Gender inequality in Canada
- Canada ranked 24th overall in
gender equality - The World Economic Forum Global
Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender-
based gaps.
Gender inequality in Windsor
A 2019 Report from the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives ranking
the best and worst places to be a
woman in Canada based on the
gender gap in Canada’s 26 biggest
cities ranked Windsor 20th overall,
rendering it one of the worst places to live as a women.
Gender Inequality - definition
- Gender equality is not just about
cisgender men and women. - We also have to consider the
experiences of transgender, gender
expansive, and gender non-binary
people.
Formal equality
- Treating men and women the same to achieve the same results
- Gender blind approach
Substantive equality
- Treating men and women differently to achieve comparable results
- Gendered approach
Gender neutral lens on social welfare
Policies that (on the surface) appear gender neutral and treat men and women the same ignore the very unequal contexts of women’s lives that may disparately impact the benefits that they are able to receive from a program
ex) Canadian Pension Plan
Social Welfare Policies
- Social welfare policies generally do nothing to address the underlying gender division of labor that contributes to women’s inequality
- Social welfare policies tend to focus on “families” rather than on “women” (more on that in part b)
- However, the good of the “family” is not necessarily synonymous with the good (or equality) of the individuals
within the family (particularly women)
Social work as a gendered profession
- Women are more likely to be social
workers than men (in 2020 in the U.S.,
more than 80% of social workers were
women) - Women are also more likely to be
consumers of social services than men
-Historically, women became involved in the provision of social welfare due to their relegated gender roles in society as “nurturers”
Maternal feminism
belief that women, due to their special nurturing qualities, had an obligation to
transfer these qualities into the public sphere to help nurture others.
Feminization of poverty
In short, women are more likely to
be poor than men for a variety of
structural reasons and processes
women-paid work
- Today two-thirds of women (64.7%) work full time
- As more women moved into the paid labour market, the amount of domestic labour they continued to perform in the home did not fall (rather, they were now simply doing both).
Care work
- Care work involves activities that have a monetary value when conducted by someone outside of the home (e.g.,
paying a babysitter, a housekeeper, etc.) but is unpaid labor when done by those in the home (usually women) - Includes things like housework, cooking, caring for children; also includes things like emotional labor, the mental load, and kin work.
Gender division of the labour market
- Women remain concentrated in
positions outside of the home in the
paid labor market that mirror the tasks
that they perform in the home (child-
care, nursing assistants, teachers,
social workers, service industry, etc.) - These positions are often de-valued
and underpaid compared to the
positions that men dominate
changing families
- More children today are being raised in dual earner families with two working parents
-One third of same sex couples in
Canada are married and one in eight
same sex couples are raising children
Defining “families”
- Other definitions focus on what “the
members of the families do for each
other and the larger society” (p. 188) - Commitment to each other over time
and shared activities
It isn’t just children that need care in families but rather…
older adults and others with health challenges
The Vanier Institute: 6 concepts
- Physical maintenance and care of group members
- Addition of new members through procreation, adoption, or placement
- Socialization of children
- Social control of members
- Production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services
- Affective nurturance (i.e. love)
Models of the family
- Patriarchal model
- Individual responsibility Model
- Social Responsibility Model
people do not just need supports to help care for children but to also…
engage in a wider range of
care giving activities in the home
True or false: Despite the movement from maternity leave to “parental leave”, most parents
who take leave are still women
true
Patriarchal Model
Model of an independent family that is responsible for it’s own well-being (economic and otherwise)
ex) mom = inside jobs, dad = outside jobs
Individual Responsibility Model
Shift from gendered assumptions to gender neutrality (but still grounded in the idea that individual families should be responsible for their own well-being)
Nine out of ten ‘standard’ parental
leave beneficiaries are _______
women
Social Responsibility Model
Regards the well-being of the individual, rather than the family unit.
