Friday, December 14, 2007
Policies Responsive to Differing Work Patterns Better Utilize Women's Labour Potential
Current labour market policies don't recognize women as a significant labour market force with specific patterns. A study released by the government of Canada in 2005 analyzes how Canadian fiscal policy reinforces the many social, economic and legal barriers women face when they try to gain equal access to full-time work with equal pay, and examines structural proposals that would remove or reduce these barriers to women's labour force participation. From the study:
“Five basic structural features of the tax and social assistance system are examined for their tendency to place pressure on women to “choose” unpaid or poorly paid irregular work to optimize the well-being of their families. These include provisions that treat the adult couple as the basic unit of fiscal policy, like the dependent spouse credit, joint income limits on the child tax benefit, and the Goods and Services Tax credit. They also include the tax exemption of unpaid work, the lack of adequate child care resources and the non-deductibility of the many costs that make women's paid work often less profitable than unpaid work, the steep clawback rates in social assistance programs and the relatively high rates of income taxes imposed on the lowest incomes.”
A recent study released from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that, again due to specific labour patterns, most women are getting shut out of Employment Insurance (EI) coverage in Canada. Exclusion from EI also means exclusion from most of the training programs and supports offered through EI funding (Read ACTEW’s blog entry on this research). While individual training programs and supports run by agencies recognize women-specific labour patterns, needs and opportunities, provincial and federal labour market development policy has so far not systemically implemented strategies that would fully maximize women’s participation in the labour force. In fact, data collection segregated by gender is patchy at best, so provinces are hard-pressed to fully understand the ways in which half the labour force is being utilized and where improvements can be made.
Only one province in Canada has made significant progress in understanding and supporting women’s unique contexts to more fully participate in the workforce: Quebec. Quebec has introduced legislation that extends maternity and parental leave to self-employed workers—significantly affecting women who are outpacing men three-fold in becoming entrepreneurs. Quebec is also the only province to implement universal accessible child care, which the Quebec government identifies as a key reason that women’s participation rates have increased dramatically in the last ten years (read Le bulletin du Cetech released by the government of Quebec in Winter 2007).
“Five basic structural features of the tax and social assistance system are examined for their tendency to place pressure on women to “choose” unpaid or poorly paid irregular work to optimize the well-being of their families. These include provisions that treat the adult couple as the basic unit of fiscal policy, like the dependent spouse credit, joint income limits on the child tax benefit, and the Goods and Services Tax credit. They also include the tax exemption of unpaid work, the lack of adequate child care resources and the non-deductibility of the many costs that make women's paid work often less profitable than unpaid work, the steep clawback rates in social assistance programs and the relatively high rates of income taxes imposed on the lowest incomes.”
A recent study released from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) finds that, again due to specific labour patterns, most women are getting shut out of Employment Insurance (EI) coverage in Canada. Exclusion from EI also means exclusion from most of the training programs and supports offered through EI funding (Read ACTEW’s blog entry on this research). While individual training programs and supports run by agencies recognize women-specific labour patterns, needs and opportunities, provincial and federal labour market development policy has so far not systemically implemented strategies that would fully maximize women’s participation in the labour force. In fact, data collection segregated by gender is patchy at best, so provinces are hard-pressed to fully understand the ways in which half the labour force is being utilized and where improvements can be made.
Only one province in Canada has made significant progress in understanding and supporting women’s unique contexts to more fully participate in the workforce: Quebec. Quebec has introduced legislation that extends maternity and parental leave to self-employed workers—significantly affecting women who are outpacing men three-fold in becoming entrepreneurs. Quebec is also the only province to implement universal accessible child care, which the Quebec government identifies as a key reason that women’s participation rates have increased dramatically in the last ten years (read Le bulletin du Cetech released by the government of Quebec in Winter 2007).
Labels: Issues_and_Trends, LMDA, Resources_and_Research
