I've done research on the history of feminist mobilization for the recognition of housework in Quebec. I also co-authored, with researcher Louise Toupin, a collective work on the invisible work of women today.
We've worked with activists and intellectuals from a variety of backgrounds. Each of them has made a contribution with a goal of proposing concrete courses of action. I've also delivered conferences and workshops, and participated in consultations with unions, organizations and community groups over the past few years. This has led to several conversations at the ground level.
My presentation today draws on these research experiences, which have been enriched by perspectives of other women I've met. I want to point that out.
It was probably from the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, the Bird commission, which released its report in 1970, that the Canadian government became more formally interested in women's unpaid work. It was seen as a barrier to their full integration into the labour market. Because of their household workload, there were significant inequalities between men and women in terms of pay, advancement and promotion, both in the public and private sectors. To remedy this, some of the Commission's recommendations were implemented, for example, the first maternity leave granted under unemployment insurance in 1971.
Other commission recommendations have yet to be implemented or are in the works, such as the creation of a public child care system at the federal level, the deconstruction of sexist stereotypes in education, or the granting of a personal pension to housewives under the Canada pension plan or the Quebec pension plan.
For feminist groups, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, three avenues were considered for the recognition of women's invisible work: wages for housework, socialization of services and government reforms. I can come back to each of these proposals during the question period. They are still important and can be used to understand the approaches favoured in the past.
In my research, I found that women's unpaid work has gradually been left as a political issue since the second half of the 1980s, as more and more women entered the labour market.
However, a number of problems have been left unresolved, including the impossibility of reconciling family, education and work, while women remain primarily responsible for raising and caring for children and the vulnerable people around them; the devaluation of traditionally female jobs, which are linked to the qualities generally expected of women in the private sphere; reducing the division of family tasks and responsibilities between spouses to a matter of individual arrangements—arrangements that would be determined based on individual preferences, rather than as a division based on gender, class, race and so on; and increasing inequality among women, with the growing use of migrant, immigrant and racialized workers to bridge the gap in “care”. I can come back to this concept later.
It must be said that, in crises such as the one we are currently experiencing with COVID-19, all these problems are exacerbated. Mothers telework while home-schooling their children, or racialized women find themselves on the front lines in seniors' residences and become ill due to the lack of personal protective equipment or the movement of staff between institutions, a situation that is particularly serious in Quebec.
All of this leads us to ask what changes need to be implemented so that women's invisible and unpaid work is more widely recognized. In terms of approaches to take, I would like to share with you a few points from the conclusion of our book Travail invisible.
To begin with, government, employers and even some social movements tend to view issues related to invisible work as a series of separate, detached issues, and therefore tend to consider piecemeal solutions.
However, if we are to implement concrete changes, it is imperative to understand the practice of invisible work in its entirety. This includes both labour law and labour relations, migration policies, education, family policies, funding of public services, accessibility of child care, the right to housing and government benefits, among others.
I'll give you a case in point. A young mother, at the end of her maternity leave, leaves a good unionized full-time job to go to a part-time job because she can't find a day care space. This woman also assumes responsibilities, for example, as a caregiver to her mother who is losing her independence, doesn't receive free home care services and can't afford a room in a private seniors' residence. This woman may return to work and then hire a live-in caregiver to care for her child and her mother, who may have moved in with her.
This situation is rather commonplace, but I think it shows how different forms of invisible, paid and unpaid work of women can be intertwined.
So decision-makers need to develop a vision in public policy—
