Unpaid work ignored once more

Another Moral Economy Column by
Christopher Lind
12 August 2010

Meet Maureen. Maureen is a single parent of a sick child and this is how she describes her day. "I administer 10 hours of peritoneal dialysis. I prepare charts which are reviewed by doctors. I dispense medications around the clock. I change surgical dressings. I oversee daily vomiting sessions.... I order medical supplies.... I lift a 46 pound child countless times along with her wheelchair. I transport and lift 60 boxes per month of dialysis fluid. I oversee physiotherapy exercises.... I have the responsibilities of a doctor, a nurse and an orderly. All of these responsibilities are over and above the task of responsible motherhood."

I think Maureen is a hero. So are the hundreds of thousands of other parents who make responsible parenting a priority in their lives. In 1985 the Canadian Government endorsed a UN call to measure and value women’s household work. However, prior to 1996, the Canadian Census asked women like Maureen to report they had never worked in their lifetime. It was absurd but true.

The wall of indifference and incomprehension began to crack in the late 1980s when the National Farmers Union began a survey to quantify the work of farm women. Under the leadership of NFU Women’s President, Nettie Wiebe, they were able to persuade Statistics Canada to change the census. Previously, the census only allowed for one person to be listed as the farm operator and it was most often a man’s name whose was listed. After 1991 there were several slots available on the form and so women’s names could be listed as well. Like magic, the number of women farmers in the country increased dramatically.

Following the effort of the NFU, in 1991 a Saskatchewan housewife refused to fill out the compulsory long form census because it did not recognize her unpaid domestic work. Her name was Carol Lees. Canadian law says you can be arrested for refusing to fill out this census. Carol began picketing a federal government building in Saskatoon as a way of goading the government into following through on its threat.

This attracted the support of other women’s groups. Members of the National Council of Women joined her protest and the BC Voice of Women called on women to boycott the next census if questions on unpaid work were excluded. In 1993 Carol formed the Canadian Alliance of Home Managers to reduce the invisibility of unpaid work. In 1995, the Canadian Government gained great mileage at the World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, by announcing they would include a question on unpaid household labour in the 1996 census.

As a result we learned that 91% of Manitobans over the age of 15, and living in private households, contributed unpaid work each week. We also learned that the total amount of unpaid work done in Canada is equivalent to 12.8 million full-time, full-year jobs. Two thirds of these jobs would be held by women.

The Canadian Government has now decided to scrap the compulsory long form census. The head of Statistics Canada has resigned amid the furor because the government was claiming the agency supported this change when clearly it did not. Lost in the debate is the fact the Canadian Government has also scrapped the question on unpaid household labour.

Good government policy should be based on sound data. By removing this question the government is preventing all government agencies including provincial and municipal agencies and not for profit groups from having access to sound data. Is there an agenda here? Of course there is. This move rolls back advances in gender equality by almost 25 years. This is the same government that has cut funding for women’s advocacy groups.

Maureen deserves better than that.

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