Driven apart: women's employment equality and child care in Canadian public policy

Abstract

Annis May TimpsonVancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001; 318 pp.Reviewed by Lois HarderDepartment of Political ScienceUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, AlbertaAnnis May Timpson's examination of employment equity and childcare policies in Canada came across my desk at an opportune moment. Canadians are reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, assessing the degree to which our lives have changed as a result of the Charter and the degree to which its protections have contributed to those changes. The peculiarity of Canada's approach to rights figures prominently in the first half of Driven Apart and provides a useful reminder of just how recently women's equality rights have appeared on the political agenda, how thin those rights are and how fragile is the guarantee that protects those rights in an era of reduced social spending. Timpson's analysis amply demonstrates that substantive equality measures, such as employment equity and child care, have long been objects of contestation, despite their central place in the realization of women's equality.The timeliness of Timpson's analysis is also associated with the attention that has recently been paid in the popular news media (Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, People) to the postponement of child-bearing by career-minded women. These stories have been grounded in a recently published treatise by the American feminist Anne Hewlett, that purports to expose the degree of ignorance among educated, middle-class women of child-bearing age regarding their fertility, seeking to set the record straight and encouraging them to make decisions concerning the timing of children and their career aspirations. The focus of this media attention has been on the inevitable disappointment that awaits child-desiring, ambitious women. However, much of the reaction has come in the form of observations concerning the lack of support from the state and from employers for women to manage an appropriate balance between work and family. Again, Timpson's book offers the promise of a useful analysis with which to confront the subterranean anxiety that coexists with this backlash-laden treatment of the consequences of a world in which equality for women has meant behaving like white, middle-class men.In addition to the timeliness of Timpson's book, its strengths lie in the usefulness of individual chapters for students and educators of Canadian social policy and feminist organizing. The book is organized chronologically and its chapters cover the terms of the various Canadian governments that have presided since the late 1960s through to the Chretien government's second term. She provides an excellent synopsis of the intersection of childcare and employment measures for women as they were articulated by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1967) and the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (1983). …