Self-employed workers are an area of very great need, and in a way their needs—and particularly women who are self-employed, because they will earn less than self-employed men—particularly need consideration, because when they're unemployed or on maternity leave they have to replace themselves, where the entire business disappears and has to go into some form of liquidation.
People who are of retirement age are in a policy trap that has been constructed over the last several years. It works like this. If an older person is in a position to retire, the current economic situation is such that their financial adviser—their union or whatever—will recommend they see if they can keep working for another two, three, four years, to increase their contribution base so they will have a little bit higher income, as every pension fund goes through an asset valuation and commitment restructuring process.
This is all well and good for male workers who historically and statistically have higher incomes in the first place, but women who are in that situation are caught, because if they were to retire, they could instantly turn their spouses' income into a much larger income through the tax benefits of retirement income splitting, which at moderate- to high-income levels will give thousands of dollars of tax benefits to people in that situation.
So there are sort of second-level forces that are actually going to push certain women out the door. They won't get employment insurance and will become a tax shelter for their spouse.