Status of Women Committee on March 29th, 2010

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

On the question of paid and unpaid work, it's not the valuation of the unpaid work that matters. There are some ways in which that figure is used but not in the context I am talking about, that being the structural barriers to women's paid work and their involvement in non-traditional work.

The problem is that there are only 24 hours in a day. I do believe that women and many men have worked hard to overcome that very concrete chronological barrier. Certainly I have wished for a duplicate 24 hours to run alongside my initial allotment.

Time-use budgets demonstrate very clearly, however, that when it comes to the unpaid work in family or family unit that has a disabled elderly person or child or other person needing some sort of care located, that work will be assigned to women. That's where the imbalance comes in.

There are certain irreducible minimums that Canadians expect human beings to meet in their relationships with each other, and the overwhelming burden falls on women's shoulders. Women, we could say, have to duke it out with their partners to make them assume that work. It has not been working out too well lately. There are numerous studies and reports on this by Statistics Canada and others, which I can provide to the chair if needed.

As to the question of how there could be discriminatory results in terms of debt or earnings or both, I think the easiest way for you to get a good overview of that would be to take a look at Maclean's magazine of March 8, 2010, and an article by Hans Rollman, where he outlines three or four publications by Status of Women Canada, some academic journals, as well as Statistics Canada demonstrating why economic discrimination against women begins at age 16. That's clearly statistically identified.

So as young women attempt to contribute to their own education, they already must deal with having less economic power than young men. I can't say why, and maybe it's just a Queen's thing, but I have seen that young men will often get higher levels of funding from their families, and young women will feel they have to go out and borrow more and take out insane lines of credit and credit cards with really high interest rates and other things. So the effects are compounded as every year goes by, and in four or five years, it's not hard to get to that 30% gap.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Professor Lahey.

Those seven minutes are up, so we now move to Irene Mathyssen.

May I also refer to one piece of work? It's the indicators on unpaid work done by Status of Women Canada in 1997. The indicators were set as a way of measuring the minutes and hours in the day of unpaid work done by women, compared with that done by men. The set of indicators is pretty clear and won't change very much. There was a follow-up report on it in 2001.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentations. It's good to see women in non-traditional fields like economics and as an electrician. I'm delighted that you're here.

I'm going to throw out some questions. I have so many and I know I'm not going to get to all of them.

The Employment Equity Act recognizes the principle that employment equity means more than just treating people the same way. Equity means that sometimes there have to be special measures and accommodations in order to make up for the barriers. I'm just wondering what special measures are needed to encourage women to consider non-traditional jobs in the auto sector, in any sector.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

I'll just make one quick response. A very respected human rights officer in India, after holding that position for years, decided that actually the number one biggest thing that could be done in India to solve that problem, and not just in non-traditional employment but women's access to education, health care, etc., was more women's washrooms. She was perfectly serious about that.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I understand that. I worked in a factory or two myself.

There's been some discussion about the reality of pay equity or no pay equity in Canada, and the fact that we don't have a national child care program, nor an affordable housing strategy. I found it interesting that the three pillars of Status of Women Canada included economic security for women. What part do those things that are missing play in terms of economic security for women and ultimately their ability to access non-traditional jobs?

[Theresa Weymouth]

Child care is a huge barrier for women entering non-traditional occupations. If we don't change our environment for women and start introducing and allowing them the opportunities without putting up huge barriers—and it's a huge barrier when they have to chose between quality child care and a job, or multiple jobs that would pay minimum wage—then everybody loses in that situation. If we had a good child care system, a good EI system, we would be able to support people in making choices, getting quality jobs and sustaining them, and then in turn giving back to society.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Statistically it's absolutely clear. For about five years now the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, has repeatedly pointed out that Canada is the most efficient in the industrialized countries in terms of providing adequate levels of child care, and this pertains directly to a key driver of the economy as a whole. Canada is facing a demographic shortage of human workers who are trained and know how to do the work they're supposed to do. The problem is that women, who are so heavily concentrated in part-time and fragmented work, cannot literally find any more hours in the day if they still have that invisible unpaid work that they have to do, which consists of very large components of care work. A smart economic strategy would be to turn infrastructure and other emergency funding into the national creation of child care resources similar to those in Quebec, so that women can intensify their labour activity and increase productivity right here in Canada without having to put pressure on people to just give everything up and have babies.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

So that would connect with the infrastructure spending. If we had more social infrastructure, we wouldn't see this incredible imbalance.

Professor Lahey, you mentioned that women account for 69% to 70% of all part-time workers since 1976, and these are very insecure types of jobs, of course. Last week we had witnesses who suggested to the committee that this was by choice—women choose to work part-time. I'm wondering if you have a comment in that regard.

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

Certainly the concept of choice reflects an implicit assumption that other choices can be made and that the person making the choice is rational. I think it is rational to a certain extent in a country that has made it clear it has absolutely no concern for how women are going to survive. If women can't get on employment insurance, then let them go on social assistance payments and lose their life savings, lose their house, whatever. That level of disregard I think also underestimates the value of true choice. I think women's involvement in part-time work is purely adaptive, and it has been statistically demonstrated that when some of the barriers have been taken away from women, as in Quebec, they immediately move out of part-time work into more income-productive work. What's been happening is that women who work part time have been choosing to work two or more jobs to make ends meet because they just can't get the flexibility they may need in their work lives.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It's interesting that the government's recent report to the United Nations with regard to the status of women featured what was going on in Quebec very heavily, not the rest of the country but what Quebec was doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Are you finished, Irene? You have about ten seconds more, which I don't know you can do anything with.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

Professor Lahey, you said very early that the private sector is the greatest barrier to women's advancement. Could you elaborate?

[Prof. Kathleen Lahey]

That's right. The less regulation there has been, the less equality has been mandated through legislation, the more pronounced these imbalances in hiring have become. That's why since 2001-02 wage disparities in the percentages of women in various employment sectors have been deteriorating, not improving.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I want to thank Professor Lahey and Ms. Weymouth. But before we do, I think Monsieur Desnoyers wanted to request something.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Very quickly, Madam Chair. I would like all the documentation that CAW uses to make non-traditional jobs more accessible to women. That would help the committee with its work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Desnoyers.

You will send us that, Ms. Weymouth?

[Teresa Weymouth]

Sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

We also have to remind Professor Lahey to send any information she has on unpaid work. And I have asked Julie if she would send you the unpaid work indicators put out by Status of Women Canada in 1997.

The meeting is adjourned.