The Caregiver Program: How Social Relations of Childcare are Reconfigured to the Detriment of Canadian Women

Abstract

A gendered lens helps highlight the underlying asymmetrical power relations within the economy for marginalized groups. Using a feminist political economy (FPE) approach under a critical realist paradigm, it is argued that the Caregiver Program (CP) reconstructs social relations of childcare, thereby creating gender, race, and class divisions. This reconfiguration is examined in past domestic work immigration and childcare policies to demonstrate escalating neoliberal ideals. The theoretical framework provided by a feminist analysis of social reproduction helps uncover how the CP supports privatization, individualization, familialization, and commoditization. The consequences of these transformations are grave, which includes upholding the gendered division of labour, supporting the double burden for women, and intensifying inequality in Canada. Dismantling the CP in favour of a more socially-just policy would challenge these unequal responsibilities for caregiving. The proposed national childcare framework consists of increasing and redistributing existing government funding to construct state organized care based on the Quebec model. It also involves changing the existing work-related legislation to help families better balance work and family life through the implementation of an adequate structure of supporting benefits.