Unit 2
Gender and Work in Contemporary Canada

Over the past few decades, women's work in Canada has undergone dramatic transformations. Not only are women working in paid jobs in unprecedented numbers, but their presence in traditionally male-dominated areas such as management, law, medicine, and business has also increased significantly. Social attitudes toward working women have also shifted, and women now have better legal protection against many of the discriminatory practices they faced in the past.

Despite these gains, many Canadian women continue to experience inequalities in their paid and unpaid work. Women are still largely responsible for raising children and performing domestic work, even though their partners may provide more help than they did in the past. In the workplace, women continue to face informal barriers such as the "glass ceiling" and, for the most part, their paid work remains undervalued. While second-wave feminism and the expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s achieved great economic advances for women, some of these gains have been reversed in recent decades, as federal and provincial governments have cut support and funding to various programs and services.

Unit 2 examines these changes in detail. It focuses both on women's work in the paid labour market and in the home. As in the previous unit, you are asked to consider these changes within the broad context of the Canadian economy, to assess how women's work has contributed to the economic development of the country, and to determine how women's work has been shaped by economic, political, and social forces. While Canadian women have made considerable gains in recent decades, they continue to face ongoing challenges. As in the past, factors such as gender, age, family status, race, and class remain central in shaping women's work.

Learning Objectives

When you have completed Unit 2, you should be able to

1. describe the key changes that have occurred in Canadian women's paid and unpaid work since the 1970s.
2. describe and provide examples of how women have negotiated these changes.
3. describe and provide examples of how women's age, family status, race, and class have shaped their work.