The Construction of Women As Worker-Citizens and Mother-Citizens in Canadian Employment and Child Care Policies, 1940-1988

ABSTRACT Driven Apart: The Construction of Women as Worker-Citizens and Mother-Citizens in Canadian Employment and Child Care Policies, 1940-1988. This thesis examines how Canadian women have campaigned for federal employment equity and child care policies in order to enjoy equal employment opportunities with men. It demonstrates how women articulated these double-edged demands through the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) and the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (RCEE). It shows that while both royal commissions called on the federal government to take up women's double-edged demands, the policy response has been uneven. Federal policies to eradicate sex discrimination at work and promote employment equity have been developed. By contrast, a publicly-funded system of child care has never been included within the federal welfare state. Drawing on forty interviews and analysis of a range of primary documents the thesis argues that the federal response to women's demands was narrowed by the meta-discourse of worker-citizenship that underpinned the Canadian welfare state. This prioritised the equal, non-discriminatory treatment of worker-citizens and defined employment inequality as a problem located in the public sphere. Although the federal government promoted the equal treatment of worker-citizens once they entered the labour market, it was less willing to address the inequalities of access many women experience as a result of assuming paid employment while caring for dependent children. Federal policy responses to women's double-edged demands were driven further apart by the costs of each policy, government structures, jurisdictional tensions over child care and the pattern of women's mobilisation on employment equity and child care during the 1980s. This Canadian case study illuminates (i) current feminist debates about whether women's roles as worker-citizens and mother-citizens can be reconciled in public policy; (ii) the multi-dimensional nature of potential policy issues. It argues that royal commissions have been critical sites for women to voice concerns about the complex nature of gender inequality in employment, and challenge prevailing assumptions that the problem can be resolved through the equal treatment of men and women in the public sphere. For my parents Michael and Patricia Timpson with special love ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writing of a thesis has to be solitary. Its development and production would not have happened without support from a number of people. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the guidance I have received, not only from Ronald Manzer as supervisor, but also from the other members of my committee - David Rayside and Sylvia Bashevkin. Ron: you have been honoured with 'golden opinions from all sorts of people; but none richer than mine. You have been a source of inspiration and encouragement throughout this project. Thank you for the way you have critiased and praised my work. David: thank you in particular for helping me to order my arguments. Your critical insights have always improved the manuscript. Sylvia: thank you for sharing your broad knowledge about the dynamics of the Canadian women's movement and for keeping me constantly updated on new material. Research that depends on manuscripts cannot come about without the help of archivists and librarians. In particular I would like to thank Jim Whalen at the Public Archives of Canada, Eva Caccia at the Human Rights Library in the University of Ottawa, Ann Malgot at the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Freda Forman and Peggy Bristow in the Women's Resource Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Martha Friendly and her colleagues in the Child Care Research and Resource Unit and Bruce Pearce and Vicki Skeiton in the Newman Industrial Relations Centre Library. I would also like to acknowledge the very practical help I have had from the following people at Robarts Library: Jane Lynch, Harriet Sonne, Lari Langford, Adrienne Thierry- Broad, Elaine Genius and John Workman. The interviews I conducted for this project have been integral to my analysis. Most of the people I interviewed lead busy lives and I would like to thank them all for sparing time to share their understanding of policy developments. As a British scholar working abroad, this process was invaluable. Without it many of the nuances of interpretation would have been lost. None of this research would have been possible without the financial support of the Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship Fund, the faculty research schemes made available to foreign Canadianists through the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the British Association for Canadian Studies. My thanks to all these institutions for their generosity and to Michael Hdlyer and Vivien Hughes in the Academic Relations Unit of the Canadian High Commission in London for many years of support. In addition I would like to thank my Deans, Bob Benewick and Andrew Crozier, at the University of Sussex, for supporting the completion of this project. For helpful comments on different sections of this manuscript and conference papers written along with it, I wish to thank Maureen McNeil, Christopher Binns, Geraint Parry, Cedric May, Albert Weale, Judith Still, Stephen Clarkson, Janine Brodie, Rod Haddow, Vivien Hart, Bob Benewick, Katherine Swinton, Yvonne Fitzsimmonds, Vincent Quinn, Barbara Oram, Christine Sypnowich, Joe Fletcher, Christina Gabriel, Jane Arscott, Ged Martin, Coral Ann Howells and my former colleagues in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham. I am indebted to Lise Gotell and Tom Klassen for the time they took to read the entire manuscript and for the way they both encouraged me through the final stages of writing this thesis. Many, many people have cheered me on my way and given me practical support. In particular, I would like to thank Helen Shea and Stuart Mutch for easing my passages in and out of Toronto; Kathryn Manzer for good humoured interlocution; Hormos Khakpour, Svetka Vucina, Agnes Segert and Jean Eng for making the entrance to the Robarts' stacks so friendly; Suzanne Ellenbogen, Tim Warner and Tita Ang-Anco, Janine Brodie and Lise Gotell, Peter and Sue Russell for their generosity with Toronto accommodation; :he members of Massey College (particularly Anna Luengo, Prakash Younger and Ann Brummel) for day- to-day support when writing the manuscript; Steven Ovadya for help with 'machete style' photocopying and Jo Reyes and Julie Knight for help in sorting the output; David Silcox, Liz Driver and Nancy Raija for access to the 'David Milne Printer' that produced the final manuscript; the waitresses at Swiss Chalet on Bloor Street for feeding me chicken with routine good cheer; Shelley MacLarty for arranging the defence so efficiently and David Barker and Joey Schwartz for going under the hood of the reveal codes and sorting the debris out. Those dearest though sadly not always nearest to me have been a continuous source of support. For their love and encouragement I wish to thank my parents Patricia and Michael Timpson, my sisters Rosie Timpson and Valerie Riziotis and my partner, Ian Read (who always got me, my bicycle and all manner of research material to the plane on time). In addition I have been sustained on each side of the Atlantic by the close friendship, in Canada, of Lise Gotell, Barbara Oram, Robert Snell, Helen Shea, Janine Brodie, Suzanne Ellenbogen, Christine Sypnowich, John Donner, Nada Conic and Lois Pineau and, in England, of Vincent Quinn, Mary St. Aubyn, Maureen McNeil, Rosemary Chapman, Liz Robinson, Julian Cooper, Judith Still, Judith Jesch, Catherine Reynolds, David Butlin, Diana Coole, Mike Pushkin and my godparents, Desmond and Barbara Vowles. My final thanks go first, to the Hart House pool for being there 'blue and cool as redemption' and, second, to Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Their writing made it possible for me to imagine I was in Canada when my own employment - and my own citizenship - kept me away. CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi List of Tables viii List of Abbreviations ix 1. The Double-Edged Nature of Employment Inequality for Women 1 Empirical and conceptual questions 2. Gender Citizenship and Employment Opportunity in the Wartime 39 and Welfare States 1940-1966 3. The Royal Commission on the Status of Women 76 The institutionalisation of women's demands for eaual emulovment. opportunities and child care. 4. The Federal Policy Response to the Royal Commission on the 124 Status of Women The development of equal employment opportunity, training, anti-discrimination and child care policies in the 1970s. 5. Reactivating and Redefining the Issues in the Early 1980s The recoenition of svstemic discrimination and the birth of a L8 national child care movement. 6. The Royal Commission on Equality in Employment The re-institutionalisation of women's demands for equal employment opportunities and child care. 7. The Conservative Government's Response to Issues of 252 Employment Equity and Child Care Bill C- 62 and the introduction of the 1986 Employment Equity Act The National Strategy on Child Care, Bill C-144 and the failure of the 1988 Child Care Act 8. Conclusions and Directions for Future Research 309 APPENDICES Appendix A: Content analysis of Index of Briefs submitted to the Royal Commission on the Stahs of Women Appendix B: References to Employment Opportunity and Child

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