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While I don’t disagree that flexible work would benefit women (and others!) in some sectors, we need to think deeper at what a gender-responsive labour strategy really looks like. (Get ready, folks. I feel another twitter thread coming on)
Flexible working arrangements are one strategy that can really make a difference for some professions and jobs - especially those that involve working in office settings. But are these approaches available to everyone at the workplace, not just professionals or white collar jobs
What about workers with administrative jobs, cleaners or other roles? Are they afforded the same flexibility and control over their working hours? Does a reduction of work time mean a loss of benefits as well? Is this only workable for the salaried vs those with hourly wages?
And if we use this as our primary strategy, are we not just entrenching stereotypical gender roles around caregiving and household responsibilities? Without corresponding improvements in public services, women will continue to subsidize our economy with their unpaid care work.
With an aging population and an austerity-driven and free-market approach to care services (which have already resulted in significant deficits in access and quality), we are careening toward a crisis when it comes to care in this country. And who is left to pick up the slack?
Well, you know who. Women pick up the slack, as we have always done. That’s the way patriarchy and capitalism work. If we are not doing it for free, those of us who do it professionally are expected to do it for low wages, poor job security and atrocious working conditions
Not only does this contribute to women’s poverty, poor mental and physical health, lifetime earnings, family stress, but it makes care workers more vulnerable to violence and harassment, at work and at home too.
And what about the workers in other sectors? Construction? manufacturing? The folks who pour your coffees and sell your clothes and pick up the garbage and fly your planes and teach your kids and all the other things that don’t happen in an office between 9 and 5?
Do they get flexible work arrangements too? What do they need to reconcile work and family responsibilities? How can we get more women into professions where they aren’t well represented - could it be that the very conditions of work are hostile to the realities of their lives?
We need a conversation about women and work that goes beyond the tired notions of needing to convince women and girls that STEM is cool, or that we just need to plug the “leaky pipeline”, or make it easier for women to work part-time so they can manage their caregiving roles
By focusing on what women need to do - just lean in, ladies! Find a mentor! - we ignore the systemic barriers that keep women out of the workforce, underemployed, or trapped in low wage and precarious work. We fail to consider who’s most disadvantaged by these systems...
Block women, women of colour, immigrant & refugee women, Indigenous women, trans women and gender diverse folk, lone mothers, survivors of violence & trauma, women with disabilities.... all the folks with multiple and intersecting identities have these impacts compounded
Let’s also consider that as the future of work changes (through climate change, automation and other factors), women will be particularly impacted. Canada hasn’t had a serious conversation about the future of work, much less one that considers the gender dimension of this issue
If we really want work to work for women, we need both governments and employers to rethink their approach and be willing to make investments. Gender equality at work means fair wages and working conditions in all job categories and classes. It means a livable wage
And it means access to benefits - leaves, health benefits and the like - regardless of whether a worker is full time or part time, hourly or salaried, permanent or temporary. Control over one’s schedule. The right to organize and bargain collectively. A safe workplace.
Governments could take a more serious look at where employment standards can help promote gender equality for all workers, and ensure that labour legislation respects, protects and promotes the right to organize and bargain.
But the one thing that governments need to do is rethink the approach to public services, and care services in particular. The care crisis is already here. Just ask any parent looking for or trying to pay for child care. Or parents of neuro-diverse kids & kids with disabilities
Or anyone with a parent or loved one in long term care. Or someone whose parent is slowly slipping into dementia or ailing health but wants to live at home.
Or the aging parent of an adult kid with developmental or physical disabilities who can’t manage their kids needs but has no access to support or respite.
No amount of workplace flexibility is going to make up for the deficits in care that exist right now, much less manage the needs we’ll be facing in the next couple of decades.
With a renewed government commitment to public care services, we could not only meet the needs of women and families and reduce and redistribute care work, but we could create good jobs. That is, if we make sure those jobs are good jobs.
If care jobs were appropriately valued and compensated, if they had good working conditions, we’d all benefit - those workers, the economy and those who want and need quality care. It’s a win/win. But we won’t get it with a magical thinking/free market approach
Crap. That was a typo. Black women.
We get there with public investment, we get there with planned systems, we get there with universality and and an approach to policy that extends beyond one election cycle. We get there with political will and leadership.
It’s unfortunate that the politics of possibility seems like such a remote and unrealistic framework in our political culture right now, where fear and division are the order of the day, where delusion and misinformation rule.
But let’s pretend for a bit that employers, governments and workers could sit together and develop a clear vision for gender equality at work. What outcomes would you like to see to make #beingawomanatwork easier? #DoneWaiting
