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 forces, 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. Using interviews and primary documents that include two Royal Commissions, Annis May Timpson demonstrates how women’s calls for family-friendly employment policies have met with inaction or inappropriate action on the part of successive federal governments. Driven Apart explains why the federal governments have been able to implement employment equaty policies, but failed to develop a national system of child care.