Cynical and Deliberate Manipulation? Child Care and the Reserve Army of Female Labour in Canada

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of Canadian child-care policy, particularly in the Ontario context. It aims to assess the adequacy of recent theories about the position of women in the capitalist workforce, most of which portray them as members of a “reserve army” of labour. Variants of this view are presented. and then tested using the state’s stance towards child care as an indicator of its intent to draw women into the labour force, or to restrict this movement, or to encourage female labour only when economic fluctuations make it functional for capital. We conclude that females have constituted a “latent" reserve army of labour, which has been steadily drawn into wage work, and which is now central to the function ing of Canadian capital ism. The installation by the stale of an appropriate child-care system to facilitate this work, however, is not inevitable.