En la intersección de la crisis económica global y el Estado Anti-Feminista: Mujeres en Canadá, 2008-2009

Kathleen A Lahey

doi:10.5209/rev_infe.2011.v2.38604

Abstract

This paper traces the deterioration of gender equality in Canada as governments failed to understand how badly the 1991 recession affected women's economic status well into the mid-2000s, and then as an anti-feminist conservative government took office in 2006. The author provides examples of how anti-recession and economic recovery policies formulated by a government antagonistic to women's demands for equal treatment accelerated the economic deterioration women continued to experience between 2008 and 2012. The paper includes gender impact data on women's employment, access to unemployment benefits, participation in infrastructure stimulus programs, shares of personal income tax cuts, and the growing wage gap in Canada.

Highlights

In its call for pre-budget submissions in the summer of 2011, the Canadian Parliamentary Finance Committee declared that the true function of the federal government’s budget-making process is to enhance ‘shared prosperity’ and ‘a high standard of living for all’ while promoting job growth and business investment
Even as the highly-respected Auditor General of Canada reported that the federal government was virtually ignoring its responsibilities to carry out gender-based analysis of all laws, programs, and policies, the 2008-2009 economic crisis and recession quickly ended debate over women’s social and economic needs, and reinforced even more strongly the insistence that only business and investment policies could stave off the effects of recession
Beginning in the 1970s, increasing emphasis on equality-promoting policies had resulted in dramatic improvements in the status of women through the 1980s. These advances resulted in Canada being ranked number one in the UN gender-related development index throughout the mid- to late 1990s

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In its call for pre-budget submissions in the summer of 2011, the Canadian Parliamentary Finance Committee declared that the true function of the federal government’s budget-making process is to enhance ‘shared prosperity’ and ‘a high standard of living for all’ while promoting job growth and business investment. Even as the highly-respected Auditor General of Canada reported that the federal government was virtually ignoring its responsibilities to carry out gender-based analysis of all laws, programs, and policies, the 2008-2009 economic crisis and recession quickly ended debate over women’s social and economic needs, and reinforced even more strongly the insistence that only business and investment policies could stave off the effects of recession In such a dynamic, it became routine to imitate US media descriptions of the impact of the recession as being essentially a ‘he-cession,’ and women were depicted as being somehow immune to layoffs or lost incomes. It emphasizes that even countries like Canada, with their stellar records of gender equality initiatives in the 1980s and early 1990s, can halt women’s slow movement toward economic equality and social inclusion by abandoning basic equality measures

BEFORE THE CRISIS

Sources

DURING THE CRISIS

Source

Findings

THE FUTURE OF WOMEN’S EQUALITY IN CANADA