Driven Apart: Women’s Employment Equality and Child Care in Canadian Public Policy

From the outset of second-wave feminism in Canada, women have advanced analyses of employment inequality that embrace their labour in both the public and domestic spheres. Through campaigns, task force and direct engagement with government departments, activists have argued that only when the Canadian state takes account of their roles as care-providers can women’s full potential as worker-citizens be realized. Drawing on interviews and close analysis of primary documents, including two Royal Commissions, Timpson demonstrates how women’s calls for family-friendly employment policies have translated into inaction, inappropriate action, or insufficiently holistic action on the part of successive federal governments. Driven Apart explains why federal governments have been able to implement employment equity policies, but failed to develop a national system of child care. While she focuses on debates and policy evolution during the Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien eras, Timpson situates these developments within a broader historical context that considers the changing patterns of women’s employment since the Second World War.
Driven Apart should be of interest to those studying public policy, the sociology of gender, and Canadian politics, and should also be of use to policy-makers and government agencies.