Gendered Work: Childcare is a Women’s Issue

“Caring for children – just one of many types of crucial care – is not a marginal or women’s issue. On the contrary, it has enormous significance for poverty (men’s, women’s and children’s), gender justice, national economic development and global inequality”

Fiona Robinson

Within our society there is an unequal proportion of women working within the care sector, and immigrant women fulfilling caregiving roles through the Live in Caregiver Program (LCP). This can be attributed to patriarchal ideologies that equate caregiving as a natural responsibility that is essential to being a woman. These ideologies are rooted within the culturally dominant concept of a gender binary, that defines women in direct opposition to men due to their inherent differences that are rooted within nature. Women are commonly attributed as being motherly, docile, and caring and men are represented as tough, unemotional, strong, and providers for the family. This essentialist view contributes to the construction of a gender hierarchy based on essential characteristics that are associated with femininity and masculinity that that place men above women within our society. The idea of these inherent gendered characteristics contributes to a gendered division of labor where women are naturally suited for domestic work and results in the feminization of caregiving work.

This gendered division of labor can be viewed through a Marxist feminist analysis that divides labor into productive and reproductive work. Productive work is associated with men and includes dangerous industrial jobs that are paid and valued within the society. In contrast, reproductive work is done by women and involves domestic duties, like cleaning, and caregiving, that are often unpaid and not valued. Within this model society fails to recognize the importance of reproductive work in enabling productive work to happen, and is indicative of the devaluation and invisibility of caregiving work within our society currently.

These patriarchal ideologies have been challenged through movements like the second wave feminist movement that addressed many issues including the importance of recognizing domestic work, and the importance of a national child care program in response to a care deficit that was created when women began entering the work force. This influenced the development of a national child care program (The Foundations Program) in 2005, that was almost implemented before a shift to a conservative government. This shift in the government resulted in the end of The Foundations Program and a neoliberal shift in how childcare was viewed, making childcare an individual issue rather than a societal problem. This left the burdens of caregiving once again on women, and through the continuation of the LCP, women of colour.

Canada’s Caregiving Problem and The Live in Caregiver Program

“Caring is not something that we must will ourselves to do it is something that we always, already do.”

Fiona Robinson

Although caring for others is an essential part of the human experience, the importance of caregiving in Canada has been greatly undervalued and unacknowledged. This has manifested in a variety of inadequate solutions to Canada’s need for caregiving from the Canadian government. Some of these solutions have included, the implementation of immigration policies that bring foreign caregivers (many of whom are women) to Canada. These solutions are influenced by neoliberal ideologies that deals with care in a privatized way, often placing the responsibility of care on women who are positioned lower on the global hierarchy, as seen in the Live in Caregiver Program (LCP).

Canada’s history of attempting to fill the need of caregivers with the migration of domestic workers from abroad has been complicated and often exploitative. Many of these workers are women from poorer countries and are motivated to work as a caregiver in Canada in the hopes of providing for their families and obtaining permanent residency. However, before the Live in Caregiver Program was implemented the right to permanent residency was often unfulfilled, with limited numbers of permanent residency status approved and preferential acceptance towards European caregivers. Further, due to the devaluation of caregiving work in the society these caregivers were often considered to be unskilled, invaluable, and disposable workers leading to unfair and discriminatory treatment.

As a result of the unfair and often exploitive treatment of these workers, they began to unite and through various demonstrations, lobbying, and activism demanded a right to permanent residency and regulations to protect them from unfair treatment. This contributed to the creation of policies that granted these foreign workers the automatic right to permanent residency through the Foreign Domestics Movement in 1981, which was later revised as the Live in Caregiver Program in 1992.

The implementation of the LCP allowed participants to enter Canada as a temporary worker for up to 3 years and granted the participant the eligibility to apply for permanent residency after 24 months of caregiving work (caring for children, elderly, or disabled persons). On the surface this program appeared to be a mutually beneficial situation that would meet the needs for caregiving in Canada and provide an opportunity for individuals from poorer countries to come to Canada and obtain their permanent residency. However, the conditions of the LCP including workers having a temporary status, a live-in requirement, and an employer-specific work permit has made these workers vulnerable to unfair treatment, and exploitative work environments.