Status of Women Committee on March 9th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Welcome, everybody, to meeting number 19 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. Today we are continuing our study on unpaid work.

We're lucky to have with us today, from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Jacqueline Neapole, who is the executive director, and from the International Labour Organization, Laura Addati, who is a policy specialist for women's economic empowerment.

Each of our witnesses will have five minutes to make their opening remarks, and then we'll go into our round of questions, where today we are upgrading to use the 30-second warning. When people come to the end of their talking time, I will gently and kindly cut them off.

With that, we will start with Jacqueline.

You have five minutes.

[Jacqueline Neapole, Executive Director, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women]

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this committee's very important study on women's unpaid labour, on behalf of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, CRIAW-ICREF.

CRIAW-ICREF is a national not-for-profit women's organization founded in 1976. We conduct and support feminist research and analysis on women's social and economic situation in Canada, using an intersectional approach in all our work.

Obviously, the issue of women's unpaid labour is not new. Even going back 50 years to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada, this has been an ongoing issue, raised then and over many decades by feminists in Canada.

Unpaid work takes place in and out of the home and includes all the activities people do to look after each other and manage their household, such as caregiving, looking after children and other family and household members, dependent adults and seniors, and other related domestic work such as cooking, cleaning and laundry.

This unpaid labour continues also out in the community and does not just include women with children. Senior women also provide a significant amount of this unpaid labour as volunteers in their community, as well as assisting others with care, such as the unpaid care of grandchildren, their spouses, partners and friends. We often look at seniors as needing care, but senior women provide a significant amount of unpaid labour. Women by and large provide the bulk of this unpaid labour, which supports the economy and fills the necessary gaps in social services and infrastructure.

The problem is the unequal distribution, intensity, lack of recognition and lack of choice. That is what undermines the rights of women.

Pre-pandemic, in 2015, 25% of women reported caring for children as the main reason for working part time, compared to 3.3% of men. Now, a recent study, which was conducted during the pandemic, found that the average mother in Canada spent 13.5 hours per day on child care in late April and early June 2020. This also includes women who reported being employed full time. Those were the averages, and that was just the child care aspect of unpaid labour.

When you look at the case of single mothers especially during the pandemic, you are looking at 24 hours a day for weeks on end with no other options. It was a heavy load before the pandemic.

The impacts are clear. On one side, this unpaid care work is so intensive that some women remain out of the paid labour force to be at home, while others move in and out of the paid labour force to accommodate this unpaid labour. Many women take jobs that minimize conflict with unpaid responsibilities and work part time. This has long-term impacts for women throughout their lives and has a significant impact on senior women's pensions and financial security.

Women have increased their participation in the paid workforce for decades. Despite this, women continue to provide a disproportionate amount of unpaid labour. There has not been a significant redistribution of this labour.

Women also face significant health challenges related to stress and burnout. For many women, in order to participate in the paid workforce, unpaid labour is done as a second shift, or even a third shift for some women.

For some women, unpaid labour can be offset by paying others to do it, predominantly other women. Black women, immigrant women and other racialized women are overrepresented in the paid sector. They're extremely low-paid jobs and very precarious. Valuing unpaid labour requires evaluation of paid care labour. They are interconnected issues.

There are also very real financial barriers limiting the ability of women to transfer or offset their unpaid labour. It is a false choice for many women, especially women who have low income, to basically contract out this unpaid labour.

It has been well documented that the lack of social infrastructure intensifies women's unpaid labour. In the absence of publicly funded options, these are very real financial barriers for women in paying for this labour, not to mention that in cases where there is insufficient infrastructure, people's lives literally depend on unpaid labour. We see this right now. Many aspects of our social infrastructure are inadequately resourced. For example, many long-term care residents relied on family members to provide supplemental unpaid care labour.

COVID has perhaps shown more clearly how our society as a whole relies on this labour. In fact, it keeps our society afloat. However, while it may be unpaid labour, it comes at a very large cost in the lives of women.

This is not for free. The state needs to shoulder its fair share of this responsibility. This can be remedied by ensuring that there are strong universal public services and that workers, predominantly women, are well compensated.

I'll end there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you. That's very good.

Laura, we'll go to you now for five minutes.

[Laura Addati, Policy Specialist, Women’s Economic Empowerment, International Labour Organization]

I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to share with you the findings of our research on this topic.

We hope it will contribute to transformative policies in Canada, as the leading champion for gender equality at home and in foreign policy.

You have some slides that I prepared. I prepared a presentation of more than five minutes, so I will try to summarize to complement the beautiful presentation that Ms. Neapole just shared.

The report uses a comprehensive definition of care work including unpaid activities for the household and the community, and paid work that we define as care employment, which is care workers providing care work for pay or profit.

The innovation of this report is that we tried to analyze how unpaid work impacts gender equality in the labour market. Learning more about and measuring unpaid care work can tell us about the persisting and stubborn gender inequality at work and how to address it.

What's really innovative is that the concept of unpaid care work is based on a new international labour standard that typifies unpaid caregiving and domestic services for household and family members as a new form of work. This is from the ILO. Unpaid care work is work. It represents a crucial dimension in the world of work. What we measure matters. It's part of this process that we want to further recognize its value and make unpaid care work a key part of decision-making.

The ILO has made estimates of the extent of unpaid care work. It represents 16.4 billion hours, which is equivalent to two billion people working eight hours per day with no remuneration. We gave a value to this work and applied methodologies that would pay this work an hourly minimum wage. It would represent 9% of the GDP globally and 26% of the GDP in Canada, with women making up almost two-thirds of the total unpaid hours.

We find there has been some progress in men's contribution to unpaid care work. Actually, Canada is performing relatively well compared to the countries for which we have data. Men's contribution has been improving, but based on labour force survey data in 2010, there is still a 10% gender gap in unpaid care work. Effort is still needed there.

The persisting inequalities in unpaid care work have direct impacts on inequality in the labour market. We also found that unpaid care work is the main barrier to women's participation in the labour market globally.

Also, there is an employment penalty for mothers living with young children. We can look at the situation in Canada to see there is still what we call the parenthood employment gap, which is the difference between the employment-to-population ratios of mothers and fathers. This gap was still 20 percentage points in 2018. Meanwhile, the gap is only four percentage points for women and men who live without young children. As we heard already, this results in a motherhood pay penalty, which directly impacts the gender pay gap. There is also a leadership penalty, with mothers being under-represented in the number of managers and leaders. Meanwhile, we see a consistent fatherhood premium in employment, wages and leadership.

One important result of the process which, in 2019, culminated in the adoption of the ILO centenary declaration for the future of work was a call for investing in the care economy. It means putting public and private investment in transformative care policies. This pays off in terms of labour force participation, health—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you, Laura. We're at the end of your time, so we're going to go to the first round of questions.

Ms. Wong, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to both presenters.

First, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of both of your organizations nationally in Canada and internationally. I have read part of the report which the ILO produced and I was really impressed by the 500-plus pages. It provides a very good overview, evaluation and excellent recommendations. I'm glad that Laura is with us this morning.

For the other research work by Ms. Neapole, CRIAW highlights the importance of care service and recognizes the value of unpaid care work.

My question is related to productivity and is directed to both of you.

You both talk about the impact of unpaid care work in the economy and the caregiving economy. You mention the definition of care economy and care sector. Both of you have already said it very clearly.

What do you think the government should do to help these women balance their paid work and their unpaid work. Also what about their future? For example, you mentioned pensions.

[Jacqueline Neapole]

I didn't get to my clear recommendations. One very significant thing that can be done is to implement a national, universal, publicly funded child care system. That is one huge thing that can be done, and it would help women in two ways.

First, women could access child care without financial barriers, so they wouldn't have to be making a choice. It would be available. It wouldn't be a financial barrier for women to access it, regardless of their income.

Second, it would also help the women working in the child care sector to have better wages. Right now they're very precarious workers. They are underpaid. Having a national, universal, publicly funded child care system would be a big thing. Child Care Now, a Canadian organization, has a clear plan for that. It's endorsed by over a hundred, probably, women's organizations and other civil society organizations on how to do this and how to ensure that it's barrier-free.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

What about ILO? Are there any recommendations from you?

[Laura Addati]

To complement that point, the report puts a lot of emphasis on carrying out a microeconomic simulation to estimate, should countries really be serious in meeting the UN sustainable development goals in terms of health, education, gender equality and decent work, the creation of decent care jobs. What it would take to deal with all the current care deficits in terms of child care and health care? The pandemic has been such a magnifier of this care deficit, in terms of social work and long-term care.

We did this exercise and found that taking a high-road approach, so meeting care needs and creating good jobs by 2030, which is when countries have to meet the sustainable development goals, will result in the creation of millions of jobs. We estimated that 120 direct jobs and almost 150 indirect jobs would be generated by investing in education, health and social work.

We also have specific data for Canada. Should Canada take a high-road approach with the care economy, this would result in the creation of almost four million jobs in this sector. When we think about what it will take to create all of these good jobs in the care economy, we know there could be a lot of fiscal recovery from this enormous investment which is needed. That is good news. If countries are really serious in filling the care gaps for the elderly and for children, this is what it takes, doubling the investment and achieving the sustainable development goals.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

My next question is related to the multicultural mosiac of Canada. As we all know, our country has been enriched by people joining us from all over the world, as you can witness from our committee. Very strong women among us have different cultural backgrounds.

In what ways, if any—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Unfortunately, Alice, that's your time.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond Centre, BC]

Maybe you can comment on that later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thanks.

We're going now to Ms. Zahid for six minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to both witnesses for your important input on this important study that we are doing on unpaid work.

My first question is for Ms. Neapole.

Thank you for your opening remarks. Your organization has emphasized for a very long time the need to apply an intersectional lens to the challenges facing women in Canada. This is an approach that our government has also taken with the adoption of the GBA+ methodology across government.

When you apply an intersectional lens to the issues of women's unpaid work, are there relevant statistics you can share with this committee? Also, does the data lead you to recommendations for what governments can do to specifically address the challenges faced by groups such as minority women, racialized women and indigenous women?

[Jacqueline Neapole]

Thank you for that question.

I do think it's important that we look at this using an intersectional lens, because often when we're looking at women entering the paid workforce and at that aspect, we're looking at some women. Some women can afford to pay for care, but that's on the backs of other women. We see, with the intersectional data, that it is on the backs of some of the most marginalized women in Canada, the most precariously low-paid women, and often Black women, racialized women and immigrant women.

That's why I think we need to look at things holistically. We can't just look at unpaid care. We need to look at how we deal with the paid care, because shouldering that burden are some of the most marginalized women in Canada. In fact, women working in the care sector are those women who are doing the double and triple shifts. They can't afford to pay someone else to take up some of their unpaid labour. Those are the women working on the front lines, right, working as personal support workers and working as child care workers. That's why I think that if we're going to really look at unpaid care, we need to look at it holistically, using an intersectional lens, so that we really do relieve this burden for all women.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Are there any specific recommendations you would have for our government to look into?

[Jacqueline Neapole]

Yes. Another one that I would say broadly speaks to some of what Laura brought up, too, is that I really think we need to have federal funds transferred to the provinces for health in addition to child care. A publicly funded child care system would actually raise the wages of some of the most marginalized women workers in that sector. We know that a lot of them are immigrant women and racialized women.

That's one thing, but I think that holistically we need to look at the care economy and who is working in that sector, and we really need to invest in it. We can't keep having it be on the backs of these other women, who are the most marginalized women—low income—when we know how essential this work is. I think it needs to be for long-term care workers and for care for people with disabilities, for that whole sector, whether it's in the community or through different institutions.

We have to strengthen our health infrastructure and close the gaps on care, because we know, as I've said, that some of the most marginalized women workers are working in the care sector, and they cannot even afford to pay for care for their family members.

I wish I had—

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you for that. I will go to my next question.

As you would know, today our government is hosting the second day of Canada's feminist response and recovery summit, bringing together experts and community leaders with lived experience to examine how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting the lives of women in Canada. Yesterday, on International Women's Day, we also created a task force on women in the economy to advise the government on a feminist intersectional action plan that addresses issues of gender equality in the wake of this pandemic.

What would you advise them to focus on and what would be your recommendations to the government to ensure that women, including those from often marginalized groups, are not left behind by the economic recovery?

[Jacqueline Neapole]

I really think it needs to focus on the fact that these gaps existed before COVID. While COVID really exposed this in maybe more of a collective way, and there was a collective reckoning with COVID, there were already gaps, really awful gaps in a lot of women's lives before. I don't think it's simply a matter of getting back to normal, because normal wasn't working. It wasn't working for many, many women. Maybe in individual lives, in different women's lives it is, but I think we've seen from COVID that there was a huge gap before; there is a huge gap now, and we need to create something better.

I firmly believe that means investing in public services, because we know that doing that helps women. That really helps diverse women be able to live the dignified lives that we want in Canada. I think it is also part of Canada's identity that we feel that we take care of each other. We need to live up to that.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think my time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Exactly.

Ms. Larouche, you have six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd also like to thank the two very interesting witnesses who are with us this morning.

Ms. Addati and Ms. Neapole, your two organizations do essential analytical work on invisible work. This is all the more important because today is March 9, the day after International Women's Day. I think it was pointed out on that day that the pandemic has exacerbated the issue of invisible work and mental burden.

Ms. Neapole, you talked about the situation of women, particularly senior women, who do invisible work. Could you tell us why senior women are in such a precarious financial situation? You had started to talk about it. Perhaps they haven't saved enough over the course of their lives.

Could you tell us a little more about this? Of course, Ms. Addati can weigh in if she has anything to add.

[Jacqueline Neapole]

Thank you.

I think the reason this impacts senior women is that if they have been working part time or not working in the paid workforce for a lot of those years, they do not have a sufficient pension. Even CPP with all of these things like OAS and GIS is very difficult to live off of. If you've been out of the paid workforce performing unpaid care for many decades, the impacts on you as a senior woman are going to be far worse, especially if you are a single senior woman. That's one thing.

The other side of that is that we're seeing the gaps in unpaid care. A lot of women actually rely on their mothers to take care of their children because they cannot afford to pay for child care, for example. You have the financial implications for senior women of a lifetime of being underemployed or unemployed in the paid workforce, but also we're seeing more and more that a lot of working-age women rely on their mothers to provide that unpaid care.

I hope that answers your question.

[Laura Addati]

I may complement this excellent point because that really gave the diagnosis of the issue.

I would mention that there are countries that are trying to tackle this issue by, for instance, providing pension credits for years of unpaid care work, so trying to reflect that in how pensions are calculated, to recognize and take those years into account. The same is also provided to men, to recognize also the unpaid care that men provide. Grandfathers in their later years may also have those years taken into account, which promotes men's participation in unpaid care work.

Also keep in mind the importance of having those non-contributory pensions at a level that really provides dignity in old age. They are a really important way to recognize those who haven't been in the labour force and who have not been able to contribute to the social security system or have a contributory pension. Keeping in mind the importance of a decent pension system is essential.

Other countries, for instance, also shape their parental leave systems or child care benefits to recognize the contribution of grandparents. Sometimes it is also possible to transfer leave or child care benefits to grandfathers or to, effectively, carers who many be other family members. If they are the caregivers, as is the reality in many countries, their unpaid work can be recognized.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

You've made some suggestions to help senior women and improve their situation. You both talk about an adequate pension plan. Perhaps some more appropriate tax credits would recognize what they do. Ultimately, it's also a savings. You mentioned earlier what that might mean in Canada in terms of GDP. It's a matter of really including it and taking it into account. Could we recognize, in economic terms, the importance of what they do?

Finally, we need to provide more funding for our health care systems and ensure that transfers are made properly so that Quebec and the provinces, which manage their health care systems, can offer more choice to caregivers who do invisible work. We must therefore better fund our health care systems and recognize the work of female caregivers, in economic terms, in relation to GDP. Both of those initiatives would be very important.

Both witnesses can respond.