Is Leisure Working? the State and the Gendered Regulation of Working Time and Leisure in Canada, 1950- 2006
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IS LEISURE WORKING? THE STATE AND THE GENDERED REGULATION OF WORKING TIME AND LEISURE IN CANADA, 1950- 2006 SANDRA IGNAGNI A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO May 2012 © Sandra Ignagni, 2012 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1 Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92802-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-92802-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract Is Leisure Working? The State and the Gendered Regulation of Working Time and Leisure in Canada, 1950-2006 This dissertation examines the intersection of gender, employment law and public health policies through an analysis of the federal government’s efforts to regulate the work/leisure relationship. The study asks how and why, despite over 50 years of state interventions to regulate leisure and healthy lifestyle, concerns about ‘work-life balance’ have surfaced in labour policy arenas in recent years. The study builds a feminist political economy framework for understanding changes in policy developments over time. I use the concepts of social reproduction and time- and work-discipline as lenses with which to probe the relationship between the changing temporal dimensions of paid and unpaid work and efforts to manage the new realities of the labour market through the institutions of the state. The dissertation considers how the changes in the gendered organization of social reproduction, the nature and regulation of employment, and the power of organized labour to advocate on behalf of workers have influenced the types of policies used to manage the work/life interface. The empirical dimension of this study traces the emergence of a framework for regulating social reproduction through state-led management of the work/life relationship. Following the evolution of such frameworks through federal policy debates, policy papers and program materials, I trace the continuities and changes in dominant leisure discourses and policy mechanisms through four phases of federal policy development: early fitness policies (pre-1960); ParticipACTION (1960 to early 1970s); employee fitness experiments (mid-1970s to 1990); and the Work/Life Balance Strategy (1990s to mid-2000s). The central argument put forward in this dissertation is that the gender- neutral and individualized framework for regulating the healthy reproduction of workers, developed in Canadian law and policy since the 1950s, has produced highly gendered outcomes through its failure to address the changing dynamics of work and family life. By continuing to uphold the notion of a worker ‘unencumbered’ by familial and household responsibilities, ‘new’ work-life balance policies exacerbate the tensions between paid and unpaid work and contribute to the ongoing marginalization of women in the labour market. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Introduction: Excavating Policy Foundations: Understanding State Regulation of the Work/Leisure Relationship in Canada 1 Chapter One: Understanding the State’s Regulation of the Work/Leisure Relationship 49 Chapter Two: Motivating Canadians Through Lighthearted Shaming: ParticipACTION and Healthy Lifestyle Promotion, 1960-1973 85 Chapter Three: Employee Fitness Experiments and the Reproduction of “Healthier, Saner and More Productive” Canadians 132 Chapter Four: Work-Life Balance or Work-Work Conflict? State Regulation of Social Reproduction through Healthy Lifestyle 1990-2006 194 Conclusion: Challenging the State’s Gendered Regulation of Work and Leisure 244 Appendix A: Interviews 264 Bibliography 265 iii Excavating Policy Foundations: Understanding State Regulation of the Work/Leisure Relationship in Canada ‘Work-life balance’ has become an increasingly important area of Canadian labour policy in recent decades. While the broad nature of the term has allowed it to become a ‘catch-all’ phrase for a variety of issues in contemporary labour markets, work- life balance is almost always associated with two related matters: struggles over control of one’s time and the outcome of this negotiation on the health of an individual worker, and often their family and the community at large. Distilled to its most basic elements, work-life balance seems less a ‘new’ issue, but rather an extension or contemporary manifestation of a longstanding concern about the nature of ‘working’ time under capitalism.1 While many core issues involved in work/life balance debates, such as the regulation of working hours, can be traced back several decades, policymakers have recently taken notice of changing work/life boundaries and have begun the work needed to address this area of labour policy. The primary manner in which the work/life relationship has been addressed in state arenas, since the early 2000s, is through the adoption of information-based policy instruments - a practice commonly referred to as exhortation} Exhortation as a “policy technique or mechanism” involves the 1 In this study, I understand working time as including both activities performed by workers in the ‘productive’ economy as well as time spent performing the unpaid work necessary to reproduce those workers. Occasionally, throughout the study, I use “working time” as a shorthand for time spent in paid employment, but this is only done when examining the 2 Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc, “Introduction: Policy Instrument Choice and Evaluation,” Carrots, Sticks & Sermons: Policy Instruments & Their Evaluation, ed. Marie-Louise dissemination of information “to directly or indirectly affect the behaviour of those involved in the production, consumption and distribution of different kinds of goods and services in society.”3 Such strategies frequently involve encouraging individuals to “engage in fewer vices and otherwise behave responsibly.”4 This study aims to understand the roots of this principal mode of managing the work/life relationship in the contemporary period. It does so by examining the historical underpinnings of different policies regulating work and leisure, asking how and why particular gendered and classed understandings of the work/life relationship emerge in policy choices and changes in policy strategies over the latter half of the twentieth century. I trace successive attempts by federal policymakers, at times with the cooperation of provincial governments, to address the health of working Canadians through distinct national policies designed to regulate work and leisure over four overlapping periods since WWII. Specifically, the study analyses a variety of ‘fitness’ promotion activities designed to encourage healthy lifestyle at ‘leisure.’ These include: early fitness policies (pre-1960); ParticipACTION (1960 to early 1970s); employee fitness experiments (mid- 1970s to 1990); and the Work/Life Balance Strategy (1990s to mid-2000s). I consider the historical development of these policies against the backdrop of a broad range of employment statutes (both federal and provincial) aimed at shaping the temporal Bemelmans-Videc, Ray C. Rist, and Evert Vedung (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2010) 11. 3 Michael Howlett, Designing Public Policies: Principles and Instruments (London and New York: Routledge, 2011) 114. 4 Ibid. 2 character of paid work for the majority of working Canadians, as well as the emergence of publicly funded health care. By examining how a particular mix of regulatory instruments was employed in each of these four periods and at whom these policies were directed, the study aims to show how the state’s approach to managing social reproduction through working time and leisure has evolved, at times in response to changing social and economic contexts,