I can do it.
Thank you for inviting me here. I'm going to talk about women whose work is unpaid or lowly paid.
My focus is on women's unpaid and lowly paid work.
When governments survey the economic situation of women, they discover that women have less income than men through most of their adult lives and in retirement are much more likely to be in poverty than are men.
You have asked how we can assure the economic security of women, security being not just the current income level but a regular flow of money over the course of a life. The common response of economists of the past has been to help women earn more today through pay equity and affirmative action, so that they can get the jobs that have higher pay. Many of these moves have been very successful, and discrimination in hiring or promotion based on gender alone is now a contravention of human rights.
The second response has been to move women out of a mode of vulnerability, principally by getting them to not depend on some other source of income or on another earner who may be unreliable. This continues to be the argument some women's groups make today. Law professor Kathleen Lahey of Queen’s University has said, for instance, that all women, for economic security, should work outside the home. The rationale is, as above, for their own good—so they have financial independence and economic security.
Governments responded, and slowly funding for the at-home role of women was eroded, along with a concept of any family wage, with the removal of the child dependent deduction and the family allowance. Slowly incentives were put in place to reward women who did find paid work outside the home, including not only a salary of their own, but also dental and health care, pension benefits, sick leave, and holiday pay, none of which women could get on their own if they were not in paid employment. We have made great progress and are halfway there.
Pay equity is nearly achieved for many women. What we have not done is recognize the care role. Since it's not possible to be in two places at once, however well you dance backwards in high heels, women were conflicted, and it was not gender that was the reason for their dilemma; it was caregiving.
Caregiving has strong historic ties to gender. Legally we would say it's analogous to gender, since pregnancy, labour, and breastfeeding are female roles. When tax systems degrade caregiving, they are degrading women.
In early societies women tended the hearth, fed the young, made the meals, gardened, and tended the sick. Men went off to be hunter-gatherers. The two roles were mutually interdependent. Later, as money was given to some roles, what a coincidence, it was only given to the men. Even the word “work” was given only to men; it was used only to describe what men did. This shift was the first way that women's roles were degraded.
Seen in this light, the liberation of women to enter paid labour, to not depend on men, and to have financial independence is half a liberation. We must also insist that our care roles be valued.
Governments have sought advice from economists like Drs. Cleveland and Krashinsky, who argue that women are not contributing to society unless they earn money. As an activist for women's rights, I noticed the women's struggle for equality has recently taken a new direction in seeking solutions to this caregiving impasse. Those who argue for women to have tax breaks to work outside the home are doing a good thing, and they make a good case, but those who are doing the care role at home also make valid arguments. The common ground women have is the right to choose how to contribute to society, and the state's role should be to respect what we choose and to enable it.
If women get funding for care of a child independent of the presence of a male and regardless of his ability to earn income, they're no longer dependent on him to the point of vulnerability. If we really want child poverty to end, the most efficient means is to fund caregiving. Fund the child wherever the child is, unconditional of the marital status of the parent or the paid employment status of the parent. If we really want a creative 21st century solution to this caregiving impasse, we must value the care role and let funding flow to whoever is the caregiver. When women are assured this will happen, they will have economic security.
It is in how we treat single mothers that we see crystallized how government values the care role. When a woman takes care of a small child in the absence of a man or any income source, government treats this role with contempt.
That's what they think of single mothers. That is the biggest insult to caregiving.
Pension laws that promise to not count caregiving years into the formula—well, we won't count it against you then. You stayed home for a while with your kid. We won't count that against you. Those are condescending laws to women because they assume they're being generous. This is far from valuing the role for itself. Italy gives pensions for the homemaking years.
It is appropriate that pension splitting is now a reality for seniors. Their taxes will be reduced to recognize the value of the non-earner or the lower earner as part of a full partnership. We have not yet recognized the care role and the lower earner role, however, before retirement. We must.
We have created tax benefits for caregiving—as if we care about caregiving—specifically to exclude caregivers. We tie maternity benefits, parental leave, and palliative care leave to how much you earned. We value unpaid labour based on your paid labour. That's valuing you as an orange based on your qualifications as an apple. This has been a devaluing of the care role. We have let government assess our care role based on how much we earn, not providing care. We have tolerated what should not be tolerated.
Women must stand up for their equality rights, not just to enter paid work, which we all know we can do, but also to have our unpaid work valued. We can ask for national child care, but that's not going to solve this problem. That would still only value paid work. We have to value caregiving itself, whether it happens in a day care, with a nanny, at home, with dad, with mum, or with a home-based office.
Recently, the Supreme Court has recognized on divorce that the care role at home is a vital part of the economics of the household and the woman is entitled to half of the assets.
More women are creating their own businesses at home-based offices—telecommuting. This is the wave of the future. Women are not working outside the home from nine to five; they're creative. So let's notice that.
The care role of aging parents is now a dominant factor for women. Middle-aged women are caring for a lot of their parents, and they're becoming aware that this equal rights movement for women has to recognize this new care role too.
In 1995, at Beijing, Canada joined all other member UN nations to promise to value unpaid care. We didn't used to count it. We promised to count it. We are overdue to keep that promise.
Early women’s rights activists did not want women forced out of the home. The right to vote was for all women, homemakers or not. Nellie McClung defended bearing children as an important role of social benefit. The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970 said women merit financial support for their caregiving.
Feminists of the third wave have been asking for more status for the care role for many years, so here are some quick suggestions of how to do that: one, this is the revolution—redefine work—and we have to stop letting people say work only exists if you're paid money for it; two, income splitting for those who would like to admit they are sharing income and this income is spreading over several people; three, pension benefits for the caregiving years; four, maternity benefits based on maternity; five, universal benefits for care of a child, wherever that care happens, flowing with the child; six, tax breaks for those who use day care and for those who do not; and seven, continued funding of activist groups such as Status of Women and any legal rights groups that promote all of the equality rights of women.
We have to be courageous as women. I'm not a male hater, I think men are wonderful, but we have let ourselves be sucked into the male ethic of traditional economics that only paid work matters. We have to challenge that unpaid work does too.
