Ontario works and single mothers: Redefining "deservedness and the social contract"

Journal of Canadian Studies, Summer 1999 by Melodie Mayson

Since the 1970s women have been struggling to insert themselves into a labour market characterized by sustained and systemic high rates of unemployment. They are confronted with a sizeable pool of "surplus labour," which creates an intensification of job competition and a downward pressure on employment standards and wages. Women who succeed in finding paid employment face important barriers in earning sufficient income to escape poverty. While some women in the professional fields have seen their incomes rise, most women have lost ground in the labour market in recent years. Wage parity with men continues to elude women, and those age 40 to 54 for example (women who often have older children and fewer family responsibilities) are still three times more likely than men of the same age to hold low-paying jobs. While younger women are more likely to achieve wage parity with men, this is not attributable to wage gains for women, but rather is due to an erosion of men's earnings. The average annual earnings of the majority of women and men age 18 to 24 years, for example, were less than $24,000 in 1994 (Scott & Lochhead 1997: 2).

Women seeking paid employment are also competing for a decreasing number of "good" jobs characterized by better wages and employment stability. In the last decade, government layoffs, corporate downsizing and relocations have meant that the traditional "good" blue collar jobs in manufacturing, along with numerous white-collar middle management and public sector positions, have been subject to globalization or elimination. Strategies of relocating to enhance profits and to elude government regulation have resulted in many corporations transferring head offices and entire sectors of production to new countries. At the same time, governments bent on eliminating deficits have eradicated numerous jobs in the public sector. The new job opportunities appearing are in small-scale private enterprises with employment that is characterized by low pay, minimal benefits, and which is rarely unionized (Fudge 1996: 61). Increasingly women in Canada have responded to their limited opportunities in the labour market by resorting to parttime work. As of 1990, 71 per cent of all part-time workers were women; by 1992, 24 per cent of employed Canadian women held part-time jobs and only 31 per cent of these women preferred part-time to full-time employment (Armstrong 1996: 33). Between 1990 and 1992, women lost 125,000 full-time jobs but gained 69,000 parttime ones (1996: 32).

Given these barriers to equitable involvement in labour force participation for women, including a 16.8 per cent rate of unemployment for lone-parents across Canada as of 1991 (Statistics Canada 1992: 22), the opportunities for most single mothers to overcome poverty through paid employment are limited. In 1990, for example, while nearly 75 per cent of female lone-parent families had some earnings from employment, 52 per cent of those families still had incomes below Statistic Canada's Low Income Cut-off line (Statistics Canada 1992: 37).