formed the Women's Bindery Union in
Toronto, which grew to 250 members within a month and to 350 by
the following year. When the printers at Eaton's struck that year, the
women could demonstrate their strength by walking out in sympathy.
A similar situation existed with women telephone operators in Van-
couver and New Westminster who formed an "auxiliary" in 1902
which, according to Elaine Bernard, was in fact a sub-local of Local
213 of the International Broherhood of Electrical Workers. (It was
not until 1911 that the union established a separate operators' — in
effect a women's — department.) Within months both male and
female members were out on strike, with the support of the other
unions in and around Vancouver and Victoria. After a two-and-a-
half-week strike both were successful, with the operators obtaining
recognition, pay gains, sick leave and restrictions on the use of
unpaid trainees. They were, however, not so fortunate four years later
160 Women and Work
when the company was able to break the solidarity of the union and
with it the operators' auxiliary after a prolonged strike.
One important point becomes clear. When women worked along-
side men in the same industry, they frequently unionized with men.
One example was the telegraph industry, one of the few skilled jobs
in which women were significantly represented in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, although women were systematically
relegated to the less skilled, and thus lower paid, jobs within the
industry. Another example of this was the Quebec textile industry.
Forty per cent of the operatives in the cotton mills were women. The
working conditions were difficult, with women often working in
excess of sixty hours a week, a situation revealed when the mill
workers struck in 1908 over wages and a reduction in hours. A royal
commission resulting from the strike and headed by Mackenzie King
uncovered the fact that the companies involved, the Dominion Tex-
tile Company and the Montreal Textile Company, had done their best
to destroy any and all attempts at unionization.
The first attempt had come in 1899 by the American Federation
of Labor (AFL), but was given up after a year. In 1905 the mule
spinners tried to organize under the aegis of the National Trades and
Labour Congress, but the local president was fired and the union fell
through. In 1906 the United Federation of Textile Workers (UFTW)
founded a local. When the company tried to break the union by
getting employees to sign a contract guaranteeing they would not
strike, 2,000 workers walked out. As a result of this show of solidar-
ity, everyone was rehired, allowed to join the UFTW, and received
a 12 to 14 per cent wage increase. For various reasons, including the
problem French-speaking operatives found in an English union, the
textile mill workers broke from the UFTW, forming the Federation
of Textile Workers of Canada, which remained active from 1906 to
the strike in 1908. Two-thirds of its members were women and they
were among the most active members, an example of how women
who worked in the same place as men, in the same industry, and
under the same conditions, unionized much more quickly than other
women.
Women, however, were not always the beneficiaries of existing
male unions or of the organization attempts of men during the first
two decades of this century. There are numerous indications of a
general lack of commitment on the part of men to the cause of the
organization of women. Within established unions the role of women
was often portrayed as the wife of a union man, a reflection of the
Women and the Labour Movement 161
prevailing consensus of women's primary support role in the house-
hold. Female union members also usually received inferior settle-
ments in wage disputes. When women tried independent union
organization, as in the case of the Toronto Bell Telephone Operators,
male organizers failed to extend the support necessary for the women
to succeed.
It would appear from the attitude of many unions that the working
woman was considered an anomaly — her role was as homemaker
in support of her union husband. The important thing for a woman
to do was to buy the union-label goods which benefited her husband,
which in turn benefited her. Particular stress was given to the sup-
portive role of the wife of the union organizer. Auxiliaries were
formed to support union activities, particularly in strike situations
when women were expected to support picketing activities. Whether
it accurately reflected the male-to-female composition of the union
or not, the union postion indicated that men worked and women made
the coffee. This attitude persisted well into the mid-twentieth cen-
tury. As Sara Diamond has reported, however, the experience of
women's auxiliaries was not always totally supportive of this male
conception. "Women participants [in the IWA auxiliary in the 1930s
and 1940s], despite the emphasis on their domestic role, had begun
to demand within their own homes an equal division of labour."
Shortly after, the auxiliaries were dismantled.
When unions were consulted about the problems that women had,
the men did not necessarily turn to working-class women for their
ideas. Instead they often looked to spokespersons for the middle
class. When a government investigation was made into the working
conditions of women employed in shops and offices, the Vancouver
Trades and Labour Council approached the Council of Women, a
middle-class women's group. With this support a minimum wage
was established at $5 a week, despite the fact that $10 a week was
hardly considered an adequate subsistence wage.
In their agreements, unions also settled for lower wages for
women than for men. In 1907 male bookbinders received from
$13.50 to $14.50 per week, while women were only given $5 to $5.50
per week. This practice of settling for less money for women was
common. A typical agreement in 1918 by the Hotel and Restaurant
Employees' Union in British Columbia provided a 50 cent per day
increase for waiters while accepting a 17 cent per day increase for
chambermaids. The settlement, which provided $22.50 a month for
women, was estimated as half a living wage.
162 Women and Work
Male unionists were not particularly supportive of independent
women's organizations. In several cases where women did organize
independently of the men and sought support from the established
unions, no support was forthcoming. This added to the women's
difficulties. A classic example concerned the organized telephone
operators in Toronto and Vancouver. Both groups appealed to the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) for supprt,
but to no avail. When the female operators went out on strike in 1906
in Vancouver, the IBEW, which represented the linemen as well as
the women, quickly gave up paying strike pay. Though the local
linemen remained supportive, the strike was lost, and the operators
replaced.
In 1907 the same union followed with a similar failure. The
operators for Bell Telephone in Toronto went out on strike. At issue
was the company's decision to return to an eight-hour day schedule,
after using a five-hour day schedule for several years, but without
additional compensation or the payment of overtime. Again a royal
commission was appointed. The hearings revealed that Bell Tele-
phone was considering abolishing its two-week paid vacation and
that working conditions were hazardous to the operators' health. The
response of the women was to form the Telephone Operators, Super-
visors and Monitors Association and to hire a lawyer to represent
them. Bell's counter-offer was two pieces of paper to sign: a promise
to work regularly and a resignation letter. Further than this, the
company refused to negotiate. On 1 February 1907 the women re-
plied with a strike. Public support rested with the strikers — a public
strike fund was started, scabs harassed, and even the newspapers
gave editorial support. The women considered affiliating with the
IBEW, but the union failed even to respond. With the promise of the
royal commission as incentive, the strike was called off and the
women returned to work after a couple of days.
Unfortunately for the strikers, Bell did not feel bound by any of
the conclusions of the commission. The inexperienced leadership and
bad strategy that contributed to the failure of the strike might have
been overcome, given the public sympathy with the operators, had
the IBEW acted upon the initiative of the women and helped them
through the strike. Not all male workers, however, turned their backs
on the women. The bell boys refused to work in hotels where scabs
were being housed during the strike, forcing the strikebreakers to find
other accommodations. In another strike, involving women boot and
shoe workers in 1912, men walked out in support. But in general
Women and the Labour Movement 163
there was a lack of concern by men for the interests of working
women, even when they were organized in the same union.
Perhaps the most celebrated case of male abandonment came in
1919, at the time of the Winnipeg General Strike. In Vancouver the
telephone operators were asked to join the sympathy strike, which
they did. But when the general strike was ended, the operators re-
fused to return to work until the issue of victimization of strikers was
settled. The rest of the labour movement, however, failed to back
them and their union was broken. In Bernard's words, the women
were used as '"cannon fodder' in a labour dispute in which they did
not have a stake."
The advent of the First World War did bring some change with
the opening up of non-traditional jobs for women. Despite the im-
proved wartime labour market, however, labour's success at the
bargaining table did not alter appreciably. In fact, employers used
the war as an excuse to lengthen the working day and oppose strikes.
The entry of lower-paid women who replaced the enlisted workers
posed a real threat to the men. Labour's response to these new
conditions brought a change in position. In 1898 the Trades and
Labour Congress (TLC) had called for the removal of all women
from the factories, mines and other industrial workplaces. Under
wartime conditions, which meant loss of male workers through en-
listment and eventually conscription, the Congress recognized that
such a position was no longer tenable. Instead it adopted a demand
for equal pay for men and women. The TLC realized that returning
soldiers would be forced to take lower wages if employers were able
to undercut the pre-war levels by paying low wages to women. As a
result, through the war the TLC and the individual unions struggled
to maintain good wages and hours for the women who worked in
place of the men, but when the end of the war was in sight, the TLC
started to work to have the women removed from their jobs to make
room for the returning men. Women were only to be hired if there
were no men to fill the jobs. Concern for the conditions of work for
women during the war reflected a concern for the interests of the
absent soldier, not for the factory "girl."
After the war and the wave of unrest that culminated in 1919
with the Winnipeg General Strike, depression set in. Not all the news
was bad, however. Minimum wage legislation had begun to be en-
acted during the war to protect women from the more extreme forms
of exploitation though, in Winnipeg at least, the level of protection
was less than half the "fair wage" level established by the federal
164 Women and Work
government. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers in Ontario
achieved an agreement that provided $20 for a forty-four-hour week
with time and a half for overtime. This wage was still only 50 to 70
per cent of the prevailing male wage but was, nevertheless, an im-
provement over previous levels. However, the depression of the early
twenties and the general retrenchment of all unionism during the
decade meant little progress at the bargaining table for women or for
men. Typical was the Federation of Textile Workers of Canada
where women had been so active earlier in the century but which
was now quiescent.
The Great Depression of the thirties hardly provided the condi-
tions conducive to union organization. Yet workers did become more
militant. Among women, activity was concentrated in the industries
they had dominated, specifically the garment and textile industries.
In Toronto and Montreal the International Ladies Garment Workers
Union (ILGWU) and the Industrial Union of Needle Trades Workers
competed to organize the women. The latter union led two unsuc-
cessful strikes early in 1931 in Montreal. Meanwhile in Toronto the
ILGWU led 500 out on a two-and-a-half-month strike, also unsuc-
cessful. In 1934 it was the turn of the Industrial Union of Needle
Trades Workers affiliated with the Communist-led Workers' Unity
League. It struck in Toronto at the beginning of the summer but the
main clash came at the end of the summer in Montreal. Faced with
company opposition, police harassment, strikebreakers, Catholic
anti-communism and inter-union factionalism, the strike failed. A
measure of success finally came when the ILGWU led a strike in
Montreal in 1937. The resulting agreement included a 10 per cent
raise, a forty-four-hour week, and recognition of the union. However,
once the employees returned to work the contract tended to be ig-
nored by the employers. This lack of success was typical of the
period, when women could be easily replaced. In some cases women
did not have a chance to strike but were locked out as soon as they
organized. Such was the practice of Eaton's, which locked out thirty-
eight women when they organized a local of the ILGWU and de-
manded better rates.
The ILGWU success in 1937 was part of the growing wave of
union organizing associated with the spread of the Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations to Canada. Since these were industrial unions,
those women on the shop floor were organized with the men. The
other major industry affected where women were deeply involved
was textiles. Under the leadership of the United Textile Workers of
Women and the Labour Movement 165
Canada they too struck in 1937, at Empire Cottons and Canadian
Cottons in Ontario. It was in Quebec, however, that the biggest
dispute broke out when Dominion Textile workers in seven plants
struck. The union involved, the National Catholic Federation of
Textile Workers, demanded a reduction in hours from sixty-four to
forty per week and a raise in wages. Women's wages at the time were
as low as $3.50 per week. The strike achieved an agreement that
included a fifty-hour week and pay increases but no union recogni-
tion. Thus, despite the rise in militancy and support for unionization
during the depression, the record of success for all workers, but
especially for women workers, was rather bleak — even considering
such important breakthroughs as the victory of the autombile workers
at General Motors in Oshawa in 1937, despite the vigorous anti-CIO
campaign of Ontario premier Mitch Hepburn. A better record re-
quired a stronger economy.
The Second World War brought prosperity to the Canadian econ-
omy as the demand grew for war supplies. Prosperity and a reduced
labour force put unions in a stronger position to negotiate, including
within those industries having a high proportion of women. The
clothing industry in particular boomed with uniform contracts, and
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the International Ladies
Garment Workers were able to demand and receive union shop
agreements. The United Garment Workers of America had lost mem-
bers through the twenties and thirties but grew from 750 members
to 12,000 by the end of the war. The ILGWU grew from 8,000
members in 1936 to 11,000 by 1948.
Despite gains in union membership and strength, all unions chafed
under the restrictions of wartime labour legislation. In December
1940, Parliament limited wage settlements to the level of 1926-29
plus a cost-of-living bonus of $1.25 per week. Then in November
1941, raises in basic wages were prohibited and the National War
Labour Board was given power to deny the bonus if they felt wages
were already adequate. In 1943 the government made raises allow-
able only in cases of severe injustice and only if the employer could
afford it. Nevertheless, one critical advance was achieved. In 1944,
by Order-in-Council PC 1003, compulsory recognition of unions
demonstrating support from the majority of workers in a plant was
introduced. Pitched battles for union recognition would not be the
barrier they had been in the past.
After the hostilities, workers tried to make up for the losses of the
war. The textile industry was once again prominent in the struggle
166 Women and Work
for better pay and lower hours. In 1946 in the Montreal area, the
United Textile Workers of America, under a militant Canadian lead-
ership, demanded an increase of twenty-five cents per hour, a forty-
hour week, and union recognition, still not mandaory at the
provincial level. The company ignored the demands, resulting in
6,000 millhands in Montreal and Valleyfield walking out. Montreal
settled for a 6 cent to 11 cent raise and a forty-five-hour week, but
in Valleyfield the issue became union recognition. The company had
the organizers arrested and violence erupted, but certification was
eventually won. In this case the union won but the majority of textile
workers in the industry remained unrepresented. By the late forties
only 40 per cent of the 75,000 textile workers in Canada were
represented by a union.
Dominion Textile continued its anti-union fight, whereas the
workers were divided by internal conflicts revolving around ideo-
logical and nationalistic issues as represented by several competing
unions. In 1952 when the company instituted a speedup plan under
the guise of a bonus incentive, the unions tried to fight it but they
were bitterly divided between the National Catholic Federation of
Textile Workers and the emerging Canadian Textile Council (at that
time attempting to break away from the UTWA), each representing
6,000 workers. The company was aided by the anti-union reactionary
administration of Premier Maurice Duplessis, whose career of strike-
breaking became legendary.
In the late forties and the fifties, there was an effort to organize
women outside the traditional industries of clothing and textiles.
Attempts were made in professional, clerical and, most energetically,
in sales occupations. The strikebreaking efforts of management,
however, usually prevailed. One such unsuccessful attempt was to
organize workers at the T. Eaton Company in Toronto. If the 15,000
employees had been organized as Local 1000 of the Retail, Whole-
sale and Department Store Union, the local would have been the
largest in Canada. Under Eileen Tallman, workers were being signed
up in 1948, but three years and a quarter of a million dollars later the
attempt was abandoned. Eaton's had retaliated with a wage increase
and pension plan. Combined with a high turnover of staff, organiza-
tion proved impossible. The anatomy of this failure is chronicled in
Eileen (Tallman) Sufrin's 1982 account, The Eaton Drive. It was
neither the first nor the last union loss to this most intransigent,
anti-union employer. In 1912, Eaton's locked out its unionized male
tailors in Toronto. The factory garment workers, one-third women,
Women and the Labour Movement 167
walked out in support and were joined by Eaton's workers in other
factories and in Montreal. Most of the workers involved were Jewish.
Eaton's used native-Canadian ethnocentrism (anti-Semitism) and
middle-class feminist disdain for working-class women's issues to
defeat the union boycott and break the strike. As Frager reports the
"King of Canada" prevailed, the garment union was undermined, and
for a long period "the T. Eaton Company would not hire any Jews."
Eight decades later, as we recount below, the company prevailed
again through exploiting gender and class, though in this case not
racial, division.
Not all efforts were unsuccessful. In Montreal, Dupuis Freres had
competed with larger stores, like Eaton's, through even poorer wages
paid to widows, the disabled and the elderly. When prevailing wages
in Montreal were $46.60 a week, Dupuis paid $30.00. In an attempt
to win better conditions, the employees walked out on 1 May 1951.
The company responded by opening the doors and offering a 20 per
cent discount for self-serve. The tactic was not successful. By the
end of July the workers had won an increase in wages, a forty-hour
week, paid holidays, and union security.
Similar organizing attempts were made in the public sector,
among government employees where women made up a large mi-
nority of the workers. The government proved no more amenable an
employer. In 1959, 12,000 British Columbia provincial employees
went out for higher wages but the issue quickly became one of the
right of government employees to organize and to strike. The gov-
ernment resorted to the courts and labour injunctions to defeat the
strike. Still, the evolution of public employee rights was under way.
In 1964 the Bureau of Classification was established to sort out
government pay scales, and a process of negotiation and arbitration
was established. Saskatchewan civil servants had been granted bar-
gaining rights by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)
administration in 1944, but until Quebec made the move in 1965,
provincial employees had made little further progress. The big ad-
vance came in 1967 when collective bargaining was introduced in
the federal civil service a year after the two associations in the federal
field had merged to form the Public Service Alliance of Canada
(PSAC). By 1967 it was the third largest union in the country. In
1979 it was second in female membership only to the Canadian
Union of Public Employees (CUPE), with almost 60,000 women
members compared with almost 110,000 for CUPE, which organized
primarily at the municipal and hospital level. By 1980 the impact
168 Women and Work
Table 7-3
Leading Unions by Female Membership, 1995
Union
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
National Union of Provincial Government
Employees (NUPGE)
United Food and Commercial Workers
Social Affairs Federation (CNTU)
Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Quebec Teaching Congress (CEO)
Nurses Association of Ontario
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)
Female Membership
COOOs)
272
159'
87
63
61
61
60
52
52
% of Union
Membership
57.7
53.0*
48.0
67.7
48.0
71.8
68.2
100.0
23.2
Total Female Union Membership
% in leading nine unions ranked by female membership
1656.5
52.3 %
* Estimated on the basis that the male/female ratio among total provincial
employees is approximately the same as among those government unions
reporting public administration membership.
Source: Statistics Canada: Perspectives (Special Supplement: Unionization in
Canada: A Retrospective), Summer 1999.
was substantial. Five out of the six largest unions in Canada repre-
sented public employees, a high percentage of them female health,
education and clerical workers organized by CUPE and the National
Union of Provincial Government Employees (NUPGE). By 1998
CUPE's membership had reached 389,000 of which 272,000 (58 per
cent) were women while NUPGE's had climbed to 309,000, of which
an estimated 53 per cent, or 159,000, were women.
The leading role of public sector unions, however, has since begun
to wane somewhat, a result of the concerted neo-liberal assault on
public sector unions generally, in part because the public sector had
ceased to grow and in many areas had begun to contract as privati-
zation, contracting out and cutbacks in social programs take hold. By
1998 only two of the six largest unions in Canada were public sector
unions. While the two largest remained CUPE and NUPGE, the
Public Service Alliance had fallen to seventh. The PSA did rank fifth
in 1995 in terms of female membership (Table 7-3). However, if the
membership of the provincial nurses unions and provincial teachers
Women and the Labour Movement 169
unions were combined in a national organization, both unions would
rank in the top four by female membership and in the top five or six
in total membership.
What is also interesting is the rise in prominence in the last decade
of two service and clerical unions with large female memberships,
the United Food and Commercial Workers (48 per cent female mem-
bership) and the Service Employees International Union (72 per cent
female membership). These unions have been able to endure and
grow despite the strong opposition of employers in the trade, clerical
and service sectors to unionization. This was exemplified by the
sustained anti-union campaigns by the banks and a major national
department store chain in the 1980s.
We have only made the barest sketch of the trials and tribulations
of union organization in those industrial and occupational areas
where women workers have traditionally been concentrated. Like the
history of the labour movement in Canada generally, it has been an
uncertain and uneven record marked by both worker solidarity and
factionalism across both political and sexual lines. Neither women
nor immigrants were particularly well served, at least in the earlier
periods, by organized labour. But this has changed quite remarkably
in the last decade or so; and despite the obstacles, the history of
employer resistance and the rise of neo-liberalism, the progress of
unionism among women has been creditable in the last few decades
— though much remains to be done.
Women and Unions: Today
Canada is not a highly unionized country, though there is consider-
able variation among regions. Table 7-4 gives some indication not
only of the regional variation, but also of the variation between male
and female workers. While women are still slightly less organized
than men, the gap has been narrowing fairly rapidly since the sixties,
indicating that women are organizing at a faster pace than men in the
last four decades. Between 1985 and 1989, the number of female
paid workers rose by 15.8 per cent, the number of female union
members by 20.1 per cent. In 1965 women represented only 17 per
cent of union members. A decade later their proportion had jumped
to 26 per cent, and by 1989 to 39 per cent, not that much below their
representation in the labour force (46 per cent of paid workers). One
reason for this has been the growth of public administration unions,
where women constitute over 48 per cent of all members. However,
given the very high rate of existing unionization in the public sector
170 Women and Work
Table 7-4
Percentage of Paid Workers Organized
by Province and Sex, 1998
% Paid Workers* Organized
Province
Atlantic
Newfoundland
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Prince Edward
Island
Quebec
Ontario
Prairies
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
Alberta
British Columbia
Canada
Total
38.5
27.1
28.8
27.4
35.5
27.8
34.2
33.7
22.1
34.8
30.5
Female
36.6
30.4
27.2
27.4
33.8
25.5
35.1
36.6
24.1
35.0
29.5
Male
40.4
23.5
30.3
27.4
37.0
30.0
33.6
30.8
20.3
34.6
31.4
* Persons receiving remuneration from employers for labour or services (does
not include the self-employed, with or without paid employees, and unpaid
family workers.)
Source: Akyeampong, "The rise of unionization among women."
(79 per cent for all workers and 76 per cent for women in 1989) and
stagnation in employment growth in this sector, the potential for any
continuation of this trend is much reduced.
Women are also well represented in national unions where they
comprise 45.5 per cent of union membership. They appear to be
particularly well organized in independent unions in the education
and health sectors. Over half of female union members in 1989 were
employed in the education and health industries. They are least
represented in the international unions (less than 25 per cent women
members) which tend to be restricted to the traditional male blue-
collar and craft workers (such as construction). The major exception
to this is the rapidly growing United Food and Commercial Workers
in the service and trade sectors.
The increase in female union membership in recent years has also
been accompanied by an increase in female participation in union
Women and the Labour Movement 171
leadership, though women are still greatly underrepresented in ex-
ecutive positions, particularly in the international unions. In some
areas, however, much more progress has been made, including in a
number of high-profile positions such as the presidency and vice-
presidency of the CLC, the presidency of a number of provincial
labour federations and city labour councils, and the chief executive
position in the largest union in Canada, the Canadian Union of Public
Employees (CUPE). Linda Briskin, in a 1990 article, reported that
in 1986 "women represented 50 per cent of the membership in the
Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and held 40 per cent of
all executive positions (although 70 per cent of those were in the
position of secretary)." Perhaps more indicative of changed union
attitudes were the actions of the Ontario Federation of Labour in
1983 in creating five positions on its executive board specifically for
women; and of the Canadian Labour Congress in 1984 in adopting
a similar constitutional amendment providing for a minimum of six
female vice-presidents. Many other labour bodies have since made
similar moves such that by 1990, there were 39 designated affirm-
ative action seats on the executive councils of the national and pro-
vincial labour federations representing 12 per cent of total executive
positions. Another indication of the more positive approach to female
participation in unions has been the establishment of women's com-
mittees within unions and federations. All of the provincial and
national federations and most of the major unions established
women's committees in the period between 1970 and 1990.
It is increasingly difficult to get data, outside of aggregate mem-
bership, on unions since Statistics Canada stopped reporting the
information gained from its annual survey of unions and corporations
(CALURA) at the beginning of the nineties. Thus, the most recent
information we have on the role of women in union organizations is
from Julie White's survey (1990-91) published in her comprehensive
1993 study Sisters and Solidarity; Women and Unions in Canada. In
her survey, White interviewed two peak organizations (the Canadian
Labour Congress and the Confederation of National Trade Unions
(CSN) in Quebec), the ten provincial federations, and thirteen major
unions. Her object was to find to what extent women participated
in union leadership and other activities relative to their share of
membership. We have consolidated some of her statistical results in
Table 7-5, which indicate that while women are still underrepre-
sented in leadership and other union activities, they have become
much more active as their share of membership has risen. As White
172 Women and Work
Table 7-5
Women's Participation in Unions: 1990-91
Women as % of
Labour
Organization
CLC
CSN
Provincial
Federations*
13 Unions*
Members
37
50
na
50
Executive
Members
26
33
27
35*"
Convention
Delegates
25 (1992)
36
33***
Local
President
na
na
na
32
Union
Staff
26
na
16*
30
Scholarships
to Labour
Courses
36
na
na
na
na = not available or not applicable.
* Averages of the 10 provincial federations and the 13 unions.
** Exludes PEI which did not keep a record.
*** Excludes 2 international unions which have no Canadian convention.
f
 Excludes 1 international union which has no Canadian convention.
Excludes 2 provincial federations which had no staff members. Average
includes the Quebec Federation of Labour figure for 1989.
Source: Compiled from Julie White, Sisters and Solidarity, chapters 4 and 5.
notes, between 1970 and 1989 the share of executive board positions
held by women increased from 9 to 25 per cent. It should also be
noted that at these executive positions, much of the increase is the
result of the creation of affirmative action positions by the peak
labour organizations and federations. Over 40 per cent of female
members of executive boards and councils in these organizations
were filling affirmative action positions, though individual unions
have not generally followed the practice of designating specific af-
firmative action positions.
As the table indicates, women's participation in union activist
roles was generally 10 to 20 per cent lower than their share of union
membership and even lower in union staff positions and local presi-
dencies. Typically, however, White found that while women were
underrepresented as local presidents, in the unions for which she had
the information women were overrepresented as local recording sec-
retaries and secretary-treasurers, replicating in the union the gender-
ing of the labour market.
Despite the progress that undoubtedly has been made, however,
there remain many barriers to the assumption of women to leadership
Women and the Labour Movement 173
roles in the labour movement. Many union structures and practices
remain hierarchical and male-dominated. Women in executive posi-
tions are frequently relegated to the role of looking after "women's
issues" or are marginalized in women's committees and caucuses.
But perhaps the biggest barrier is the double (or triple) burden of
paid work, work in the home and work for the union. It arises from
the union activist's work patterns combined with women's traditional
role in the home. Staff representatives face a great deal of travel, long
evenings or weekends in bargaining sessions and long hours on the
job. Faced with additional home responsibilities, which their partners
are often not prepared to share, few women are prepared to make the
sacrifice, especially in the majority of unions where there is a pre-
ponderance of male members whose perceived interests may be quite
different from those of women members. Julie White discusses this at
length in her study of postal workers. In 1987, when women comprised
almost 43 percent of the union's membership, they held only 33 per
cent of local presidencies, 29 per cent of full-time paid presidencies,
and a mere 17 per cent of full-time elected officials at regional and
national levels. Most of the women who were involved with the union
were those relatively free of family responsibilities. Peter Warrian, a
union official, has described the problem. Union leaders, he wrote,
rise through this [hierarchical union] structure, through large
amounts of hard work, commitment to the organization and
"being a team player." At a practical level, this means being
available to the organization 24 hours a day, being locked up
in hotel rooms for weeks on end, endless travel and separation
from families. This inherently assumes, if these men are "avail-
able," then they are not available to their families. Women and
children are by definition placed in a subordinate role, subject
to the organizational and leadership needs of the union. They
are arbitrarily subject to transfers, disruption of home and
school life, see their men rarely, and usually in a spaced-out
condition, etc. Women trade unionists see all this, and are
offended by it. Most reject it.
Almost certainly this has begun to change. Unions have worked
to modify their own attitudes and those of their members. Other than
the affirmative action provisions in union constitutions, perhaps the
best evidence lies in labour's bargaining program. Kumar and Acri's
study, for instance, shows that in the union contracts they surveyed
174 Women and Work
in Ontario almost half contained provisions outlawing sexual dis-
crimination, almost two-thirds required the acquisition of seniority
during maternity leave, 70 per cent provided for leave for personal
reasons, almost a quarter for leave for family illness, a third for VDT
protection and for part-time workers' rights, and so on. This is a far
cry from the results of Julie White's survey of contract provisions
on women's issues that we reported on in the first edition. Obviously
women's issues have a much higher priority now than they did even
a two decades ago.
Nevertheless, progress in certain areas has been slow, particularly
in the critical area of child care. Less than half of 1 per cent of
contracts covering 7 per cent of employees had provisions for child
care, though this omission is probably due more to employer oppo-
sition than union apathy. Similarly, provisions covering sexual har-
assment are relatively rare, covering less than 15 per cent of
employees though, to be fair, sexual harassment is also covered by
human rights legislation. Inclusion in collective agreements only
means that sexual harassment is subject to the grievance procedure
and arbitration — a much faster, cheaper and less onerous route than
recourse to human rights tribunals. If women have such positive
attitudes to unions, if unions benefit them so, and if unions have come
to accept the primacy of women's issues, why has union organization
among women workers lagged behind that among men? The answer
again lies in the labour market allocation of the female worker. This
becomes clear from an analysis of Table 7-6.
The problem is that women are already relatively well organized
in certain job ghettos where the overall level of organization is also
relatively high — the public service, education, health, even light
manufacturing. However, the sectors and occupations where unioni-
zation has failed to penetrate to any extent are exactly those with a
high percentage of female workers — finance, trade, services other
than education and health, and clerical occupations generally in all
industrial sectors. Note that for most of the industrial sectors, the
percentage of women organized is not materially different than for
men and in services and finance are marginally higher.
In Julie White's 1980 study Women and Unions, in five of the six
manufacturing subsectors where women were a third or more of the
total labour force in the subsector, the percentage of women union-
ized was greater than that of men (the one exception was the catch-all
group, miscellaneous manufacturing). In eight of the subsectors
where women were less than a third of the employees, women were
Women and the Labour Movement 175
Table 7-6
Distribution of Female Membership
by Selected Industry, 1998
% of Female % of Union Females as % % of Industry
Paid Workers Membership in of Union Unionized
in Industry Industry Members
Industry
Goods Producing
Manufacturing
Service Producing
Trade
Transportation
Finance
Professional
Scientific and
Technical
Management
Education
Health Care
Information &
Culture
Accommodation
&Food
Public admin.
Other
Total
%
13.1
10.0
86.9
16.3
2.7
8.1
4.9
3.0
10.1
18.3
4.7
8.7
6.3
4.1
100.0
Total
26.3
18.1
73.7
6.4
7.2
1.6
0.7
1.3
17,2
18.3
4.1
1.8
14.1
1.3
100.0
Female
8.8
7.4
91.1
5.9
3.7
2,4
0.7
0.8
23-9
32.8
4.3
2.2
14.1
1.2
99.9
%
15.4
18.7
56.8
42.2
24.0
71.4
32.0
28.3
64.1
82.2
48.7
57.1
43.8
42.6
45.9
Total
31.5
32.3
30.3
12.5
44.9
7.8
4.6
12.8
68.9
53.2
27.8
7.8
64.3
9.8
30.6
Female
19.8
21.7
30.9
10.6
41.6
7.8
2.9
7.8
70.1
52.7
27.4
7.4
62.7
8.8
29.4
Source: Akyeampong, "Unionization — an update."
47 to 85 per cent organized. Only in the remaining seven subsectors
were women less organized than men and less organized than the
labour force generally. Further, almost all of these seven subsectors
employed fewer than 20 per cent women, meaning that most would
be office workers rather than production workers. This points to the
fact that industry and occupation, not sex directly, explain the lower
degree of labour organization among women. Excepting teaching and
health employees, therefore, our conclusion is much the same as
Kumar and Cowan's. "The findings suggest that since professionals,
clerical, and sales and service workers are less likely to be unionized
than other workers, trade unions face an uphill task in organizing the
unorganized women."
176 Women and Work
This, however, only raises the further question of why these sec-
tors and occupations are less likely to be unionized. The answer lies
both in the history of trade union organization and in the relative
market power and ideological opposition of employers. The first
unions were in the skilled crafts, which were, as we have pointed
out, largely male preserves. As industrial capitalism evolved, general
unions — such as the Knights of Labor — emerged and tried to
organize all workers, including women, as did the more militant
industrial unions like the American Labour Union, the One Big
Union, and the Industrial Workers of the World. The fact is that the
industrial unions with their unskilled and semiskilled workers were
no match for the combined opposition of employers and government
who were dedicated to smashing any class-based unionism but were
willing to make some compromises with the skilled workers, and
their unions, which had the market power to extract concessions.
Where most women were employed, they had no such power.
In general, less than 10 per cent of the workers were able to
organize stable unions in the period before the emergence of the
industrial unions in the late thirties and their consolidation during
and after the Second World War. The major unions that did exist
were concentrated where women had sparse representation: in the
construction, metal and railway-running trades, and among the min-
ers in the more isolated mining communities.
The logjam was broken with the formation of the CIO and the
political realities of the wartime economy which gave labour in-
creased leverage. Nevertheless, acceptance of unionism even then
never extended to most service, clerical or financial workers or to
public employees, and as employment levelled off in the industrial
sector after the postwar boom, union membership stagnated. The
second breakthrough came in the mid-sixties with a change in atti-
tude and in legislation affecting public employees.
No such attitudinal change has occurred in that bastion of anti-
unionism, the financial sector, or even in the large-scale trade sector.
In 1977, among bank employees, 77 per cent were women, over
two-thirds of whom earned less than $10,000 a year. This can be
compared to the men employed in the banks, two-thirds of whom
earned more than $10,000. Furthermore, women were restricted to
dead-end positions with little opportunity for promotion and had few,
if any, fringe benefits. Despite a change in the ruling of the Canada
Labour Relations Board in 1977 permitting the organization of
banks, branch by branch (rather than demanding the impossible task
Women and the Labour Movement 177
of organizing all branches of a bank simultaneously), and despite the
considerable resources committed at various times by a number of
unions and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), so far success has
been minimal. In part the organizing effort in the late seventies and
early eighties was hindered by inter-union conflict over jurisdiction,
between unions such as the United Food and Commercial Workers,
the Office and Professional Workers, the Canadian Union of Bank
Employees, the CLC umbrella organization, the Bank Workers' Or-
ganizing Committee, and the "militant feminist" B.C. independent
union, the Service, Office and Retail Workers Union of Canada.
However, it was the intransigent opposition of the banks that
ultimately brought organizing to a virtual standstill. This is the case
despite the fact that a number of banks were found guilty of a variety
of unfair labour practices ranging from closing organized branches,
discriminating in wage increases against union members, transferring
individuals among branches to eliminate union majorities, to even
the firing of union activists. At the time of the organizing drive,
one-third of all unfair labour practice complaints before the Canadian
Labour Relations Board involved the banks. They had initiated what
Rosemary Warskett has called an "orgy of litigation," using the
juridification of Canadian industrial relations to tie up the fledgling
union locals in the courts. The local unions were also hindered by
the fact that the average branch bank employed only 14 employees.
With turnover rates of over 30 per cent per year, time delays were
on the side of the employer. As a result, ten years after the first spurt
of 174 bank unit certifications, only 62 (covering less than 1 per cent
of bank branches) remained in effect, the most important being the
CIBC Toronto Visa Centre with 400 employees.
For similar reasons, the success of organizing drives among the
insurance and trust companies and the large retailers, excepting the
major grocery chains, has been equally limited. This is perhaps best
illustrated by the experience of two unions which attempted to or-
ganize Eaton's stores in Ontario and Manitoba in 1984—85. In March
of 1984, a local of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
(RWDSU) was certified at the Eaton's store in Brampton, Ontario.
Within months it was followed by five other stores in St. Catharines,
London, and three in Toronto, in total representing less than 10 per
cent of Eaton's employees. The union began negotiations for a first
contract but the company remained intransigent. On November 30th
1984,1,500 employees at all six outlets went out on strike in support
of higher wages, a decent pension and benefit plan, job security and
178 Women and Work
a seniority system. The majority — an estimated 80 per cent — were
women, two-thirds of them part-time workers. Average wages before
the strike were reported at $5.50 to $6.00 per hour, pensions as low
as $115 per month after 26 years service.
The company did not put a contract offer to the union until after
28 bargaining sessions and then, when it did, offered the union less
than the employees had before the union was organized. Union
claims that this amounted to refusal to bargain in good faith were
dismissed by the Labour Relations Board which argued that the
exercise of unequal bargaining power did not constitute an unfair
labour practice — in effect, that might makes right! Nevertheless,
the refusal of the company to budge turned the strike into a strike of
recognition and, as one women put it, a strike about "freedom for
women." The labour movement across the country rallied in support
of the strikers and a boycott of Eaton's was organized which was
eventually endorsed by the United and Roman Catholic Churches.
After five-and-a-half months on the picket line, unable to shut the
stores down due to strikebreakers, and facing the six-month deadline
after which, under Ontario law, the strikers lost their legal right to
be reinstated in their jobs, the union capitulated and accepted a
contract that merely codified the pre-strike conditions. The interna-
tional office of the union, recognizing that the capitulation would not
be ratified by the strikers, but not wanting to lose the membership to
the union rolls, signed the contract without putting it to a vote of the
membership. Ten months after the contract went into effect, as soon
as it was legal to do so, a group of dissenting and replacement
workers applied for decertification. The vote, taken in February of
1987 went two to one (647 to 301) agaist the RWDSU and the union
was decertified except at four small non-retail units.
In Brandon the situation was somewhat different because the NDP
government in Manitoba had enacted first-contract legislation which
provided for the imposition of a first contract by the Labour Board
in order to prevent exactly the kind of "recognition strike" as oc-
curred in Ontario. In this case, the union was the Manitoba (United)
Food and Commercial Workers, which was certified as bargaining
agent for the almost 100 employees (over 80 per cent of them women
and just over half of them part-time employees) at the Brandon store
in October of 1984 after the union signed up three-quarters of all of
those eligible. A small minority of the employees who opposed the
union took legal action which delayed negotiations but, in any case,
the company showed little inclination to bargain seriously which
Women and the Labour Movement 179
again led to the union filing unfair labour charges before the Mani-
toba Labour Board. The pending hearing on the charge brought the
company to the bargaining table on May 9, 1985 where the union
was offered the "Ontario contract." It responded by asking the La-
bour Board to impose a first contract and on July 23rd the Board
issued its decision providing for significant wage increases plus other
benefits. When Eaton's appeal was rejected, the company announced
that it would reduce its Brandon operation and lay off 49 employees,
about half of the staff, most of them part-time. The union did enter
into further negotiations to prevent the lay-off but nothing was re-
solved before the dissident employees applied for decertification
nine-months into the one-year contract. The vote in Brandon was
somewhat closer than in Ontario with around 40 per cent backing the
union. But the company's scare tactics worked and the union was
decertified. In both Ontario and Manitoba, the battle for union rec-
ognition had once more been lost.
In the eighties, the environment for further organization turned
even more unfriendly to labour than it had been in the preceding
period. Economic recession and high unemployment in the early
years of the decade was followed by "jobless growth," the accession
to power of neo-liberalism and the "decade of greed," global restruc-
turing and free trade agreements. This culminated in a major dis-
membering of Canada's manufacturing sector and a second
debilitating economic downturn in the early nineties, again driving
unemployment into double digits. The unfavourable economic cli-
mate was in most jurisdictions accompanied by retrenchment in the
public sector and by what Panitch and Swartz have called the assault
on trade union freedoms by government. What is perhaps most sur-
prising is not why unionization has declined a few percentage points
in recent years, but how well it has been maintained. This is particu-
larly evident when one compares the Canadian labour movement
with the American where the level of unionization has declined to a
half or less of the Canadian level.
The real barrier to unionization for women lies in the opposition
of employers, given the vulnerable economic position of the employ-
ees, who face a large reserve army of unemployed ready to take their
places in any confrontation. The use of replacement workers (strike-
breakers or "scabs") often under the protection of the police, con-
tracting-out, plant relocation in the anti-union southern United States
or Mexico, threats of plant or store closure, the increased use of
part-time labour and non-English (or non-French) speaking immi-
180 Women and Work
grant women, dispersal of work into employees' homes — all these
and many more techniques have been used to obstruct organization,
and break strikes and unions.
The bargaining power of women workers is frequently even more
vulnerable to labour market conditions than is men's. The advent of
microelectronic technology may only serve to reduce whatever bar-
gaining power these workers have, particularly if significant amounts
of word and data processing is relocated to employees' homes. In the
highly fragmented ad competitive service (including hospitality and
tourism) and trade sectors, the potential appears even more bleak.
Union organizing, even at the best of times, is a difficult and expen-
sive business, and the prospect of organizing a large, and growing,
number of small employers with a high turnover of staff and a high
proportion of part-time workers is formidable. Nor is it clear that
unionization could secure benefits for members commensurate with
the effort, given the competitive conditions in so many of the unor-
ganized sectors, the decline in employment standards and increased
competition from low-wage countries and areas. The ultimate loser
in this economic milieu is the employee, a disproportionate number
of whom are women. While it is important to amend our legislation
to remove the barriers to organization of all workers, it may be that
the only action that can give any security and support to these work-
ers is upward revision of the minimum wage and improved labour
standards legislation.
The future of women and unions? The evidence suggests that
women benefit from organizing and that the benefit is, in most cases,
substantial. Whether this will continue to be true if and when union-
ization spreads to those competitive and small-scale job markets
where so many are employed is another question. But the recent
evidence at least suggests that male unionists — or at least their
leadership — have recognized their vested interest in promoting
equal wages and working conditions for their female co-workers, if
only to protect themselves from being undercut. The reasons are that
the direction of structural and technological change and the resulting
decline in jobs in primary and secondary goods production, com-
bined with equal opportunity legislation and the penetration of more
women into non-traditional jobs, threaten to increase competition
between men and women for jobs, competition that employers can
exploit in a sexually divided labour force. Human rights legislation
and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in any case, make it con-
siderably more difficult for men to resort to exclusionist tactics to
Women and the Labour Movement 181
counteract that competition. Given the further evidence that families
increasingly need a second income to maintain their living standards,
this means that men have a powerful additional motive to improve
the economic status of women whether through inclusion in the
unions or through active support for social and labour legislation that
incorporates the women's agenda.
8
The Future: Proposals and
Prospects for Change
The Challenge
Women's place in the world of work, despite the not inconsequential
advances that women have made over the last three decades, remains
that of secondary citizens. One should not, however, downplay the
progress that has been made. Over the 1980s average female incomes
increased from less than half those of men to almost 60 per cent,
average earnings from 51.6 to 59.9 per cent, and the earnings of
full-time, full-year women workers, from 64.2 to 67.6 per cent of
male earnings. The following decade, the differences were com-
pressed even further, such that by 1998 the comparable figures were
61.8 per cent for incomes; for earnings 63.2 per cent for all women
workers, and 72.4 per cent for full-time full-year workers. Moreover,
legislation has been passed in many jurisdictions promoting pay and
employment equity, thereby extending human rights legislation and
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. On the other hand, the repeal
of affirmative action legislation and the restriction of private sector
pay equity legislation by the Conservative Harris government in the
mid-nineties in Ontario has clearly been a major setback for women.
However, it is clear that unions, for the most part, have accepted
gender equality as a priority in collective bargaining and in legisla-
tive lobbying. The numbers and percentages of female engineers,
scientists and professionals are rising, albeit slowly and from an
almost inconsequential base. Perhaps the most encouraging sign has
been the steady increase of women in managerial and administrative
occupations, from 16 to 45 per cent in the seventies and eighties,
even if many of these were subordinate positions. The change in
occupational classifications means that we cannot give a comparable
figure for the nineties, but women as a percentage of the total em-
ployed in managerial occupations rose significantly over the decade,
The Future 183
from 33.8 per cent in 1990 to 37.5 per cent in 1998. Also, family laws
have been amended to provide for equal splitting of family assets in
the event of marriage breakdown. While these improvements can
hardly satisfy those interested in the rapid achievement of gender
equality, particularly since in the case of falling pay differentials a
major cause has been falling male wages, they do represent substan-
tial progress toward gender equity.
There is no reason, however, to be sanguine or complacent about
the future of women and work. As we noted in the second edition of
this book, there are new and disturbing developments, one of the
most serious being the "feminization of poverty." As we state in
Chapter 3, it results from the continuing high levels of marriage
breakdown and single parentage, the lack of adequate support pay-
ments and day care for working mothers, the increasing reliance on
part-time work and self-employment, and the singular decline in the
quality of unemployment insurance in the 1990s. A second develop-
ment is the rise in inequality and the polarization of the entire labour
market that is resulting from the destruction of middle-income jobs
in the goods-producing industries combined with the creation of a
large number of low-level service jobs and a considerably smaller
number of technical, skilled and professional jobs. The prevalence
of these phenomena was documented in a 1988 Statistics Canada
study by Myles, Picot and Wannell which covered the period from
1981 to 1986:
Our main conclusion is that the distribution of wages (across
all age groups) did become somewhat more polarized over this
period ... [T]he main change, which occurred across the entire
economy, was a decline in the relative wage rates in jobs held
by young people, on one hand, and on the other, if anything an
increase in the relative wage rates in jobs held by middle-aged
workers.
From a woman's perspective this change is not encouraging since
it means that new job creation (entry positions) is at the lowest wage
category, which will adversely affect the higher proportion of first-
time female labour market entrants. It should also be noted that
almost 60 per cent of jobs occupied by young women (under 25
years) were in the lowest wage categories compared with a much
smaller 44 per cent for young men. At the other end of the age and
wage scale, the results were not much more encouraging. High-wage
184 Women and Work
jobs declined by almost a third for both men and women in the 25
to 34 age group, and while wages paid to both men and women in
the 35 to 49 age group rose substantially, the proportional increase
in the numbers of women affected was only around half that of men.
Furthermore, for those 50 years of age and older, only men benefitted
from upward wage mobility.
The polarization of the labour market is in part the result of the
growth in employment in the low-paid service sectors and the decline
in employment in the higher paying goods-producing sectors. But as
Myles, Picot and Wannell point out, this is not the major cause of
the growing polarization. The major cause is that entry jobs in all
industries are paying lower wages; and the dismembering of job
ladders in the lower tier of the primary labour market means that
upward mobility is becoming increasingly difficult for those not
already on the ladder. (It is interesting to compare with the United
States, where projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the
next decade indicate that around 60 per cent of new jobs will be
unskilled, paying poverty-level wages.) For most women workers
and all younger workers, this is not good news. It is also bad news
for workers being laid off due to "restructuring" and the decline of
traditional manufacturing and for women who are attempting to
re-enter the labour market after a period of non-participation due to
family responsibilities. These women will be doubly hit because of
recent changes to the unemployment insurance system that penalizes
labour re-entrants, particularly part-timers.
The reasons for this decline in new "good jobs" is associated with
the processes we described in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, increased compe-
tition from low-wage countries and regions, free trade, market de-
regulation, privatization, public sector retrenchment, the hollowing
out of the unemployment insurance system, and the assault on union
organization — all elements of the neo-liberal policy agenda. The
decline has also been intensified by recent deep recessions beginning
in 1981 and 1990, whose recoveries were delayed and attenuated by
this same neo-liberal program and by the accompanying fiscal and
monetary policies.
After the economic downturn in the early nineties, female partici-
pation rates stopped increasing and, in fact, declined. This occurred
in the face of stagnation in public sector employment, a decline in
clerical jobs with the spread of microelectronic technology, slower
economic growth, and economic discrimination in the unemploy-
ment insurance system. While female unemployment grew along
The Future 185
with male unemployment, it remained below male rates except that,
when corrected for involuntary part-time employment, women's un-
employment exceeded that of men's. If one also considers the "dis-
couraged worker effect," of women leaving the labour market
because they believe there are no suitable jobs available, then
women's unemployment has soared, well above the official recorded
rates.
This rather pessimistic forecast is based on the premise that social
attitudes towards the role of women (what political conservatives call
"family values"), held not only by men but by many women as well,
have not changed sufficiently to accommodate the kind of proactive
programs required if progress toward gender equality is not to be-
come stalled. In this view, it is considered unlikely that attitudes will
change much in the near future, especially in an economic climate
of depressed economic opportunity. It is much easier to promote a
change in distribution of economic opportunity and income in a
climate of economic growth than in one of stagnation or decline. If
the economic expansion of the last few years of the nineties continues
for a few more years — and economists are quite divided on this
question — it is possible that a more positive climate for such
programs will develop.
Is this assessment excessively pessimistic? The signs at the mo-
ment are obviously mixed. On the negative side are phenomena such
as the continuing high level of violence against women and of sexual
harassment in the workplace, cutbacks in social, health and educa-
tional programs, the failure so far to develop a national child-care
program, the feminization of poverty, the double disadvantage faced
by the growing number of immigrant women and women of visible
minorities, the political power of religious fundamentalism and anti-
abortion organizations, the stagnation and underrepresentation in the
number of women on corporate boards, in Parliament, legislatures
and other political bodies, the attacks on unionism and collective
bargaining, the fall in male wages, and business opposition to the
extension of pay and employment equity to the private sector. Per-
haps most ominous are the consequences of the Canada-United
States Free Trade Agreement, the North America Free Trade Agree-
ment and the World Trade Organization in forcing the harmonization
of Canadian with American, Mexican and Third World social policy,
which would undermine even existing programs.
More positively, however, we must note the strength and vitality
of the women's movement in Canada and the emergence, within a
186 Women and Work
resilient labour movement, of women in leadership positions and of
women's issues in the labour agenda. Furthermore, the legislative
achievements of the last two decades or so — in the Charter of Rights
and Freedoms, in human rights legislation at both the provincial and
federal levels, in affirmative action and in pay equity, despite the
unsuccessful attempts by the federal government and some of the
employers under federal jurisdiction to deny their commitment to pay
equity — will not be easily reversed. There is also some indication
that the North American public's disaffection with the economic and
social service woes initiated by the neo-liberal economic agenda may
have reversed the swing of the political pendulum so that it is now
moving in a more socially conscious direction. The provinces' at-
tempts to hire more nurses to replace those fired during the down-
sizing frenzy initiated by the manufactured debt/deficit crisis earlier
in the decade is one indication at least of the beginning of a swing
in the political pendulum. The failure of the WTO at its Seattle
meetings to extend the control of global capital over labour and the
environment as a result of popular protest is perhaps another indica-
tion of a changing political climate.
In any case, it is in this climate that the movement to advance the
cause of female equality must operate. Our purpose here is to look
at and evaluate a number of the proposals that have been put forward
to improve the position of women in the Canadian political economy.
In the final analysis, equality will only be achieved when fundamen-
tal institutions and attitudes in our society are altered. Discrimination
against women is ingrained in our social and economic systems, so
deeply imbedded that equality will not be easily achieved by any
number of specific remedial provisions, no matter how well inten-
tioned. Basic to a systemic change must be the acceptance by men
that the work in the home is not "woman's work" but work to be
shared. Until the added burden of household work is removed from
being the sole responsibility of women, there can be little hope for
true equality in the marketplace.
Proposals for Change
There is little reason to believe that the gains won by women over
the past several decades will necessarily be consolidated and contin-
ued without further action. Social change, particularly of such a
fundamental nature as is involved in raising women to equality, does
not take place simply with a recognition of the problem. It will only
take place under strong pressure. This makes it mandatory that, if
The Future 187
further progress is to be achieved, an aggressive and progressive
women's movement be maintained. This also requires that its base of
support be continually broadened and renewed by coalition-building
with other sympathetic popular organizations, particularly those with
a base in the working-class, which has borne the brunt of the costs
of restructuring.
Obviously, the struggles for women's reproductive rights and
control over their bodies, equality in appointments to political, cul-
tural and judicial office, freedom from violence and sexual harass-
ment and recognition of political and social equality are important
and must continue. But important as these goals may be, they also
require a material or economic base. By this we mean that without
access to equal opportunities and economic returns in the labour
market, women will have difficulty escaping the dependency that
underpins many of the other aspects of gender subordination and
inequality. This, in turn, requires a number of immediate economic
reforms to deal with the sources of inequality in the labour market
that we have identified here.
Over the longer run, creating a climate for permanent change will
depend on a moderation in people's attitudes, a long and slow process
of education, not only in the formal system (changing textbook
stereotypes, bringing equality into school counselling, incorporating
in syllabi female role models, and so on), but also across the broad
spectrum of information media, including TV with its pervasive
influence in shaping social attitudes and creating stereotypes. Just
recently, for instance, Mattell came out with a new line of children's
computers, a pink Barbie one for girls and a blue one for boys. The
software for the Barbie computer contained fashion and modeling
programs; the boy's computer contained software for racing, action
and mathematical games. This is the kind of perpetuation of sexual
stereotyping that must be eliminated if attitudes are to be changed.
Nevertheless, even with evolving attitudes, change will be manifested
in a number of discrete measures, many of them legislative. A number
of such measures have been proposed: wages for house workers;
equal pay for work of equal value (pay equity); affirmative action
(employment equity); a major expansion of public day care; pension
reforms; the encouragement of unionization in the service industries;
and a significant upward revision in labour standards, in particular
the minimum wage, and the expansion of all labour standards cov-
erage to part-time workers. We will examine these proposals.
188 Women and Work
House Workers' Wages
One of the earliest proposals of some women's groups, rarely heard
these days, was for the payment of wages to any person, male or
female, acting as a full-time homemaker, much as family allowance
used to be paid. Though there is no reason that this should apply only
to women, in our contemporary society the vast majority of people
who would be affected are women. This proposal has many attractive
features. It would give women, particularly those in poorer families
and those with preschool-age children, a real choice between work
in the home and work in the labour market. In turn, this would reduce
the reserve supply of women to the labour market and lighten down-
ward pressure on women's wages. Housewives would have an in-
come independent of money provided by their husbands, which
would not only reduce their dependency, but also increase their sense
of self-worth. This would also have the benefit of reducing women's
vulnerability to spousal abuse and desertion. The drawbacks, however,
are that the proposal would also likely perpetuate the sexual division
of labour in the household with its consequences for sexual stereo-
typing of jobs in the labour market, and would encourage women to
withdraw from the labour market for family rearing with the resultant
negative consequences for career and income progression.
Whatever its merits, however, the proposal is not likely to receive
serious consideration. It would involve new government transfer
spending of at least $35 to $40 billion (1999) a year without any real
increase in economic output. The only way to finance such a payment
would be a massive increase in taxes on those in the labour market.
This would be at a time when the state has just faced a self-proclaimed
fiscal crisis, while tax revolts from increasingly burdened consumers
are becoming common. At the same time, despite its cries of tax
overload, the corporate sector has steadily decreased its proportional
contribution to tax revenues, a transfer of the tax burden likely to be
accelerated by free trade. Furthermore, the Mulroney government in
the 1980s curtailed and eventually eliminated family allowances, the
one social program that most closely approached that of a house
worker's wage, and opposed the very principle of such universal
programs. This opposition has continued and even been intensified
by its successor, the Chretien Liberal government. Given the political
climate, therefore, wages for house work would appear to be a "non-
starter," at least for the foreseeable future.
The Future 189
Pay and Employment Equity
Equal pay for equal work has been a traditional demand of unions
since the last century, but it was not until 1956 that it was achieved
at the federal level in Canada, when the Canadian government, over
the opposition of private employers, passed equal pay legislation
covering the 10 per cent of the labour force under its jurisdiction. As
we have noted, the major purpose of the unions in advocating equal
pay was to protect male workers from competition from lower-wage
female workers. In short, it was primarily an exclusion device,
though when implemented it did protect women from the most bla-
tant forms of wage discrimination and for this reason always com-
manded the support of women's organizations. During the 1960s and
1970s, legislation providing for equal pay for "equal work," "equiva-
lent work," "similar or substantially similar work" (the different
wordings used in different jurisdictions) became general across the
country.
However, despite some notable breakthroughs (such as the deter-
mination that the work of nurses' aids is equal to that of orderlies,
or that the work of librarians is equal to that of archivists, to cite two
high-profile court decisions), the impact of equal pay legislation had
minimal effects in decreasing male-female wage and earnings differ-
entials. This is because any differences in skill, responsibility, effort,
or working conditions, whether inherent in the jobs or deliberately
designed into jobs to make them appear significantly different, were
frequently held to render the work unequal and not subject to the
equal pay provisions. Secondly, the provisions only hold for the same
employer in the same plant and location, a weakness of all attempts
to legislate wage equality.
To address the first problem, women's organizations, increasingly
supported by the unions, have called for equal pay for work of equal
value. In Canada the concept of equal pay for work of equal value
is now usually referred to as pay equity, which (as Judy Fudge and
Patricia McDermott point out in Just Wages, their assessment of the
contemporary state of pay equity) emphasizes the goal of wage
equality as compared with the U.S. usage of "comparable worth"
which emphasizes the process of achieving wage parity.
The concept of pay equity is now embodied in legislation in eight
jurisdictions in Canada, six provinces, the Yukon Territory, and the
federal government through the Human Rights Act. The federal
program has extended coverage through the act and the Labour Code
790 Women and Work
to the larger private sector employers under its jurisdiction, federal
departments and agencies and, through its contractors program, to
many other large employers not formally under its jurisdiction. How-
ever, in a number of cases legislation is complaint-based, which
means that individual employees or groups of employees must file a
complaint with the human rights agency against a particular em-
ployer alleging discrimination. This contrasts with the proactive Pay
Equity Acts, first initiated by the NDP government of Manitoba in
1985 and which by 1989 had spread to Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince
Edward Island, and New Brunswick. These acts require specified
employers to initiate action to bring about pay equity. Moreover,
Ontario made world history when it extended pay equity to the
private sector and not just to public employees within its jurisdiction.
Quebec became the second province to extend proactive pay equity
to the private sector in 1996 with a program that was even more
extensive than Ontario's, involving mandatory pay equity plans and
committees for employers of over 100 workers, and lesser require-
ments for employers of between 10 and 99 workers. In addition,
British Columbia and Newfoundland have adopted non-statute, pay
equity policies within their civil services. On the other hand, the
Conservative Government of Ontario tried to greatly restrict its pay-
equity program through legislation in 1996, in particular by elimi-
nating the proxy system of outside comparators where no male
comparator group existed in the quasi-public sector (such as the
health, education, municipal sectors), restricting payouts by employ-
ers and eliminating retroactivity. However, this legislation was over-
turned by the Ontario courts the following year on the grounds that
it contravened the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. The following year other changes were introduced which
exempted homecare workers employed in their own homes from
coverage and limited retroactivity in the public sector while reintro-
ducing elements of a complaint-based system.
There are many limitations to current pay equity programs, apart
from the fact that only five are proactive and only three include the
private sector. The first we have already mentioned, the fact that pay
equity is generally restricted to individual, large employers and sin-
gle locations. Secondly, the definition of female- or male-dominated
job classes is determined by threshold values (usually 60 or 70 per
cent female or male), which may exclude some affected groups,
while comparison requires the existence of an appropriate male-
dominated job class (or "comparator group"). Thirdly, the basis for
The Future 191
determining equity is usually job evaluation using four basic criteria
— skill, effort, responsibility, working conditions — which critics
charge are themselves not gender-neutral. The values placed on
them, they argue, are values created by male-dominated markets and
therefore tend to overvalue criteria characteristic of male work. Also,
they reinforce male-dominated hierarchical management. Neverthe-
less, the very concept of pay equity does challenge the market as the
sole determinant of women's wages, at the same time as it legitimizes
the market determination of male job values.
Perhaps the most serious limitation of pay equity, however, is that
even if it were universal and effective, it would leave untouched most
of the earnings differential between men and women. As we noted
earlier, wage discrimination is estimated to account for only four or
five percentage points of the overall difference of around 30 per cent,
and this difference has probably been reduced significantly since
those estimates were made. This is confirmed by the extent of earn-
ings narrowing when pay equity programs have been introduced in
some jurisdictions, although in others, the narrowing has been some-
what higher (around 10 per cent in the Prince Edward Island civil
service). This, of course, is no reason not to press for universal,
proactive pay equity. But it does emphasize the importance of other
measures to reduce the discrepancy between male and female earn-
ings, particularly employment equity.
Employment equity involves creating equal opportunity for all
people for employment in all occupations and at all levels. Specifi-
cally, it prohibits discrimination in hiring and employment practices
(systemic discrimination) and, in its proactive form (affirmative ac-
tion), provides for deliberate over-hiring of underrepresented groups.
All provinces prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, relig-
ion or other individual characteristics through human rights legisla-
tion and they also exempt affirmative action from being declared as
discrimination. A number of provinces actually encourage affirm-
ative action in the private sector and many public and quasi-public
sector employers have specific affirmative action programs dealing
with particular target groups (normally women, aboriginals, visible
minorities, and the disabled), and particular occupations (police,
hydro construction workers, and teachers being some specific cases).
However, only the federal government has so far addressed employ-
ment equity in a systematic way through employment equity legisla-
tion. Ontario's NDP government did introduce its own comprehensive
Employment Equity Act in 1994 which applied to 75 per cent of
192 Women and Work
employers in Ontario but the following year the newly elected Con-
servative government repealed the legislation and replaced it with a
voluntary program.
Like the provinces, the original federal government legislation
affecting employment equity was implemented through human rights
legislation. The 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act and Human
Rights Commission prohibited discriminatory employment programs
and provided for the Commission to investigate complaints and in-
itiate remedies where warranted. The legislation and the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms also provided that affirmative action
programs (preferences) for disadvantaged target groups, including
women, do not constitute discrimination.
In 1986, the federal government passed the Employment Equity
Act. It went much farther than the Human Rights Act in that it
required employers (including federal departments) to: i. report on
their employment of women, visible minorities, aboriginals and the
disabled; ii. identify and eliminate barriers to the employment of
these groups; iii. prepare affirmative action plans detailing how and
when representative workforces will be achieved; and iv. institute
affirmative action policies to ensure that these groups are adequately
represented in their workforces — though only in the case of report-
ing is enforcement provided for. These provisions covered all em-
ployers with 100 or more employees under federal jurisdiction.
Though the act did not require it, the Human Rights Commission
also requested comparable information from the Treasury Board and
the Public Service Commission for the federal civil service and
government agencies. Similar requirements were also required of
employers, otherwise under provincial jurisdiction, who were doing
or seeking business with the federal government under the contrac-
tors program administered by Canada Employment and Immigration
Commission. As of January 1992, twenty-five joint reviews affecting
roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the workforce covered had
been undertaken, fourteen with firms under the Employment Equity
Act, eleven with federal departments and agencies.
In 1995 the Employment Equity Act was strengthened and in 1996
it came into force. Jurisdiction was extended to include 350 private
sector employers and Crown corporations under federal jurisdiction
and to federal departments and agencies, all under enforcement by
the Human Rights Commission. In 1998, 412 organizations (exclud-
ing contractors) employing close to a million employees were cov-
ered. Compliance by federal contractors is monitored by the
The Future 193
Department of Labour. The regulatory bodies oversee the reporting
requirements of the act, and operate primarily through joint reviews
with employers of their employment situation rather than through
complaints and litigation. Employers are required to develop and
implement employment equity plans, although this does not include
mandatory quotas, the creation of new positions or the hiring of
unqualified workers. When the situation is deemed not to measure
up to the goals established in the legislation (essentially that the
workforce has the same relative composition of the designated group
as is in the labour force available to it), a plan is negotiated to achieve
employment equity. The plan may include special recruitment, train-
ing and promotion programs, the changing of stated job or physical
qualifications, and education and sensitizing initiatives to make em-
ployers and managers more aware of the problems encountered by
the target groups and more supportive of their needs. The commis-
sion then monitors the implementation of the plan for a specified
period.
Results under the revised act still leave much to be desired al-
though progress is being made. At the end of 1999, 125 audits had
been completed, but only 4 employers were found to be in complete
compliance with the objectives of employment equity while follow-
up audits were proceeding on 54 others. With a total of 96 employers
the audits had been completed with negotiated compliance agree-
ments between the employers and the Commission. Furthermore, the
data from 1998 confirms what we have maintained throughout, that
a large part of the problem has been the hiring of women only in the
lower-pay occupations. For instance, in the spring of 1998, 51 per
cent of men but 76 per cent of women earned less than $45,000 in
the federal civil service. For senior positions, 20 per cent of men
working full-time earned $60,000 or more compared with only 7 per
cent of women. Commission data indicated that a similar situation
existed in the regulated private sector.
The provisions of most of the federal and provincial equity acts
suffer the same weaknesses of any complaint-based system in that
they are reactive rather than proactive and are difficult to enforce. In
the first instance, very few employees are willing to take the risk of
making a complaint, which is time consuming and uncertain. The
burden of proof is frequently on the employee, and discrimination is
difficult, often nearly impossible, to prove. In 1998-99 for instance,
of 1,591 complaints to the Human Rights Commission, only 182
were settled. Also, a successful complaint often depends on women
194 Women and Work
applying for positions or promotions in non-traditional areas. Con-
sequently, there have been a very low number of complaints brought
to provincial or federal boards. The federal commission, for instance,
had 73 complaints by 1992 under the Employment Equity Act, of
which only 11 came from individuals. All but two of the rest came
from two organizations, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the
Disabled People for Employment Equity Human Rights Group. The
remaining two were initiated by the Human Rights Commission
itself.
Despite the weaknesses of the complaint system and employer
hostility to the program, including eight court challenges to the
authority of the Commission, it has been judged by the Conference
Board of Canada to have had a significant effect on employment
practices in federally regulated businesses, particularly for women,
and to have raised the profile of employment equity among business
leaders. Indeed, 84 per cent of the federally regulated organizations
surveyed indicated that they had initiated some form of employment
equity program by the end of 1990. Nevertheless, there are other
indications that the program is failing to achieve the equal opportu-
nity goal. In 1990, women, who represented 44 per cent of the
available labour force according to the 1986 Census, represented 43.7
per cent of employees covered by the Employment Equity Act and
44.4 per cent of employees of federal departments. However, women
were still largely concentrated in clerical and administrative support
categories. By 1998, under the new act, women represented 50.5 per
cent of the federal public service, but only 13 per cent of new female
hirings in the previous year were of permanent employees, less than
half the level of men. Also, among the executive group, women
represented only 25.1 per cent, just over half of their labour market
availability.
Women were poorly represented in transportation (22 per cent in
1996) and mining and in non-traditional manual work, although there
has been some marginal improvement. They remain grossly under-
represented among directors, executives and senior managers. In
1990, according to a study by Professor Lauzon, women accounted
for only 4.7 per cent of directorships of major public and Crown
corporations and only 6.7 per cent of top executive positions. The
financial sector has been one of the worst offenders along with the
resource and industrial products industries.
Although union leadership has indicated support for mandatory
affirmative action, it does run up against worker hostility to any
The Future 195
scheme that would abrogate the hard-fought-for seniority system.
Indeed, a backlash among employees has been reported by a large
number of employers implementing such action. However, this may
in part be attributed to the fact that unions and employee organiza-
tions have been largely excluded from the design and implementation
of these programs even though their inclusion is mandated by the
Employment Equity Act. Without employee participation, opposition
to any management-imposed plan can be expected.
Still, it is readily apparent that without affirmative action, progress
in opening up equal opportunity will be both slow and partial; and
inequity in employment opportunities is deemed responsible for ap-
proximately a quarter to a third of male-female earnings differentials,
or two to three times the effect of wage discrimination. The obvious
place to begin is at the provincial level with governments and Crown
corporations. But despite all the criticisms made of government,
there is evidence that it is already a more equalitarian employer than
the private sector, at least with respect to gender. Employment eq-
uity, therefore, needs to be extended to the private sector. Federal,
provincial and municipal governments can utilize the weapon of
contract compliance to enforce affirmative action in much of the
private sector (though it is not altogether clear that this may not run
afoul of the investment clauses in recent trade deals). Some such
provisions have been introduced at both federal and provincial levels
in Canada with respect to Native workers in a number of northern
energy projects, and more generally, in Quebec and in Toronto. It
could be generalized to include female workers in all contracts at all
levels of government.
The problem is primarily one of political will and of enforcement,
particularly in non-traditional occupations where a skilled female
labour force does not now exist. To create this force would require
a substantial expansion of programs to train women in these non-
traditional jobs. Unfortunately, this requirement comes at a time
when the federal government is drastically cutting its expenditures
in employment training and shuffling its responsibilities in this area
off to the provinces. It will also require a significant and continuing
improvement in the state of the Canadian economy. There is little
prospect that employers or unions will accept, or indeed even be in
a position to offer, affirmative action employment policies in a period
of very high unemployment, layoffs, shutdowns and a failure to create
good jobs. Women, therefore, have a vested interest in reversing the
neo-liberal economic agenda that has contributed substantially to
196 Women and Work
the high unemployment rates that make the expansion of affirmative
action unfeasible and politically unacceptable.
Pension Reform
There are two reasons to support the call for improvements in the
pension system. The first is simply one of correcting the injustice
suffered by many women as a result of biases in the way the current
system works. The second is that it is a necessary precondition to
reducing the extent of female poverty. The fundamental problem is
that, with the exception of the Old Age Pensions (OAS), Guaranteed
Income Supplement (GIS) and related Spouse's Allowance, most
pension income is earnings- and employment-related. As a result,
women face two disadvantages. The most obvious is the inferior
lifetime earnings capacity of most women workers as a consequence
of both lower wages and incomes and also of interrupted careers and
a shorter working life. If women choose not to enter the paid labour
force but opt instead to work full-time in the home, they earn no
pension entitlement at all in their own right but must rely on spousal
benefits where available.
The second disadvantage is that private, occupation-based pension
plans, which are assumed to account for three-quarters of earnings-
based pension income, covered only 32.4 per cent of women in the
labour force in 1997 compared with an only slightly higher percent-
age of men, 33.5. Coverage of paid workers was a little better, 39.9
per cent for women and 42.3 per cent for men. Also, part-time
workers, the majority of whom are women, are very poorly served
by private pension plans. For instance, only 16 per cent of part-time
women workers had pension coverage in 1987, well under half the
rate for full-time workers. Indeed, it is the high level of public sector
pension coverage among women that has raised their coverage to
near parity with men. However, it should be noted that pension
coverage among women and more particularly among men has been
falling steadily since the early nineties along with restructuring of
the labour market and retrenchment in the public sector. Thus women
are slightly less likely to be entitled to any earnings-related pension
income; but even when they are, their pensions are generally much
lower than men's. In theory, of course, it is possible for workers,
male or female, to provide for their own pensions through Registered
Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs). However, this is not an option
that is in reality applicable to lower income workers, women house
workers, or part-time workers. It is mainly a tax-financed benefit for
The Future 197
the upper income bracket and for self-employed businessmen and
professionals.
The inadequacies in the existing pension system were addressed
in a 1990 report of the National Council of Welfare, Pension Reform.
Monica Townson, in a 1995 report for the Advisory Council on the
Status of Women, "Women's Financial Futures," takes up a number
of the same issues. Many of the recommendations included in the
1990 report are still directly relevant to disadvantages faced by
women. They are grouped into three categories: improving the basic
non-earnings related income security programs (including a return to
universality in the Old Age Pension and abolition of the clawbacks);
improving and extending the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans; and
reforming the private-sector pension plans (including RRSPs).
Although the provision of the GIS has considerably reduced the
problem of seniors' poverty, the level is still insufficient to raise the
poor senior who does not have an outside income or other pension
above the poverty line. In 1994, Old Age Security and GIS together
provided only 76 per cent of the poverty line for a single person in
a medium size city. Since women are far more likely than men to be
in this situation and to be without alternative outside income, the
proposed rise in the GIS for this poorest of groups is an obvious first
step. The problem of poverty for married couples is not quite as
severe, although if a couple must rely wholly on OAS, the GIS and
Spouse's Allowance, their annual income would still have fallen
almost two thousand dollars below the poverty line in 1994. There-
fore, there is need for an increase in the GIS and Spouse's Allowance
for this group as well, though not perhaps as large. The National
Council on Welfare also proposes extension of Spouse's Allowances
to all poor Canadians over the age of sixty to end the age discrimi-
nation in the existing plan. For instance, women sixty to sixty-four
who are divorced or separated remain ineligible for spouse's allow-
ance. Finally, the council argues that the clawbacks on old age
pensions be repealed and universality be restored. The tax system
should be reformed to tax all sources of retirement income equally.
This tax, of course, would apply to all incomes, male, female and
family.
The universal public employment-related pension plans, the Can-
ada Pension Plan (CPP) and its Quebec equivalent, the Quebec Pen-
sion Plan (QPP) also need to be reformed. As previously noted, when
these plans were established in 1966 they were designed to provide
only one-quarter of the expected income necessary for a decent
198 Women and Work
retirement standard of living. The other 75 per cent was expected to
come from private pension plans and other savings and investments.
However, as we have also noted, less than half the labour force, only
32.4 per cent of women, and around half that percentage of women
part-time employees, have private pension plan coverage, while
RRSPs and other private investment income is primarily restricted
to upper income earners, businessmen and independent profession-
als. Women especially, therefore, are not well served by the existing
pension system. But, to be fair, neither are men. A single woman
receiving the average CPP or QPP pension as well as Old Age
Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement would have had an
income that in 1994 almost exactly equalled the poverty level in
1992. A couple in the same situation would have been only margin-
ally better off. Anybody with less than the average wage — and this
would disproportionately include women because of their lower
wages and lifetime earnings — would be in an even worse position
and could fall below the poverty line despite thousands of dollars of
income supplement payments.
The National Council on Welfare's recommendation to remedy
this situation is to sharply increase the value of pensions under the
CPP and QPP plans, to 50 per cent of retirement income for lower
income people. Townson also supports this approach but admits that
politically, it has little support at this time. Such an increase would
not only give many more pensioners incomes significantly above the
poverty line but would also substantially reduce government trans-
fers in the form of GIS payments. Women, including those with an
occupational history of part-time and low-wage work, would be clear
beneficiaries. However, universal transfer payments, whether or not
earned, have become victims of the prevailing neo-liberal ideology.
Other recommendations of the council for changes to the CPP
designed to improve the status of women include making the splitting
of pension credits automatic and mandatory in the case of marriage
breakdown. This was done in 1991, but, as noted previously, this can
be overridden by provincial legislation.
The report also recommended credit-splitting be required in all
provincial and federal jurisdictions for private, occupational pension
plans. But what was perhaps most urgent was the need to require all
such plans to include continuing benefits for surviving spouses —
which in the majority of cases will be women and which was not
common in earlier plans. As it is now, legislation requires that private
pension plans include a provision for survivor benefits unless the
The Future 199
surviving spouse waives that right in writing. However, this provi-
sion is not retroactive and only affects pensions since the reforms.
Despite recent pension reforms, therefore, the spectre of poverty
among older women remains. What is also required is the expansion
of occupational plans to a much higher percentage of the labour
force, in particular to part-time workers. The best way to achieve this
would be through expansion of the CPP but, given the political
opposition to this, the best alternative is the encouragement of unions
and collective bargaining, since fringe benefits, including pension
plans, are much more prevalent in unionized firms than they are in
non-union firms. For instance, in 1978 the average unionized firm
spent almost three times as much on pensions and welfare plans as
did non-unionized firms (reported in Morley Gunderson and Craig
Riddell's Labour Market Economics). In addition to raising women's
wages and reducing wage discrimination, therefore, unions have the
additional benefit of improving women's economic position in old
age.
Day Care and Parental Leave
Of all the legislative measures important to the future economic
status of women, the expansion of subsidized day-care facilities
(along with relevant parental leave provisions) is perhaps the most
important. The evidence given in Chapter 3 strongly supports the
argument that it is the interruption of women's careers that consti-
tutes a major barrier to female equality in the marketplace. Career
interruption forces women to start all over again on re-entry to the
market even when they are able to climb onto a job ladder. It denies
women seniority and the on-the-job training so central to productiv-
ity. It encourages statistical discrimination by employers. And it
contributes to the poverty problem among low-income and female-
headed, single-parent families. Maternity leave, now widely avail-
able, does provide some protection for women for a relatively brief
time surrounding the birth date, but does little for the more prolonged
period of infant and child rearing. (However, a significant improve-
ment in maternity leave provisions was announced in the recent
February 2000 federal budget, which extended maternity leave to one
year.) Also, the cost of private day care in simple monetary terms or
the lack of care and supervision that so often accompanies the alter-
native informal child-care arrangements, acts as a formidable barrier
to women in lower-paying jobs.
200 Women and Work
This is not only our conclusion. "Child care," Gunderson,
Muszynski and Keck conclude, "is an essential support for women
and all parents who work in the labour market ... A strategy is
required to expand the number of licensed child-care spaces dramati-
cally ..." What they proposed included a major capital grants pro-
gram for constructing child-care facilities and the creation of a
refundable tax credit for child-care. The fact, however, is that the
Mulroney Conservative government which promised such a national
plan in the 1980s reneged on its promise and the Chretien Liberal
government which followed has failed to come up with an alterna-
tive, at least to date. On the other hand, from women's point of view,
it is fortunate that the provisions of the 1992 constitutional accord,
which would have made it much more difficult to introduce such a
new national social program, were defeated.
Good quality, low-cost day care is, of course, no panacea. It is of
little use to women who choose to be full-time housewives during
the child-rearing period. It is also not without its detractors, particu-
larly those who argue that young children need a mother in the home
in their formative years to develop personally and socially. But even
if this were the case, and it is by no means generally accepted, the
facts are that many women, for reasons of need or of choice, must
and will work, if not full-time, at least part-time. It makes a great
deal more sense to provide quality day care at a cost that ensures a
reasonable take-home income than to continue with grossly inade-
quate day care that leaves women workers with minimal incomes
after care costs have been paid.
A further issue is whether day care should be community-based
— that is, located in the home community — or if it should be
employment-based — located at the place of employment of either
the mother or father. Both have their advantages, but in the case of
large employers there is much to be said for employment-based care,
both for the parent in the form of proximity and convenience, and
also for the employer: employers with such facilities report a signifi-
cant decline in turnover and absenteeism; more women are able and
willing to work full-time or on shifts; maternity leaves are shorter;
and productivity in some cases has risen.
On the other hand, some concern has been expressed that em-
ployer-tied day care not only raises the problems of the children's
proximity to industrial pollution and hierarchical authority structures,
but may also result in subsidization of employers by employees
through lower wages because the potential loss of day care will act
The Future 201
as a deterrent to workers who might otherwise seek better jobs and
higher wages with some other employer.
Thus, day-care issues are not unequivocally resolved by having
quality, low-cost day care. It would still be undeniable, however, that
it is a necessary condition for lessening the economic burden of child
rearing on women. Given the totally inadequate facilities at present,
as indicated by the imbalance between the number of spaces and the
number of preschool children of working women, one should expect
that the provision of day care will remain foremost among people
concerned with the women's movement.
The movement for affordable day care has remained a central
focus for many women's groups. Several provinces do provide some
level of subsidies for day care and other forms of kindergarten,
pre-school and after-school care, but it is minimal in comparison with
the demand for such services. Only Quebec has moved in a major
way to meet the need. In 1997 Quebec adopted a new approach, what
the Globe and Mail called a feminist approach to family policy (14
September 1999). The centrepiece of the Quebec program was uni-
versal $5 a day day care, for children from 2 years of age and above,
and after 2000, to all children including kindergarten and before
school and after-school care. The program is non-profit and parent-
controlled. The program may also be expanded to evening and part-
time care. This approach replaced Quebec's baby-bonus cash
payment for children, which had proved ineffectual in stabilizing its
falling birth rate.
We have not discussed many of the other, less central suggestions
to facilitate improvement in the economic status of women: for
example, parental leave on the European model, which provides for
a number of days' leave a year from work for family duties for both
men and women, placing men on the same footing as women before
employers; or flextime, which permits adaptation of working hours
around family schedules, and work sharing, which permits people to
share a full-time, regular job — both measures that would increase
the ability of women to cope with dual jobs in and out of the home
and allow men to share more equitably in work in the home.
But parental leave has also become a feature of the Quebec femi-
nist system. Quebec is set to pay 75 per cent of parents' salaries for
up to 30 weeks in parental leave, well above the 15 weeks of mater-
nity leave at 55 per cent salary and 10 additional weeks of parental
leave under existing Employment Insurance regulations — for the
minority that are eligible. This aspect of the Quebec plan still awaits
202 Women and Work
negotiation with Ottawa, which baulks at extending the plan to part-
time and self-employed workers. At the moment, Quebec guarantees
workers under their labour standards legislation up to one year com-
bined maternity and parental leave with wage top-up in the public
sector for 20 weeks. Workers are also entitled to 5 days a year for
"urgent family matters."
The suggestions above are not meant to be exhaustive. However,
they do touch on the most important provisions that could be made
and, if they are to benefit all women in the labour force, must be
achieved through government action. For some women, of course,
many of these reforms may be achieved through union action.
Unions
Unions have been criticized in the past for being male dominated and
male oriented — exclusionist of women and uninterested in so-called
"women's issues" in collective bargaining, unconcerned with organ-
izing women and unsupportive of women involved in industrial dis-
putes. From our historical review it is apparent that unions have had
a rather chequered history with respect to organizing, supporting and
promoting women in the labour movement. Even now, we would not
suggest that all unions, on all issues, are always totally supportive of
women. However, it is equally apparent that the labour movement
as a whole has made great progress within the last decade or so in
accepting the principles of feminism and of women's equality in the
labour market. Even the problems that remain, we would argue, do
not represent failings peculiar to unions but rather reflect the same
economic and social forces that produced the inferior economic po-
sition of women in the first place.
In fact, the evidence presented in Chapter 7 documents that unions
do benefit women substantially in terms of wages, working condi-
tions and fringe benefits and in reducing inequality in wages and
promotions. Unions have been a major driving force in achieving
recognition and acceptance of some fundamental women's demands,
including maternity leave benefits, equal pay for work of equal value,
protection from sexual harassment, and health and safety in the
electronic office. Secondly, there is considerable evidence that un-
ions and their officials are much more sympathetic to and cognizant
of women's issues than are employers. This was brought out in a
study done for Canada Employment and Immigration as early as
1979. Trade unionists were four times as likely to identify women
as a leading disadvantaged group than were the sample of contractors
The Future 203
and manufacturers interviewed, and they were the least likely to
consider women the least disadvantaged of all minority groups.
Of course, actions speak louder than words. As pointed out in
Chapter 7, female wages are consistently higher and male/female
wage differentials are in almost all cases lower among unionized
workers than among those non-unionized. But the effect of unions
goes beyond purely monetary issues. As Kumar and Acri have
pointed out, "[S]exual and racial equality is [now] an integral part of
the Canadian labour movement's economic and social policy
agenda." For instance, unionized workers are much more likely to
have provisions superior to those of non-unionized workers with
respect to maternity leave, fringe benefits for part-time workers,
child-care leave and allowances, protection from sexual harassment,
day care, affirmative action, non-discriminatory promotion and pro-
moting pay and employment equity. Many examples can be given,
particularly in the public sector where women represent a higher
proportion of the union membership. (A fuller list and examples can
be found in Kumar and Acri's 1991 study, "Women's Issues and
Collective Bargaining.")
Furthermore, women and feminist consciousness have made con-
siderable gains within the leadership of the unions within the last
fifteen years. As one labour and feminist activist, Linda Briskin, has
noted "although the numbers of women leaders have not increased
as quickly as we might like, feminist-informed leadership practices
in the union movement are having an important impact, and have the
potential to inspire a creative rethinking of union organization."
Moreover, the labour movement's impact goes beyond collective
bargaining. Outside of the women's movement itself, unions have
been the most active bodies in lobbying governments for progressive
legislation that would advance women's economic and social inter-
ests, particularly in such areas as pensions, minimum wages and
other labour standards, occupational health and safety, crisis centres,
day care, restrictions on sub-contracting, and pay and employment
equity. On broader policy issues affecting women, labour has been
at the forefront of opposition to the free trade agreements, deregula-
tion, privatization and the retrenchment of social services and uni-
versal programs.
What are the prospects for expanding unionism, particularly in
sales, service and clerical occupations; the finance, insurance and
real estate and trade industries; and among part-time workers — all
employment areas where women are concentrated and where union-
204 Women and Work
ization rates are low? The fact is that under existing legislation it is
difficult. The reasons are generally recognized: strong employer op-
position, fragmentation and small size of employee groups, high
turnover among women workers, high proportion of part-time work-
ers, employment instability, highly competitive market climate, low
skill content of jobs, high labour to capital ratios, attitudes toward
unions among women workers, deference of women to male hier-
archical management, and so on. The uncompromising opposition to
unions by such firms as Wal-Mart, McDonalds and other retail
chains, who have gone as far as closing outlets rather than submit to
collective bargaining, suggests that union penetration under existing
laws and practices may prove difficult, if not impossible. However,
for others unionization would be possible and should be encouraged
by legislative changes that would make organization less difficult
and would make arriving at a collective agreement a less conflictual
and, at times, violent process.
It may very well be impossible to unionize in some sectors or with
some employers, and therefore improvements may only be gained
through upgraded labour standards or the adoption of laws providing
for sectoral bargaining. By sectoral bargaining we mean the adoption
of laws that extend a collective agreement to all employers in an
economic sector once agreement has been reached between one or
more employers and unions in that sector. Such a system exists
already in Quebec in the decree system in the construction industry
and in a number of countries in Europe.
In their discussions of how to combat female poverty among the
working poor, Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck recommend six spe-
cific governmental changes. These are: i. creating a positive climate
toward unions; ii. restricting contracting out; iii. limiting the right of
employers to threaten or carry out plant closures to escape unioniza-
tion; iv. imposing first contracts where employers refuse to negotiate;
v. prohibiting strikebreakers ("replacement workers" or "scabs");
and vi. introducing sanctions against employers who refuse to bar-
gain meaningfully ("in good faith"). There are others we would add.
It is obvious from the experience with the banks that procedures must
be found to prevent employers from interfering with the employees'
right to organize through threats, transfers, other forms of unfair
labour practice, and refusal to provide lists of eligible employees.
Perhaps this could best be accomplished by setting much higher
penalties for unfair labour practices and allowing automatic certifi-
cation where such practices occur. Secondly, we view favourably the
The Future 205
Manitoba experience with final-offer-selection (FOS) arbitration to
settle disputes in just those kinds of employment situations where
many women are employed and do not have a strong bargaining
position — day care centres, nursing homes, and retail outlets.
Unfortunately, despite its success in promoting meaningful nego-
tiations and reducing conflict, opposition from business led the Man-
itoba Conservative government to repeal the FOS legislation in 1991.
This setback, and the fanatical opposition of business to Ontario's
modest legislation to "level the playing field" in industrial relations
and guarantee the right of workers to organize and to collective
bargaining, suggest that the struggle for legislative changes to facili-
tate organization of women workers will be a very difficult one. It
is, however, an issue which should encourage a natural coalition
between the women's movement and the labour movement.
Employment Standards and the Minimum Wage
Whether or not such changes in the climate for union organization
are achieved, it will still be imperative to significantly upgrade fed-
eral and provincial employment standards. One reason is that, as Judy
Fudge has pointed out in a 1992 article in Canadian Dimension, the
"implicit and explicit state deregulation of the labour market" has
led to a massive growth in non-standard work — part-time, short-
term, own-account, and temporary-help agency work — which by
1987 comprised 33.8 per cent of all jobs. Whatever the union pene-
tration of the labour force, these jobs are unlikely to be covered.
Secondly, as long as there is unemployment and a "reserve army" of
potential employees among housewives, the primary determinant of
wages and other benefits in the secondary labour market will be
legislated minimum wages and other employment standards. Thirdly,
the existence of low wages and poor job security in the secondary
labour market provides strong incentives for business to shift work
from the primary labour market to the secondary labour market
through sub-contracting and the replacement of traditional jobs with
non-standard types of work. Fourthly, as we have shown, women are
less likely to be unionized than men though that difference is de-
creasing as men are forced into the secondary labour market.
Fudge argues that employment standards should be extended to
include job security protection and measures to make it easier for
women to balance domestic responsibilities with paid work including
family and sick leave, a reduced work week and increased vacations.
An absolute minimum should be a legislative requirement that fringe
206 Women and Work
benefits be extended to part-time workers, as required in Saskatche-
wan. However, what is most immediately required is a substantial
increase in minimum wages across the country to restore them in
both real and relative terms to what they were two decades ago.
Minimum wage rate increases have fallen well behind inflation and
behind average wage increases since the 1970s with the result that
minimum wages in real terms have fallen by around 30 per cent and
are now well below the 50 per cent of the average industrial wage
that used to prevail. The National Council of Welfare's 1990 study,
Women and Poverty Revisited, reported that average minimum
wages across all jurisdictions in Canada fell from 49 per cent of
average earnings in 1975 to 40 per cent by 1987. Some increases
have taken place since then, but not enough to restore the levels of
protection of the mid-seventies. The people most affected by this
relative decline are women, since in 1986, two-thirds of all minimum-
wage workers were women and most minimum-wage jobs were in
female employment ghettos, retail trade, accommodation and food,
and personal services, Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck, indeed,
suggest that the appropriate policy to help combat female poverty
among the working poor is to restore the minimum wage to a level
of 50 per cent of the average industrial wage and maintain it at that
level by indexation to the inflation rate. Since they made this recom-
mendation, studies of increases in the minimum wage in the United
States have shown that, not only do increases in the minimum wage
not cause unemployment — in fact they may even reduce unemploy-
ment — but that most of the increase in the minimum wage goes to
the lowest income earners, in particular women. In short, minimum
wage increases are probably a necessary, if not sufficient, require-
ment for improving the economic status of women, in particular
those women at the bottom of the secondary labour market.
Conclusion
Continued political pressure and education, improved legislation on
a variety of fronts, and union action show some potential for lessen-
ing the economic inequality experienced by women in the workforce.
The progress over the past decade, however slow and uneven, does
indicate that these kinds of activity can have some impact though,
given the depressed economic conditions, the improvement in
women's economic position seems to have been bought, at least in
part, at the expense of men's. We would be wrong, however, to
suggest that even with these means, any rapid or dramatic break-
The Future 207
through is likely to occur. The sexual division of family work, social
attitudes towards sexual inequality, and the supporting institutions
are all deeply imbedded in the social fabric. Moreover, our market
economy has become heavily dependent upon this inequality to pro-
vide the flexibility to adjust to the instabilities of the unplanned
market economy. Furthermore, the direction of economic and tech-
nological change has been to increase inequality in the labour market,
while the continuing very high unemployment of the 1980s and the
1990s mitigates against pay and employment equity initiatives de-
signed to combat this inequality. Given these factors, it is not even
clear that the gains of the last decade or two can be retained.
If, as we have argued in Chapter 4, inequality is systemic, an
intrinsic aspect of the functioning of our contemporary political
economy, change will be required in the system itself, thereby run-
ning up against the inertia of social institutions and the opposition of
all those with a vested interest in the status quo. The direction and
pace of future change is far from clear.
Notes on Sources
and Further Reading
Twenty years ago when we wrote the first edition of Women and
Work, the first wave of secondary works on women's work had only
recently become available, the result of the rise of the feminist
movement and the growing public consciousness of women's issues.
By the time of the second edition, the interest in reclaiming women's
role in history and advancing recognition of their contemporary eco-
nomic and social contribution and of their equality rights had main-
tained the flow of academic, popular and government reports and
studies. Indeed, the amount of new material made the updating and
revising of our analysis a considerably more onerous task than in-
itially envisioned. With the third edition, the pace of publication on
women has tapered off somewhat and statistical sources dedicated to
women have become fewer and farther between.
What has made the updating and revising of this edition so onerous
has been the difficulty in getting comparable data to that in previous
editions. There are two reasons for this. Due to government cutbacks,
Statistics Canada has ceased or delayed publishing some of the data
previously available or is providing it only electronically. Analysis
of unpublished data is sometimes provided in the excellent publica-
tion Perspectives on Labour and Income but there are no consistent
updating of analysis and some of the articles are by now very dated.
The electronic sources, unfortunately, are frequently not very user
friendly, particularly the main statistical source CANSIM, which is
a nightmare. On the other hand, the availability of consistent histori-
cal labour force statistics on a CD-ROM disk proved very valuable
and useful.
The second problem with the statistical data is that Statistics
Canada has made some major changes in what information it collects
and how it classifies the data. For instance, since the last edition was
published, Statistics Canada has adopted an entirely new occupa-
tional classification code making all new data non-comparable to our
previously published data. All of this made the process of researching
this edition painfully slow and frustrating and, in some cases, has
Notes on Sources 209
forced us to rely on studies, reports and statistics quoted in the
previous edition.
While progress toward equality has occurred, albeit slowly and
only partially in some areas and subject to a number of serious
reverses such as unemployment insurance changes, the convergence
of male and female labour market outcomes has largely been due to
a deterioration in male jobs and incomes rather than to any marked
improvement in women's position in the labour market. Neverthe-
less, not all is gloom and doom. Women's position in the labour
movement and participation in post-secondary education, the con-
solidation and court support of pay equity legislation, Quebec's day-
care initiative — all changes that point in a positive direction. These
changes we have tried to document and analyse in as comprehensive
a manner as we could given this volume's limits of time and space.
We have again tried to consult as much of the primary and secon-
dary material available, though we make no claim that our research
has exhausted all, or even the majority, of the works and sources on
the subject, particularly non-Canadian studies. We include here the
major works consulted, both for the first, second and now third
edition, as a guide to those who wish to pursue some of the subject
matter in greater depth, though some readers may also wish to check
through the "Notes on Sources" in the first edition for some earlier
titles that have perhaps been superseded by more recent work. The
reader should be aware, however, that many other sources informed
our research and writing, too many for all to be listed here. Refer-
ences are provided by topic rather than specifically by chapter, since
some sources, particularly statistical sources, were used throughout
the book.
Historical References
For a good detailed history of women in Canada, including women's
work, see Alison Prentice, et. al. Canadian Women: A History, 2
nd
edition (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1996).
The material on women in the fur trade comes from Marjorie
Wilkins Campbell's article, "Her Ladyship, My Squaw," published
in The Beaver, September 1954, and from Sylvia Van Kirk's article,
"The Impact of White Women on Fur Trade Society," found in The
Neglected Majority: Essays in Canadian Women's History, edited by
Susan Mann Trofimenkoff and Alison Prentice (Toronto: McClel-
land and Stewart, 1977). For a more detailed study, see Sylvia Van
Kirk's "Many Tender Ties": Women in Fur-Trade Society in West-
210 Women and Work
ern Canada, 1670-1870 (Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1980). See
also her work on women in the gold rush, "A Vital Presence: Women
in the Cariboo Gold Rush, 1862-1875," in Gillian Creese and Ve-
ronica Strong-Boag, eds, British Columbia Reconsidered: Essays on
Women, pp. 21-57 (Vancouver, Press Gang Publishers, 1992).
There were two books that were particularly valuable in the analy-
sis of the evolution of women's work in the home, the 4
th
 edition of
SJ. Wilson's Women, Families and Work (Toronto: McGraw-Hill
Ryerson, 1996), which focusses on Canada, and Glenna Matthews'
study of the evolution of women's role in the American family, Just
a Housewife (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). The ideo-
logical background to the cult of domesticity and the social reform
movement in the late nineteenth century is clearly outlined in Linda
DeRiviere's paper to the 1999 meetings of the Society for Socialist
Studies, "Canadian Women in Social Reform: The 19
th
 Century Ma-
terial Feminists Tradition."
Material on the work of pioneer women comes from Pioneer and
Gentlewomen of British America, 1713-1867, edited by Beth Light
and Alison Prentice (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1980). Com-
ments on women in the fishing and craft industries are also based
upon material found in this source, a very useful collection of docu-
ments. Additional information was taken from A Harvest Yet to
Reap: A History of Prairie Women, by Linda Rasmussen et al.
(Toronto: Women's Press, 1976). The quotation on page 11 is taken
from this source. For a detailed discussion of the work of women in
Upper Canada before confederation see Elizabeth Jane Errington's
Wives and Mothers, Schoolmistresses and Scullery Maids: Working
Women in Upper Canada, 1790-1840 (Montreal & Kingston:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995). Errington draws heavily on
journals and letters in her treatment of paid and unpaid women's
work. See also Rusty Bitterman's article "Farm Households and
Wage Labour in the Northeastern Maritimes in the Early 19
th
 Cen-
tury," in Labour and Working-Class History in Atlantic Canada: A
Reader, pp. 9-40, edited by David Frank and Gregory S. Kealey (St.
John's: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1995.) Another
interesting recent regional perspective is Mary Kinnear's A Female
Economy: Women's Work in a Prairie Province 1870-1970 (Mont-
real & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998). Kinnear
adopts Marilyn Waring's inclusive definition of "work*' to encom-
pass any activity, whether paid or not, that produces a good or
service. A particular emphasis is given to ethnicity in women's
Notes on Sources 211
experience and although her focus is Manitoba, she also extends her
discussion to similar contemporary experience across Canada and in
the United States and Great Britain.
Population figures were taken from J.S. Woodsworth's interesting
book My Neighbour: A Study of City Conditions, A Plea for Social
Change, first published by the Missionary Society of the Methodist
Church in Toronto in 1911. Figures on the number of women in
Montreal come from Suzanne Cross's "The Neglected Majority: The
Changing Role of Women in Nineteenth Century Montreal," in-
cluded in The Neglected Majority.
An indispensable source of material is a superb collection of
articles under the title of Women at Work, edited by Janice Action,
Penny Goldsmith and Bonnie Shepard (Toronto: Women's Press,
1974). Specific use was made of Genevieve Leslie's article "Domes-
tic Service in Canada, 1880-1920" in reference to Eaton's advertis-
ing practices; Elizabeth Graham's article, "Schoolmarms and Early
Teaching in Ontario," on teaching; Leo Johnson's article, "The Po-
litical Economy of Ontario Women in the Nineteenth Century," on
industrial and economic activity; and Wayne Roberts and Alice
Klein's "Besieged Innocence: The 'Problem' and Problems of Work-
ing Women — Toronto, 1896-1914." On the topic of teaching there
is also Alison Prentice's article, "The Feminization of Teaching,"
found in The Neglected Majority, and the documentary collection
edited by Alison Prentice and Susan Houston, Family School and
Society in Nineteenth Century Canada (Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1974). See also Janet Guildford's article " 'Separate Spheres':
Feminization of Public School Teaching in Nova Scotia, 1838-1880,"
in Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, eds. Separate Spheres:
Women's Worlds in the Nineteenth Century Maritimes, pp. 119-143.
(Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994).
For a discussion of overseas recruitment of domestic servants see
Marilyn Barber's article, "The Women Ontario Welcomed: Immi-
grant Domestics for Ontario Homes, 1870-1930," in The Neglected
Majority: Essays in Canadian Women's History, Vol. 2, pp. 102-121,
edited by Alison Prentice and Susan Mann Trofimenkoff (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1985). For a discussion of the issue of
'respectability' and domestic work see Magda Fahrni's article,
"'Ruffled' Mistresses and 'Discontented' Maids: Respectability and
the Case of Domestic Service, 1880-1914," (LabourlLe Travail 39,
Spring, 1997, pp. 69-97). The concern that working women were in
moral jeopardy is a common one at the turn of the century. On this
212 Women and Work
topic see Carolyn Strange's Toronto's Girl Problem: the Perils and
Pleasures of the City, 1880-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1995).
An invaluable complementary study to ours with our emphasis on
paid work is Meg Luxton's More than a Labour of Love: Three
Generations of Women's Work in the Home (Toronto: Women's
Press, 1980).
There are several studies that analyse the social and living condi-
tions of Ontario cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, including The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family
and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City by Michael Katz (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); Hogtown: Working
Class Toronto at the Turn of the Century by Gregory Kealey
(Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1974); and Michael Piva's The Con-
dition of the Working Class in Toronto: 1900-1921 (Ottawa: Univer-
sity of Ottawa Press, 1979). Wayne Roberts addresses conditions for
women in his book, Honest Womanhood: Feminism, Femininity and
Class Consciousness Among Toronto Working Women 1893-1914
(Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1976).
On Montreal there is the famous study by Herbert Brown Ames,
freqently referred to in the text, The City Below the Hill: A Socio-
logical Study of a Portion of the City of Montreal, Canada, originally
published in Montreal by Bishop Engraving and Printing in 1897 and
reprinted by the University of Toronto Press in 1972. Terry Copp has
used Ames's material plus much additional material in his book. The
Anatomy of Poverty: The Condition of the Working Class in Mont-
real, 1897-1929 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974).
The quotation of Sharon Myers on the tension between middle-
class ideals and working-class reality is taken from her article, "'Not
to Be Ranked as Women': Female Industrial Workers in Turn-of-the
-Century Halifax," in Separate Spheres: Women's Worlds in the 19
th
Century Maritimes, edited by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton,
p. 162 (Fredricton: Acadiensis Press, 1994). For an important discus-
sion of the impact of middle-class reformers on working-class
women after the First World War see Margaret Jane Hillyard Little's
book, 'No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit': The Moral Regulation
of Single Mothers in Ontario, 1920-1997 (Toronto: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1998).
There are a number of excellent articles dealing with women in
industrializing Montreal. Perhaps the most useful work is that of
Bettina Bradbury, including "The Family Economy and Work in an
Notes on Sources 213
Industrializing City, Montreal, 1871," Historical Papers (1979): 71-96;
"The Fragmented Family: Family Strategies in the Face of Death,
Illness and Poverty, Montreal, 1860-1885," in Childhood and Family
in Canadian History, pp. 109-128, edited by Joy Parr (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1982); Working Families: Age, Gender and
Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart, 1993); and "Women and Wage Labour in a Period of Tran-
sition: Montreal, 1861-1881," Histoire Social-Social History, vol-
ume 17, May 1984, which was very useful in preparing this section.
Also useful was Marta Danylewycz's paper to the Canadian Histori-
cal Association in 1980, "Through Women's Eyes: The Family in
Late Nineteenth Century Quebec." An article that looks at the textile
industry in Quebec in the slightly later period is Gail Cuthbert
Brandt's "Weaving It Together: Life Cycle and the Industrial Expe-
rience of Female Cotton Workers in Quebec, 1910-1950," published
in Labour/Le Travailleur, Spring 1981. On industrial home sewing
in Canada from the late nineteenth century to the present, see Laura
C. Johnson with Robert E. Johnson, The Seam Allowance (Toronto:
Women's Press, 1982). See also Robert McIntosh, "Sweated Labour:
Female Needleworkers in Industrializing Canada" (Labour/Le Tra-
vail 32, Fall, 1993, pp. 105-36). The material on the Ganong Broth-
ers confectionery is from a fascinating study by Margaret McCallum,
"Separate Spheres: the Organization of Work in a Confectionery
Factory: Ganong Bros., St. Stephen, New Brunswick," published in
Labour/Le Travail, 24 (Fall) 1989, though we may disagree with her
conclusion based on our different conception of the meaning of a
"reserve army" in a segmented labour market.
Of further interest are Gail Cuthbert Brandt's article, "The Trans-
formation of Women's Work in the Quebec Cotton Industry,
1920-1950," in The Character of Class Struggle: Essays in Cana-
dian Working-Class History, 1850-1985, pp. 115-137, edited by
Bryan D. Palmer (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986) and Mer-
cedes Steedman's article, "Skill and Gender in the Canadian Clothing
Industry, 1890-1940," in On the Job: Confronting the Labour Proc-
ess in Canada, pp. 152-176, edited by Craig Heron and Robert
Storey (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986).
Material on rural life can be found in John MacDougall's Rural
Life in Canada: Its Trend and Tasks, first published in 1913 and
reprinted by the University of Toronto Press in 1973. For material
on the development of the Canadian dairy industry see Marjorie
Griffin Cohen's interesting article, "The Decline of Women in Ca-
214 Women and Work
nadian Dairying" in The Neglected Majority: Essays in Canadian
Women's History, Vol. 2, pp. 61-83, edited by Alison Prentice and
Susan Mann Trofimenkoff (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1985).
The impact of the industrial and organizational revolution in Cen-
tral Canada is analysed in Gregory Kealey's 1980 study, Toronto
Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism 1867-1892 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press). A somewhat similar study of Hamilton
is Bryan Palmer's A Culture of Conflict (Montreal: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 1979). Kealey is also editor of the 1973 University
of Toronto Press reprint of the 1889 Royal Commission on the
Relations of Labour and Capital, published under the title Canada
Investigates Industrialism. This is an invaluable contemporary ac-
count of hours, working conditions and wages to which we have
made frequent reference. Other royal commission whose evidence is
important are the Royal Commission to Investigate Industrial Dis-
putes in the Cotton Factories of the Province of Quebec, 1908; and
the Royal Commission Regarding the Dispute Regarding Hours of
Employment Between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd.
and Operators at Toronto, Ontario, 1907.
For detailed studies of the impact of industrialization on women
see Joy Parr's book, The Gender of Breadwinners: Women, Men, and
Change in Two Industrial Towns: 1880-1950 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1990) and Marjorie Griffin Cohen's book,
Women's Work, Markets, and Economic Development in Nineteenth-
Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988). Spe-
cific information on the involvement of women in factories in 1871
taken from the 1871 Census can be found in Elizabeth Bloomfield
and G.T. Bloomfield, Canadian Women in Workshops, Mills and
Factories (Guelph: University of Guelph Press, 1991).
Another important source of contemporary material is Irving
Abella and David Millar's edited collection The Canadian Worker
in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1978),
which includes the "Videre" articles written in 1912 for The Toronto
Star and excerpts from the memoirs of Jean McDonald, covering
1877-1969. There is also Women of Canada: Their Life and Work,
published by the National Council of Women in Canada in 1900 and
reprinted in 1975. On women with university educations, there is
Veronica Strong-Boag's article "Canada's Women Doctors: Femi-
nism Constrained," in A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and So-
cial Reform in Canada, edited by Linda Kealey (Toronto: Women's
Notes on Sources 215
Press, 1979). See also Mary Kinnear's In Subordination: Profes-
sional Women, 1870-1970 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University
Press, 1995). Work on the organizational revolution in white-collar
work as a result of the growth of big business during this century has
been done by Graham S. Lowe. It is summed up in "The Adminis-
trative Revolution in the Canadian Office: An Overview," in Work
in the Canadian Context, edited by Katherna L.P. Lundy and Barbara
D. Warme (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981,2nd ed. 1986). See also his
discussion of this subject in "Mechanization, Feminization, and
Managerial Control in the Early Twentieth-Century Canadian Of-
fice," in On the Job: Confronting the Labour Process in Canada, pp.
177-209, edited by Craig Heron and Robert Storey (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986) and Women in the Admin-
istrative Revolution: The Feminization of Clerical Work (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1987).
For the period of the First World War, see Ceta Ramkha-
lawansingh's article "Women During the Great War," published in
Women at Work. There are also several primary sources, including
two by Marjory MacMurchy, The Woman — God Bless Her (Toronto:
S.B. Grundy, 1916), and The Canadian Girl at Work (Toronto: AT.
Wilgress, 1919). The classic in the area from which the majority of
analysis is drawn is Enid (Price) Bone's Changes in the Industrial
Occupations of Women in the Environment of Montreal During the
Period of the War, 1914-1918 (Montreal: McGill University Press,
1919).
Useful sources for the later periods include A. Oddson's report for
the Economic Survey Board in 1939, Employment of Women in
Manitoba, and the edited collection by Michiel Horn, The Dirty
Thirties: Canadians in the Great Depression (Toronto: Copp Clark,
1972). This latter is an excellent collection of material from, and
dealing with, the thirties. See also Veronica Strong-Boag's treatment
of the inter-war period, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and
Women in English Canada, 1919-1939 (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman
Ltd., 1988). The discussion of the ideological conception of the
proper role of women in the labour market demonstrated in the
debate over unemployment insurance is taken from Ruth Roach
Pierson, "Gender and the Unemployment Insurance Debates in Can-
ada, 1934-1940," LabourlLe Travail, volume 25 (Spring) 1990.
For a concise description of the movement of women into the
workforce during the Second World War, see Ruth Pierson's article
"Women's Emancipation and the Recruitment of Women into the
216 Women and Work
Canadian Labour Force in W.W.II," found in The Neglected Major-
ity. See also her works, Canadian Women and the Second World War
(Ottawa: the Canadian Historical Association, 1983) and "They're
Still Women After All": The Second World War and Canadian Wom-
anhood (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986).
For a detailed study of the development of women's work in a
southern Ontario town in the mid-twentieth-century see Joan Sang-
ster's "The Softball Solution: Women Workers and Male Managers
and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923-60," (LabourlLe
Travail 32, Fall, 1993, pp. 167-199); and Earning Respect: the Lives
of Working Women in Small-town Ontario, 1920-1960 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1995).
For statistical sources additional to those mentioned above and the
decennial Census, we have made frequent recourse to M.C. Urquhart
and K.A.H. Buckley's encyclopaedic and invaluable Historical Sta-
tistics of Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1965). We also consulted
David Millar's regrettably unpublished data on real wages in Canada
over the last century.
Although we have not looked specifically at the way in which race
shaped women's work experience, the issue of race is being exam-
ined by more scholars in recent years. See for example Suzanne
Morton's "Separate Spheres in a Separate World: African Nova
Scotian Women in Late-nineteenth Century Halifax County," in
Separate Spheres: Women's Worlds in the Nineteenth Century Mari-
times, pp. 185-210, edited by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton,
(Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press, 1994) and Tamara Adilman's
"A Preliminary Sketch of Chinese Women and Work in British
Columbia, 1850-1950," in British Columbia Reconsidered: Essays
on Women, pp. 309-339, edited by Gillian Creese and Veronica
Strong-Boag ( Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1992). Perhaps the
most interesting, indepth study of the interaction of gender, race and
unionization in an historical context is Alicja Muszynski's study of
the British Columbia fisheries, Cheap Wage Labour (Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996). This is a "must
read" for those interested in the racial and gender structuring of a
capitalist labour market.
Women's Participation and Wages
The sources used for Chapters 2 and 3 are primarily of two types,
statistical data drawn from official government sources, and secon-
dary analyses, frequently by government agencies or in the form of
Notes on Sources 217
labour economics monographs or texts, based on official statistical
sources. The primary statistical sources for labour market data are
the Census (quinquennial and decennial and, since 1991, available
electronically) and for information prior to 1990 Statistics Canada,
The Labour Force (monthly) and The Labour Force: Annual Aver-
ages. The monthly, The Labour Force, is no longer published but the
annual averages are now available in CD-ROM format under the title
Labour Force Historical Review, (SC 71F0004XCB).The latter in-
cludes all the basic data on employment and unemployment by age,
sex, occupation, industry, full- and part-time employees, personal
and family responsibilities and province. Special surveys, including
annual work patterns, absence from work, child care arrangements,
work histories and a host of other specific aspects of labour market
behaviour which used to be published in The Labour Force, are now
published in a separate quarterly publication, Perspectives on Labour
and Income. A large number of recent articles were consulted from
this source, a number of which will also be cited in the notes to other
chapters. Among them (in alphabetical order): Ernest Akyeampong,
"Work Arrangements: 1995 Overview" (Spring 1997) and "Missing
Work in 1998 — Industry Differences" (Autumn 1999); Diane
Galarneau and Jim Sturrock, "Family Income after Separation"
(Summer 1997); Diane Garlarneau, "Income after Separation —
People without Children" (Summer 1998); Lee Grenon and Barbara
Chun, "Non-Permanent Paid Work" (Autumn 1997); Marilyn Man-
ser and Garnett Picot, "Self-Employment in Canada and the United
States" (Autumn 1999); Katherine Marshall, "Dual Earners: Who's
Responsible for Housework?", "Stay-at-Home Dads" (Spring 1998)
and "Employment after Childbirth" (Autumn 1999); Dominique Pe-
russe, "Working at Home" (Summer 1998) and "Home-Based Entre-
preneurs" (Autumn 1998); and Debrah Sunter and Geoff Bowlby,
"Labour Force Participation in the 1990s" (Autumn 1998). The major
source of income data was Statistics Canada, Earnings of Men and
Women and, for pre-1990 data, the Department of Labour compen-
dium, Women in the Labour Force. Unfortunately, the latest edition
of Women in the Labour Force provides data only up to 1987 and in
some cases it is difficult to reconcile the figures in it with other
statistical sources. Other statistics on incomes came from Statistics
Canada, Income Distributions by Size in Canada, 1997 and Charac-
teristics of Dual-Earner Families in 1995. Econometric analysis of
the 1991 Census data on women's labour market activity is provided
by Morley Gunderson in his 1998 Statistics Canada monograph,
218 Women and Work
Women and the Canadian Labour Market. A comparative analysis
with the United States was provided by Ronald Bodkin in his paper,
first presented to the Canadian Economics Association meetings in
1998, "Gender Differences in the Canadian Economy, with Some
Comparisons to the United States."
Data on trends in self-employment were taken from an excellent
study by Karen Hughes, published in 1999 by Renouf Publishing of
Ottawa for the Canadian Policy Research Network, Gender and
Self-Employment in Canada: Assessing Trends and Policy Implica-
tions.
Earlier labour market statistics are taken from secondary sources
and analyses, including: Opportunity for Choice, edited by Gail C.A.
Cook for Statistics Canada in association with the CD. Howe Re-
search Institute published in 1976 (see, in particular, "Family: Func-
tions, Formation, and Fertility" by Monica Boyd, Margrit Eichler and
John R. Hofley, from which we quote, and "Work Patterns" by
Morley Gunderson from which we have taken some important data
and analysis); Labour Economics in Canada, by Sylvia Ostry and
Mahmood A. Zaidi, published in 1979; and "Labour Markets and
Sex Differences in Canadian Incomes" prepared by Monica Boyd
and Elizabeth Humphreys for the Economic Council of Canada in
1979. Some statistics for the earlier editions and included here were
taken from a statistical compendium compiled by the Manitoba De-
partment of Labour in 1981, Women in the Manitoba Labour Market.
More recent sources of statistical analysis include: Green Paper
on Pay Equity, Government of Ontario, 1985; Jac-Andre Boulet and
Laval Lavalee, The Changing Economic Status of Women, Economic
Council of Canada, 1984; Pat Connelly and Martha MacDonald,
Women and the Labour Force, Statistics Canada, 1990; John Myles,
G. Picot, and T. Wannell, Wages and Jobs in the 1980s: Changing
Youth Wages and the Declining Middle, published by Statistics Can-
ada in 1988, and a subsequent 1991 study by the same authors, Good
Jobs, Bad Jobs and the Declining Middle; the National Council of
Welfare's Women and Poverty Revisited and Pension Reform, both
published in 1990; and perhaps the most useful single source, Women
and Labour Market Poverty, by Morley Gunderson, Leon Muszyn-
ski, and Jennifer Keck, written for the Canadian Adviory Council on
the Status of Women in 1990. More recent data comes from the 1998
report of the National Council of Welfare, Poverty Profile 1996. This
contains a wealth of information, analysis and policy recommenda-
tions relevant to a number of chapters in our work. In fact, all these
Notes on Sources 219
studies are relied on for the background information underlying the
analysis and recommendations in the later chapters. The cost of
raising children was taken from the Manitoba Department of Agri-
culture's handbook, Family Resource Management Guide, 1998.
This updates the estimate in Wayne Lilley's article, "The Bottom
Line on Baby," in the Financial Post Magazine, April 1981.
Earlier specific information on education came from three Statis-
tics Canada publications, Teachers in Universities, Universities En-
rollment and Degrees, and Community Colleges and Related
Institutions: Postsecondary Enrollment and Degrees. These have
since been discontinued although most of the statistical information
is now available, in electronic form, in Statistics Canada's Education
in Canada, 1998 (81-229 XIB).
On work in the household and its relation to housework, see Karen
Duncan, "Balancing Employment and Household Work Activities:
The Role of Workplace Location," Canadian Home Economics Jour-
nal, 49:1, 1999. Data on house work and child care was taken from
Ronald Bodkin's previously cited paper, "Gender Differences in the
Canadian Economy." One of the more useful earlier studies of house
work in Canada by Susan Clark and Marylee Stephenson, "House-
work as Real Work," is included in the collection edited by Katherine
Lundy and Barbara Warme, Work in the Canadian Context (Toronto:
Butterworths, 1981). The work of Meg Luxton is also important; see,
for instance, 'Taking on the Double Day: Housewives as a Reserve
Army of Labour," Atlantis 7,1 (1981). The best and most readable
recent comprehensive survey is Few Choices: Women, Work and
Family, by Ann Duffy, Nancy Mandell and Norene Pupo, published
by Garamond in its Network Basics Series in 1989. Of course, the
classic study of the double burden of house and market work, now
out in a third edition, is Pat and Hugh Armstrong's The Double
Ghetto (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994, first published
1978).
Segmented Labour Markets
The amount of material on segmented labour markets and the appli-
cation of segmented labour market theory to the problems of women
in the labour market was already large when we wrote the first
edition of this book. In the decade since it has increased substantially
(although, strangely, it has not found its way into orthodox labour
economics texts which usually fail to deal with systemic discrimina-
tion in a realistic way). The pioneering work in segmented labour
220 Women and Work
market theory was Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis
by P.B. Doeringer and M.J. Piore (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath,
1971), which has since come out in a second edition. Piore has also
written a number of subsequent articles and books and edited several
collections on the subject, including Dualism and Discontinuity in
Industrial Societies (with Suzanne Berger, Cambridge; Cambridge
University Press, 1984) and Unemployment and Inflation (White
Plains: Sharpe, 1979). A somewhat different slant to the general
theme is given by Edna Bonacich in "The Past, Present, and Future
of Split Labor Market Theory," Research in Race and Ethnic Rela-
tions, 1979. Perhaps the best survey integrating the historical evolu-
tion of the labour process with dual labour market theory in the
American context is Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain, (New
York: Basic Books, 1979). Much more modest attempts in the Ca-
nadian context are Paul Phillips, Canadian Political Economy
(Toronto: Garamond, 1990), "Through Different Lenses: The Politi-
cal Economy of Labour" in The New Canadian Political Economy,
edited by Wallace Clement and Glen Williams (Montreal-Kingston:
McGill-Queens, 1989), and "Labour in the New Canadian Political
Economy" in Understanding Canada, edited by Wallace Clement
(Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens, 1997). The most recent work
that completely undermines the 'human capital' model of orthodox
economics and supports the segmented labour market model is D.W.
Livingstone's, The Education-Jobs Gap (Toronto: Garamond, 1999).
This is must reading for anyone who is interested in education and
training and labour market adjustment. The most ambitious applica-
tion of segmented labour market theory to historical and contempo-
rary labour markets in America is David Gordon, Richard Edwards
and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1982). Much econometric work has
been published since that gives empirical support for various aspects
of segmented labour market theory and generally fleshes out the
model. A survey of some of the recent work was prepared for us by
Linda DeRiviere, "Gender in Institutional Labour Market Analysis,"
April 1999.
There has not been a great deal of theoretical or empirical work
in the formal area of segmented labour market economics in Canada
outside of some studies for the Economic Council of Canada and
Statistics Canada, though there is a burgeoning labour process litera-
ture which also relates to labour market segmentation. Two of the
best recent collections that are well worth reading are Craig Heron
Notes on Sources 221
and Robert Storey, eds., On the Job (Montreal: McGill-Queens Uni-
versity Press, 1986) and Graham Lowe and Harvey Krahn, eds.,
Working Canadians (Toronto: Methuen, 1984). Some of the most
interesting work on women and work in the Maritimes, in particular
in relation to the fishing industry, is included in a number of articles
by Joan McFarland and by Pat Connelly and Martha MacDonald.
Two worth mentioning in particular are McFarland's "Changing
Modes of Social Control in a New Brunswick Fish Packing Town,"
Studies in Political Economy, 4 (Autumn) 1980, and Connelly and
MacDonald's "Women's Work: Domestic and Wage Labour in a
Nova Scotia Community," Studies in Political Economy 10 (Winter)
1983.
Earlier, more labour market oriented studies include: Harish Jain,
"Employment and Pay Discrimination in Canada: Theories, Evi-
dence, and Policies," in Union-Management Relations in Canada,
edited by John Anderson and Morley Gunderson (Toronto: Addison-
Wesley, 1982); Chan F. Aw, "A Dual Labour Market Analysis: A
Study of Canadian Manufacturing Industries," a discussion paper for
Labour Canada, 1980; Paul Phillips, ed., Manpower Issues in Man-
itoba, Manitoba Economic Development Advisory Board, 1975; and
Christine Rollo, "An Investigation of Variables Affecting Male/Fe-
male Wage Differentials in the Retail Food Industry in Winnipeg,"
unpublished MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1980. For an explic-
itly Marxist analysis of the female labour market in Canada see Pat
Connelly, Last Hired, First Fired (Toronto: Women's Press, 1978).
Technology, Free Trade and
Economic Restructuring
The advent of the new microelectronic and related technologies has
excited the imagination of large numbers of writers and prognosti-
cators, both those that can be labelled optimists and those that can
be considered pessimists about the impact of the new technologies
on the world of work. Perhaps the best recent comprehensive survey
is Heather Menzies' Whose Brave New World? (Toronto: Between
the Lines, 1996) which follows her Fast Forward and Out of Control
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989) which, in turn, updates and
significantly broadens the analysis of her seminal study Women and
the Chip: Case Studies of the Effects of Informatics on Employment
in Canada (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1980).
A statistical analysis is provided by Graham Lowe in his article
"Computers in the Workplace" which was published in Statistics
222 Women and Work
Canada's Perspectives in the Summer 1997 issue. A European per-
spective is provided by Juliet Webster in Shaping Women's Work:
Gender, Employment and Information Technology (London: Ad-
dison, Wesley, Longman, 1996). Earlier background information
came from "Special Report," Business Week, 3 August 1981; "At the
Centre: The Chips are Down," Canadian Dimension, December
1981; and "The New Electronic Canada" by Marc Belanger, The
Facts (CUPE) 5,7 (September) 1983.
The specific effects of microelectronic technology on retail trade
are explored in Julie White's Trouble in Store? The Impact of Micro-
electronics in the Retail Trade prepared for the Women's Bureau of
Labour Canada, 1985. A very readable and accessible Canadian
discussion of the new technology and clerical workers is contained
in Marcy Cohen and Margaret White, Taking Control of Our Future:
Clerical Workers and the New Technology (Vancouver: Women's
Skill Development Society, 1987). American sources are numerous.
Three that were consulted are: Heidi Hartman, Robert Kraut and
Louise Tilley, eds., Computer Chips and Paper Clips, vols. 1 and 2
(Washington: National Research Council-National Academy Press,
1986 and 1987), and Robert Kraut, Technology and the Transforma-
tion of White-Collar Work (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asso-
ciation, 1987). On the impact of VDT technology on women's health
see Julianne Polle, "A Multivariate Analysis of the Non-Radiation
Health Effects of Video Display Terminals," unpublished MA The-
sis, University of Manitoba, 1984. Anecdotal information on the
impact of the electronic office and privatization on female employ-
ment is related in a number of issues of the Canadian Union of Public
Employees' magazine, Organize.
The seminal work on the impact of free trade on women is the
1987 study by Marjorie Giffin Cohen, Free Trade and the Future of
Women's Work (Toronto: Garamond and the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives, Network Basics Series). More recent analysis is
found in her article "The Implications of Economic Restructuring for
Women: The Canadian Situation" in I. Bakker, ed., The Strategic
Silence, (London: and Ottawa: Zed Books and the North-South In-
stitute, 1994). Two other contributions on trade-related restructuring
are Pat Armstrong's "The Feminization of the Labour Force: Har-
monizing Down in a Global Economy" and Christina Gabriel and
Laura MacDonalds's "NAFTA and Economic Restructuring: Some
Gender and Race Implications", both of which can be found in the
Notes on Sources 223
collection edited by Isabella Bakker, Rethinking Restructuring
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
Unemployment Insurance and Labour Market
Evolution: A Women's Issue
The research for this chapter was undertaken as part of the prepara-
tion of an affidavit by Paul Phillips in support of a constitutional
challenge to the Employment Insurance (sic) Act. The complete
affidavit is entitled "In the Matter of the Employment Insurance
Act and In the Matter of a claim by Kelly Lesiuk and In the Matter
of an appeal to an Umpire by the claimant from a decision by the
Board of Referees given on November 19, 1998 at Winnipeg,
Manitoba" (Winnipeg: Public Interest Law Centre, August 29,
1999). (Noreen Pupo's affidavit in the same case, subtitled "Ca-
nadian Women and Part-Time Work: Issues of Economy, Family,
and the State with Special Consideration of the Impact of Recent
Changes to Employment Insurance" is also an excellent source.)
Linda DeRiviere was our research assistant for this project and
also author of the excellent MA thesis The Historical Gendering
of Canadian (Un)Employment Insurance: A Feminist-Institutional
Critique of the Changing Nature of Work and Family/Maternity
Policy (University of Manitoba, 1999). All three works have ex-
tensive bibliographies but a few specific sources are worth noting
here. On the historical aspects of UI and gender see Ann Porter,
"Women and Income Security in the Post-War Period: The Case
of Unemployment Insurance, 1945-1962," LabourlLe Travail, 31
Spring 1993; and her unpublished PhD thesis, Gender, Ciass and
the Welfare State: The Case of Canadian Unemployment Insur-
ance (York University, 1998); Ruth Roach Pierson, "Gender and
the Unemployment Insurance Debates in Canada, 1934-1940,"
LabourlLe Travail, 25 Spring 1990; and for the historical context,
James Struthers seminal work No Fault of Their Own: Unemploy-
ment and the Canadian Welfare State 1914-1941 (Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1983). On recent changes and their
evaluation, there are copious works, many of them published or
commissioned by HRDC itself. Worth looking at are those by, in
various combinations, Lars Osberg, Shelley Phipps and Sadettin
Erksoy. Particularly worth looking at are: Canadian Labour Con-
gress, Left out in the Cold (Ottawa: CLC, 1999); Lin Zhengxi,
"Employment Insurance in Canada: Recent Trends and Policy
Changes," Canadian Tax Journal, 26:1 April 1998; Leon Muszyn-
224 Women and Work
ski, From Unemployment Insurance to Employment Insurance
(Ottawa: Caledon Institute, 1997); and Jane Pulkingham, "Remak-
ing the Social Divisions of Welfare: Gender, 'Dependency,' and
UI Reform," Studies in Political Economy, 56 Summer 1998.
For a discussion of the development of the 'mother's allowance'
in Ontario see Margaret Jane Hillyard Little's book, 'No Car, No
Radio, No Liquor Permit': The Moral Regulation of Single Mothers
in Ontario, 1920-1997 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Women and Unions
Resource material on women and unions can be divided into three
categories: historical accounts, contemporary analyses and documen-
tary material (for example, collective agreement surveys), and statis-
tical sources. In the first edition, we relied heavily on Julie White's
Women and Unions, (Ottawa: Canadian Advisory Council on the
Status of Women, 1980) for information in all these areas. In the
second edition we have updated much of this material, which was a
not inconsequential task given the significant progress of women
within labour's agenda and organization over the last decade. Per-
haps one of the best examples of this is the study, again by Julie
White, Mail and Female: Women and the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishers, 1990). For
this edition Julie White has again come forth with a seminal study,
Sisters and Solidarity; Women and Unions in Canada (Toronto:
Thompson Educational, 1993). Statistical information has been up-
dated by two timely and comprehensive articles in Perspectives by
Ernest Akyeampong, "The Rise of Unionization Among Women"
(Winter 1998) and "Unionization — an Update" (Autumn 1999).
Also useful, particularly for its discussion of union programs for
advancing the cause of working women, was the report published by
the Canadian Labour Congress in 1997, Women's Work: A Report.
More specifically on the history of women's participation in un-
ionism, we utilized many of the same sources as were consulted in
the chapter on the history of women's work. Material on the early
unionization of women comes from Wayne Roberts's excellent book
Honest Womanhood and the article he wrote with Alice Klein, "Be-
seiged Innocence," in Women at Work. Union material is also in-
cluded in the reports of the Royal Commission on the Relations of
Labour and Capital (1889), the Commission to Investigate Whether,
and If So, to What Extent, the Sweating System is Practised in the
Various Centres of the Dominion (1896), and the 1908 Royal Com-
Notes on Sources 225
mission to Investigate Industrial Disputes in the Cotton Factories of the
Province of Quebec. For her discussion of the printers' union at the
turn of the century see, Christiana Burr's "Defending "The Art Pres-
ervation': Class and Gender Relations in the Printing Trades Unions,
1850-1914," (Labour/Le Travail 31, Spring 1993, pp. 47-73).
Sexism in the early labour movement comes up in a number of
places. For a general view of the U.S. and British experience, see the
review article by Dorothy E. Smith, "Women and Trade Unions," in
Resources for Feminist Research, July 1981. References to the atti-
tudes of men to women in Canada can be found in Roberts and in
White, who also outlines how the government consulted middle-class
women when writing up protective legislation for working-class
women. For a detailed discussion of how this worked in British
Columbia, there is Marie Campbell's informative article "Sexism in
British Columbia Trade Unions, 1900-1920," published in In Her
Own Right: Selected Essays on Women's History in B.C., edited by
Barbara Latham and Cathy Kerr (Victoria: Camosun College, 1980).
Campbell and White also discuss how unions would negotiate for
lower wages for women. Campbell includes a discussion of the role
of men in the 1906 telephone operators' strike in Vancouver. On the
history of women and the B.C. Telephone Company see Elaine
Bernard's excellent study, The Long Distance Feeling (Vancouver:
New Star, 1982). Note that her account of the 1906 strike differs
somewhat from Campbell in the matter of the support from the male
linemen. See also Bernard's account of the 1919 operators' strike in
"Last Back: Folklore and the Telephone Operators in the 1919 Van-
couver General Strike," Not Just Pin Money, edited by Barbara
Latham and Roberta Pazdro, (Victoria: Camosun College, 1984). For
a treatment of the strike of Bell Telephone operators in Toronto in
1907, see Joan Sangster's article, "The 1907 Bell Telephone Strike:
Organizing Women Workers," in Labour/Le Travailleur, volume 3,
1978. This is a useful discussion of the strike, which resulted in the
Royal Commission Regarding the Dispute Regarding Hours of Em-
ployment Between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd. and
Operators at Toronto, Ontario, 1907.
For a discussion of what effect the First World War had on un-
ionization, see White and Campbell's work already cited and Ceta
Ramkhalawansmgh's article "Women During the Great War" in
Women and Work. Other sources consulted on this period and earlier
include Shirley Tillotson, "We may all soon be 'first-class men':
Gender and skill in Canada's early twentieth century urban telegraph
226 Women and Work
industry," Labour/Le Travail, Volume 27 (Spring) 1991; Bob
Russell, "A Fair or a Minimum Wage? Women Workers, the State,
and the Origins of Wage Regulation in Western Canada," Labour/Le
Travail, volume 28 (Fall) 1991; Jacques Ferland, "In Search of the
Unbound Prometheia," LabourlLe Travail, volume 24 (Fall) 1989;
and Ruth Frager, "Sewing Solidarity: The Eaton's Strike of 1912,"
Canadian Woman Studies, Volume 7 (3). See also Ruth Frager's
article, "Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Eaton Strikes of 1912
and 1934" in Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women's History, pp.
189-228, edited by Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) for a very interesting
discussion on the interplay of ethnicity, gender and class in union
activity. These issues are examined in greater detail in her book
Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish Labour
Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1992). The issue of ethnicity and race as an important factor
in the work experience and unionization of women has been raised
by other writers as well. See for example Robert A. Ventresca's
examination of the issue of ethnicity for Italian workers in two strikes
in the auto industry in the 1960s in "'Cowering Women, Combative
Men?': Femininity, Masculinity and Ethnicity on Strike in Two
Southern Ontario Towns, 1964-1966." (LabourlLe Travail 39,
Spring, 1997, pp. 125-58).
Material on the 1924—27 movement of the Amalgamate Clothing
Workers is taken from Terry Copp, The Anatomy of Poverty. Gail
Cuthbert Brandt describes the Federation of Textile Workers in
"Weaving it Together: Life Cycle and the Industrial Experience of
Female Cotton Workers in Quebec, 1910-1950," LabourlLe Tra-
vailleur, Volume 7, 1981. A discussion of the 1931 strike of the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union is available in Cather-
ine Macleod, "Women in Production: The Toronto Dressmakers'
Strike of 1931," in Women at Work. The 1934 strike is discussed in
Evelyn Dumas' well-known article 'The Shmatta Strikes," published
in The Bitter Thirties in Quebec (Montreal: Black Rose Books,
1975). Sara Diamond's quote about women's auxiliaries is from "A
Union Man's Wife: The Ladies' Auxiliary Movement in the IWA,
The Lake Cowichan Experience," in Latham and Pazdro, eds., Not
Just Pin Money. See also Mercedes Steedman's "Communist Organ-
izing in the Needle Trades, the Dressmakers Campaign, 1928 to
1937" {LabourlLe Travail 34, Fall, 1994, pp. 37-73) and her book
Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender
Notes on Sources 227
Relation in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940 (Toronto:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
On Eaton's in the thirties there is the article "Working for Eaton's,
1934" found in Michiel Horn's collection The Dirty Thirties: Cana-
dians in the Great Depression. More recent is Eileen (Tallman)
Sufrin, The Eaton Drive (Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1982).
There are few secondary sources on the 1984-85 Eaton's strikes. The
one exception we found is Errol Black's "The Struggle Against
Eaton's Moves to Manitoba," Canadian Dimension, March 1986.
Other sources used were various issues of several daily newspapers,
Maclean's, the Ontario Federation of Labour's Ontario Labour, and
the CLC's Canadian Labour.
For information on the effect of the Second World War on the
unionization of women, see Desmond Morton and Terry Copp,
Working People: An Illustrated History of Canadian Labour
(Ottawa: Deneau and Greenberg, 1980) and other general histories
of the Canadian labour movement, in particular H.A. Logan, Trade
Unions in Canada: Their Development and Functioning (Toronto:
Macmillan, 1948), and Charles Lipton, The Trade Union Movement
of Canada, 1827-1959 (Montreal: Canadian Social Publications,
1966). These sources also deal with the postwar union developments,
including the 1946 textile workers' strike. Also to be consulted on
that strike is "Madeleine Parent: Valleyfield's Textile Workers,
1946" in Gloria Montero's We Stood Together (Toronto: James
Lorimer, 1979). Lipton also deals with the 1952 Dominion Textile
strike. The evolution of the Postal Worker's Union in its attitudes
and sensitivity to women is recounted in Julie White, Mail and
Female. A detailed discussion on the problems of organizing bank
workers in the last decade can be found in Rosemary Warskett,
"Bank Worker Unionization and the Law," Studies in Political Econ-
omy 25 (1988).
A number of important studies examining the history of women
in unions and the development of union attitudes towards women and
women's work have been published in the past ten years. Linda
Kealey, in her book Enlisting Women for the Cause: Women, Labour,
and the Left in Canada, 1890-1920 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1998) examines the complex interplay of class, gender and
ethnicity in both the union movement and left-wing political move-
ments at the turn of the century. In her interesting study of the United
Auto Workers, Labour's Dilemma: the Gender Politics of Auto
Workers in Canada, 1937-1979 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
228 Women and Work
1994) Pamela Sugiman examines how a union with a reputation for
being highly democratic nonetheless perpetuated sexual division of
labour within auto plants. For an examination of a white collar union
see Gillian Creese's Contracting Masculinity: Gender, Class and
Race in a White-Collar Union, 1944-1994 (Toronto: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999). Creese examines the history of unionization at B.C.
Hydro in this and in her article "Power and Pay: The Union and Equal
Pay at B.C. Electric/Hydro," (Labour/Le Travail 32, Fall 1993, pp.
225-45). See also her study of the history of labour demands for
equal pay and minimum wages for women in "The Politics of De-
pendence: Women, Work, and Unemployment in the Vancouver
Labour Movement before World War II," in British Columbia Re-
considered, pp. 364-390, edited by Gillian Creese and Veronica
Strong-Boag (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1992). See also
Julie Guard's "Fair Play or Fair Pay? Gender Relations, Class Con-
sciousness, and Union Solidarity in the Canadian UE," (Labour/Le
Travail 37, Spring 1997, pp. 149-79).
Contemporary data on women in unions come from the Akyeam-
pong articles cited above. Information on union wages by gender and
occupation were provided to the authors by Wayne Simpson as a
special tabulation of data from the Survey of Labour and Income
Dynamics (SLID) Previous information came from three major
sources, the first two of which are no longer published, Part 2 of
Statistics Canada's annual publication Corporations and Labour Un-
ions Returns Act (better known as CALURA), which reports on labour
union membership including male and female distribution; Statistics
Canada, Women and the Labour Market; and a series of papers
published by the Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University.
The three utilized here are Pradeep Kumar and David Cowan, Gen-
der Differences in Union Membership Status: The Role of Labour
Market Segmentation, (1989); Pradeep Kumar, Union Beliefs and
Attitudes of Canadian Workers: An Econometric Analysis, (1991);
and Pradeep Kumar and Lynn Acri, Women's Issues and Collective
Bargaining, (1991) which gives extensive data on women's issues in
collective bargaining. Labour Canada's Directory of Labour Organi-
zation has extensive union statistics and in some aspects is more
complete than CALURA. Unfortunately, however, it does not report
on the gender distribution of membership. Since 1997, some union
data is now being collected by Statistics Canada through its Labour
Force Survey and a very minimal amount of data from this source is
published along with its regular labour force publications.
Notes on Sources 229
Though a little dated now, Union Sisters: Women in the Labour
Market, edited by Linda Briskin and Lynda Yanz (Toronto,
Women's Educational Press, 1983) deals in much greater detail with
most of the issues discussed here. Fortunately, on the matter of
women in union leadership and labour's agenda, Linda Briskin has
added a more recent assessment in her article "Women, Unions and
Leadership" in Canadian Dimension, 24,1 (January-February) 1990.
On the relation between union strategy and labour and employment
standards, see Judy Fudge, "Solidarity Strategies for a Polarized
Labour Market," Canadian Dimension, 26,1 (January-February)
1992. The general discussion on the impact of unions on wages and
benefits is taken from two sources, Morley Gunderson and Craig
Riddell's Canadian textbook, Labour Market Economics 3
rd
 edition,
(Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1993); and from an American
study by Richard Freeman and James Medoff (for which there is no
comparable Canadian source), What Do Unions Do? (New York:
Basic Books, 1984). Peter Warrian's quotation regarding union rep-
resentatives is from a paper, "Patriarchy and Trade Unions," pre-
sented to the Society of Socialist Studies in Ottawa in 1982. The
neo-liberal assault on unions and collective bargaining, with the
consequent negative implications for women, is documented in Leo
Panitch and Donald Swartz, The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms:
From Consent to Coercion Revisited (Toronto: Garamond, 1988).
Proposals for Change
Our discussion of the potential policy alternatives to deal with gender
inequality in the labour market in the first edition was based on Gail
C.A. Cook and Mary Eberts, "Policies Affecting Work," in Oppor-
tunity for Choice, and the specific legislative measures listed in the
reports of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and the
Ten Years Later updated by the Advisory Council on the Status of
Women. Since then, much has happened, perhaps most importantly
the spread of pay and employment equity plans at the governmental
level. An excellent survey and analysis of the state of pay equity is
Judy Fudge and Patricia McDermott, eds., Just Wages (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1991). Particularly useful were the
editors' "Conclusion," Pat and Hugh Armstrong's "Limited Possi-
bilities and Possible Limits for Pay Equity," and Isabella Bakker's
"Pay Equity and Economic Restructuring: The Polarization of Pol-
icy?" though all of the contributions are worth reading. Data and
information on pay and employment equity for the third edition was
230 Women and Work
largely obtained from the Internet, in particular from the web sites
of the provincial and federal human rights commissions. However,
the description and history of the Quebec system was outlined in
some detail in an article by Andre Picard in The Globe and Mail, on
14 September 1999, "A Working Parent's Paradise," which is also
archived on the paper's web site. On employment equity, the Cana-
dian Human Rights Commission background paper, "The Canadian
Human Rights Commission and Employment Equity, 1987-1991"
published in January 1992, was the initial source but this has been
updated by information on the legislation and the performance of the
employment equity initiative on the Commission's web pages on the
Human Resources Development Canada web site. For an interesting
study of the factors influencing union negotiations for pay equity see
Gillian Creese's article, "Power and Pay: The Union and Equal Pay
at B.C. Electric/Hydro," Labour/Le Travail 52 (Fall 1993): 225-45.
Professor Leo-Paul Lauzon's survey of female senior executives and
directors is reported in an article by Barrie McKenna, "Women face
closed door to boardrooms" in The Globe and Mail, 30 June 1992.
The most authorative writer on women and pensions is Monica
Townson. She has written quite extensively on the subject but the
primary source we used here was her monograph Mid-Life Financial
Futures: Women's Prospects for a Secure Retirement (Ottawa: Ca-
nadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1995). We have
already referred the reader to the reports of the National Council of
Welfare and to Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck's excellent Women
and Labour Market Poverty, which come to policy conclusions that
are, for the most part, very similar to ours.
This is certainly not, in any sense, a complete bibliography. It is
meant to be a guide of the most important sources used in this current
edition and contains all those that we quote directly or indirectly. A
complete bibliography would be a book in itself. Indeed, there are
several such bibliographies that readers interested in a specific topic
might wish to explore. A few specific Canadian bibliographies in-
clude: Evelyn Bayefsky, Women and the Status of Part-time Work:
A Review and Annotated Bibliography (Toronto: Ontario Library
Review, 1977); Sara Diamond, Women's Labour History in British
Columbia: A Bibliography, 1930-1948 (Vancouver: Press Gang,
1980); Employment Equity: An Annotated Bibliography (Toronto:
Ontario Women's Directorate, 1990); John Ford and Alan Miller,
Women, Microelectronics, and Employment: A Selected Bibliog-
raphy (Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Labour Library, 1983); and
Notes on Sources 231
Carol Mazur and Sheila Pepper, Women and Canada: A Bibliog-
raphy, 1965-82 (Toronto: McMaster University Library, 1984). In
addition, useful bibliographies can be found at the end of many of
the secondary sources listed here, in particular the one included in
Gunderson, Muszynski and Keck.
Index
Acri, Lynn, 156, 173
affirmative action seats, 171-72
Air Canada, 124
Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 165
American Federation of Labor (AFL),
160
American Labor Union, 176
Ames, Herbert, 18, 23, 24
Armstrong, Pat, 125
Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, 194
automation, 110-11
Bank Workers' Organizing Committee,
177
banks, resistance to unionization,
176-77
Barber, Marilyn, 22
Bell Telephone, 21-22, 28, 162
Bennett, R.B., 130, 131
Bernard, Elaine, 159, 163
Bodkin, Ronald, 48
Boulet, Jac-Andre, 67
Boyd, Monica, 45
Bradbury, Bettina, 18, 19, 24
Briskin, Linda, 171
Burr, Christina, 157
Canada Pension Plan/Quebec Pension
Plan, 78-79, 197-98
Canada-United States Free Trade Agree-
ment, 124
Canadian Airlines, 124
Canadian Cottons, 165
Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), 98,
171, 177
Canadian Textile Council, 166
Canadian Union of Bank Employees,
177
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
(CUPW), 154-55
Canadian Union of Public Employees
(CUPE), 167-68, 171
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 140,
182,186, 190
child care. See day care
children: cheap labour, 19-20, 94; cost
of rearing, 45-46; protective legisla-
tion, 26-27; rearing, 11; and school-
ing, 32
Chretien government, 188, 200
CIBC Toronto Visa Centre, 177
clerks, clerical jobs, 26, 29, 31-32, 52;
deskilling, 96-97, 114-15, 120;
feminization, 96; incomes, 63, 64;
mechanization and, 109; microelec-
tronic technology and, 111-13,
118—23; segmented labour markets,
87
Co-operative Commonwealth Federa-
tion (CCF), 131, 167
coalitions, 187
Cohen, Majorie Griffin, 16, 119, 124,
125, 127
collective agreements, 152
collective bargaining, 167
Computer-Aided Design/Computer As-
sisted Manufacture (CAD/CAM),
117
computers, 113-14. See also microelec-
tronic technology
Confederation of National Trade Unions
(CSN), 171
Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO), 98, 164, 176
Connelly, Pat, 49
Copp, Terry, 32
corporations, and segmented labour
markets, 86-88
Council of Women, 161
Cowan, David, 151, 154, 175
credit-splitting, 198
Crompton Corset Company, 21, 157-58
day care, 27, 35, 49-50, 128, 174,
199-201
degradation of work. See deskilling
depression: early 1920s, 33; 1930s, 34,
130
deregulation, 123-24
DeRiviere, Linda, 13
deskilling, 94, 96-98, 109-10, 114-16
Diamond, Sara, 161
Disabled People for Employment Equity
Human Rights Group, 194
discrimation: job, 63-65; statistical,
71-72; stereotyping and, 66; sys-
temic, 71; wage, 59-63
domesticity, cult of, 12-14, 22, 33
domestics, domestic service, 16, 22
Index 233
Dominion Textile, 165, 166
dual labour market: behaviour of capital
intensive firms and, 86-88; labour-
intensive firms and, 87; earnings gap,
104; primary labour market, 85-86,
88-89; secondary labour market,
90-92; segmented labour markets,
85-86; sexism and racism and, 101-2
Duncan, Karen, 48
Duplessis, Maurice, 166
Dupuis Freres, 167
Eaton's, 20,34,159,164,166-67,177-79
Economic Council of Canada, 59-60,62
Eichler, Margrit, 45
Empire Cottons, 165
employment: equity, 191-194; and re-
serve army of workers, 67-68; stand-
ards, 205-6
Employment Equity Act, 192
employment insurance. See (unemploy-
ment insurance
Employment and Social Insurance Act,
131
entry-level positions, 183, 184
family allowance, abolition of, 128
Federation of Textile Workers of Can-
ada, 160
female labour market participation: late-
nineteenth century,19; First World
War, 30-33; Great Depression,
33-34; Second World War, 34-36;
post-war trends, 4, 38-41; 1990s,
184; fertility and, 50; income inde-
pendence and, 43; influx of married
women, 40-41; "opportinity cost"
and, 51; part-time work and, 53-55;
poverty and, 41-42; rising real wages
and, 43-46; social changes and, 42,
47-50; spouse's income and, 42-45;
urbanization and, 45
female occupations: First World War
and, 30; growth of, 52-53; range of,
16, 24, 29-30, 52; self-employed on
"own account," 70
feminism: and employment equity,
185-86; maternal, 12-13; rejection of
cult of domesticity, 14
feminization, 2-3
Ferland, Jacques, 158
final-offer-selection (FOS), 205
fines, 20-21
flex time, 201
Forget Commission, 139
Frager, Ruth, 157, 167
free trade, 123-125
Fudge, Judy, 189
fur trade, 15
Gabriel, Christina, 126
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 37, 86
Ganong Brothers, 20
garment and textile industries, 126, 164
General Motors Oshawa strike, 165
globalization: foreign competition and
wages, 103-5, 126, 184; impact la-
bour market, 101—2; and social pro-
grams, 126-28, 185
Guaranteed income Supplement (GIS),
196, 197, 198
Gunderson, Morley, 41, 47, 60, 63, 76,
151, 199,200,204
Harris government, 182
Hepburn, Mitch, 165
Hofley, John, 45
Hotel and Restaurant Employees' Un-
ion, 161
household work: pre-industrial period,
10-11,15-17; early industrial period,
10,11-12,17-26; age of domesticity,
10, 12-14, 26-36; contemporary pe-
riod, 10, 14-15,4749; girls and, 32;
market extension of, 20, 24, 99-100;
unpaid, 6-7, 28-29; wages for, 187,
188
Hudson's Bay Company, 15
Hughes, Karen, 70
human capital, 88
immigrants: domestic service, 22; and
job ghettos, 98
Industrial Union of Needle Trades
Workers, 164
Industrial Workers of the World, 176
industrialization: and role of women,
13-14; sexual division of labour,
93-94; social, economic, and demo-
graphic changes, 11-12, 17; urban
slums, 12-13; working conditions,
20-21, 32, 34
international Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, 159, 162
International Ladies Garment Workers
Union (ILGWU), 164, 165
job ghettos, low wage: creation and per-
sistence of, 95-101; isolation of, 121;
overcrowding hypothesis, 65; and re-
serve army of unemployed, 66-68;
statistical discrimination and, 71-72;
systemic discrimination and, 71,73—74
job ladders, 90, 98
234 Women and Work
job loss: economic consequences, 95;
free trade and, 125; globalization and,
102-3
job skills, 72
Kealey, Greg, 18
Keck, Jennifer, 41, 47, 76, 200, 204
King, Mackenzie, 130, 131, 160
Kingston Cotton Company, 20
Knights of Labor, 156-57, 176
Knights of St. Crispin, 156
Kumar, Pradeep, 151, 154, 156, 173,
175
labour militancy and radicalism: bindery
workers, 159; department store work-
ers, 166-67; garment and textile
workers, 164-66; management
strategies controlling, 98, 158; in
Quebec cotton industry, 158, 160;
telephone operators, 159-60, 161,
162, 163; women boot and shoe
workers, 162; women teachers, 159
Lauzon, Leo-Paul, 194
Lavallee, Laval, 67
Leontief, Wassily, 119
Lowe, Graham, 114, 115,121
luddism, 109
Luxton, Meg, 48
McCallum, Margaret, 20
McDermott, Patricia, 189
MacDonald, Laura, 126
MacDonald, Martha, 49
managerial occupations, 182
Manitoba Telephone System, 122
Manitoba (United) Food and Commer-
cial Workers, 178
manufacturing: impact of automation,
110-11; and union membership, 150,
174-75
married women: attitudes towards role
of, 34; and labour market participa-
tion, 42-47; and teaching, 25; time
spent on household work and child
care, 47-50; and unemployment in-
surance, 134—35
Marx, Karl, 96
maternity: benefits, 135-46; claims,
143; leave, 155
Matthews, Glenna, 13
mechanization, and production, 109-10
medicine, 64
Menzies, Heather, 2,107,110,115,119,
120, 129
microelectronic technology: destruction
of full-time work, 119; and destruc-
tion of middle income jobs, 116; em-
ployee monitoring, 121; health haz-
ards, 122-23; impact on labour
market, 116; industrial robots,
116-17; and office work, 112-16;
and women's jobs, 117-118
midwifery, 16
Millar, David, 27
Mortenson, Thomas, 82
Mulroney government, 188, 200
Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI), 124
Muszynski, Leon, 41, 47, 76, 200, 204
Myers, Sharon, 28
Myles, John, 184
National Catholic Federation of Textile
Workers, 166
National Council of Welfare, 41-42, 50,
75, 197
National Council of Women, 21, 25, 27
National Selective Service, 34-35
National Union of Provincial Govern-
ment Employees (NUPGE), 168
National War Labour Board, 165
neo-conservatism, 1
neo-liberalism, 4-5, 107
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), 124
North West Company, 15
Northern Telecom, 110, 115
nursing, 52
Office and Professional Workers, 177
Old Age Pension, 196, 197, 198
One Big Union, 176
Ontario Educational Association, 159
Ontario Federation of Labour, 171
Ontario Green Paper on Pay Equity, 59,
60,61
Ontario Shops Act, 27
Order-in-Council PC 1003, 165
Panitch, Leo, 179
parental leave, 201
part-time work, 76, 119 and employ-
ment insurance benefits, 141-43,
145-56; expansion of, 120; multiple
job holders, 145-56; and pension
credits, 77-78; postal workers and,
155; and underemployment, 54-55;
women and, 53-55; working poor
and, 76
pay equity, 127, 189-91
pensions, 77-79; reform, 196-99
Picot, G, 184
piece rates, 24, 34
Index 235
Pierson, Ruth Roach, 33, 34
Piore, Michael, 102
Piva, Michael, 18
polarization of labour market, 102-3,
183-84
Polle, Jule, 122
Porter, Ann, 135
postal workers, 154-56
poverty: female, 77-83; feminization of,
185; income-related pension plans
and, 78-78; older women and, 77,78;
sexual stereotyping and, 79-80; sin-
gle parent mothers, 41—42, 75-76;
unattached women and, 77; urban,
18-19; "war on," 84-85
pre-industrialization: family life, 10-11;
sexual division of labour, 15, 92-93
Price, Enid, 30, 31
primary labour market, 85-86, 88-89,
101
printing industry, 159
privatization, 126-28
public sector: declining employment,
153; unions, 167-69
Public Service Alliance of Canada,
(PSAC), 154, 167, 168, 171
Pulkingham, Jane, 141
Quebec Pension Plan. See Canada Pen-
sion Plan/Quebec Pension Plan
real income, 46-47
reform movement: and gender roles,
27-28; and low-wage competition,
95; middle-class, 12-13, 26-29
Registered Retirement Savings Plans
(RRSPs), 196
reserve army of workers, 66-68
restructuring, 1-2
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store
Union (RWDSU), 166, 177
Riddell, Craig, 151,199
Roberts, Wayne, 158, 159
Rowell-Sirois Commission. See Royal
Commission on Dominion-Provin-
cial Relations
Royal Bank of Canada, 32
Royal Commission: on Dominion-Pro-
vincial Relations, 131; on Price
Spreads, 34; on the Relations of La-
bour and Capital, 18, 20, 157
sales jobs: incomes, 63, 65; union ad-
vantage, 150
secondary labour market, 90-92
secretarial work, 26, 120. See also
clerks, clerical jobs
sectoral bargaining, 204
segmented labour markets. See dual la-
bour market
self-employment, 68-71; and employ-
ment insurance, 144
Service Employees International Union,
169
service jobs: free trade and job loss, 126;
incomes, 63; and segmented labour
markets, 88, 99-100, 104-5
Service, Office and Retail Workers Un-
ion of Canada, 177
sexual division of labour, 6; industrial
capitalism, 93-94; pre-industrial, 15,
92-93
sexual harassment, 174
sexual stereotyping, 187
Simpson, Wayne, 150
single parent mothers, 41-42, 75-76
social programs, cutbacks and harmoni-
zation, 126-28, 185
Spouse's Allowance, 196, 197
Starr, Michael, 135
stress-related illnesses, 121-22
strikes. See labour militancy and radical-
ism
Struthers, James, 130
suburbanization, 14
Swartz, Donald, 179
sweating system, 24, 34
takeovers, 124
Tallman, Eileen, 166
Taylor, F.W., 120
teachers, teaching profession, 25-26,
52; income, 64; pay differential,
25-26, 62; segmentation of, 97-98;
university, 79-79
telephone operators, 21-22, 64, 159-60,
161, 162, 163
Telephone Operators, Supervisors and
Monitors Association, 162
temporary workers, 115, 119
Toronto Bell Telephone Operators, 161
Townson, Monica, 197
Trades and Labour Congress (TLC), 28,
163
training: costs, 72; skills, 84-85
unemployment: female, 184-85; free
trade and, 125-26
(un)employment insurance: origins of,
130-33; 1971 amendment, 136-37;
1975 amendment, 139; 1977 amend-
ment, 139; 1990 amendment, 139;
1993-94 amendments, 139-40; 1996
amendment, 140-41; "actuarilly