Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Jane Pulkingham, eds. Public Policy for Women: The State, Income Security and Labour Market Issues.
Prentice, Susan
Marjorie Griffin Cohen and Jane Pulkingham, eds. Public Policy for
Women: The State, Income Security and Labour Market Issues (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press 2009)
THIS SPLENDID collection grows out of a Community-University
Research Alliances (CURA) project on economic security which brought
academics and activists together to consider the complex intersections
of gender, public policy, and the labour market. The heart of the book
is its focus on the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring of
both state institutions and political discourse, on the one hand, and
the gender social order in Canada, on the other. The collection is
especially attentive to the dynamic relationship between policy and
social movement action.
Sixteen chapters move seamlessly between explanatory critique and
proposals for alternative progressive remedies. The collection is
organized in three parts--on restructuring public policy in the Canadian
state, on reimagining income security for the most vulnerable, and the
largest section, on rethinking labour market and employment support
policy. Across all three sections, contributors are highly sensitive to
questions of citizenship and social reproduction, long overdue in most
public policy work on income security and labour markets. Many
contributors address care work, in both the formal and informal market,
as well as in the private sphere. All chapters work from the notion of
substantive equality, recognizing systemic discrimination and
intersectional analysis, although gender is the foregrounded concern of
the book as a whole.
Academic contributors span political science, social work, and
sociology (including three of the rare female social science Canada
Research Chairs), alongside eminent popular sector activists, graduate
students, and independent scholars. Because the book has roots in a
multi-year network, the chapters display a strong thematic integration
across a mixture of disciplines and approaches.
Public Policy for Women problematizes both the enabling as well as
the controlling nature of the Canadian welfare state and its provincial
variants. It begins with critique of BC neo-liberalism under Gordon
Campbell and extends its reach across Canada, including a strong
representation of Quebec. The anthology opens with a carefully
contextualized critical Canadian history. The editors offer the wry
definition of public policy as "whatever governments choose to do
or not do." This broad approach allows both deliberate actions as
well as the refusal to address systemic barriers--what Cohen and
Pulkingham call, after Sheila McIntyre, "studied
ignorance"--to be part of the material for analysis.
In section one, Jane Jenson reviews the Quebec childcare program to
argue that Parti Quebecois efforts to build an Early Childhood Education
and Care (ECEC) system premised on social justice, gender equality,
child development, and increasing employment rates was an instance of
"progressive post-neoliberalism," something often overlooked
in macro-level analyses that set aside local initiatives. Wendy McKeen
reviews the National Children's Agenda to caution against
romanticizing the rapidly-retreating Keynesian welfare state, which
failed to either adequately address social needs or concerns of equality
and social justice. Economic provisioning (Sheila Neysmith, Marge
Reitsma-Street, Stephanie Baker Collins, and Elaine Porter) and gender
mainstreaming (Olena Hankivsky) are addressed in the final two chapters,
which propose that "political imagining" is essential for
putting forward a policy agenda with a focus on the enhancement of
social equality.
Section two opens with a chapter by long-rime activist Lee Lakeman,
who weighs into the sex debates to propose that prostitution can be
abolished through the provision of economic, physical, and political
security for women. Over three chapters, Lea Caragata, Shauna
Butterwick, and the team of Penny Gurstein and Silvia Vilches take up
the complex issues of lone mothers and poverty. Legal scholar Margot
Young revisits the question of a guaranteed annual income, concluding
sadly that the prospects of an adequate GAI are very low.
Seven chapters close out the book's final section, which
considers progressive alternatives for rethinking labour market and
employment support policy--embracing a range of issues from sex work, to
immigration, to pensions and more. Martha MacDonald tackles Employment
Insurance, showing how poorly women and other careworkers rare under its
rules and regulations. Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay persuasively
demonstrates that Quebec's policies for work and family balance are
a model for Canada, enabling Quebecoise mothers to enter the labour
market at rates that are the highest in Canada. Canadian Labour Congress economist Andrew Jackson argues wage supplements are a problematic
remedy for the working poor, including women. The contested issues of
pensions and mandatory retirement are central to the chapter by Margaret
Menton Manery and Arlene Tigar McLaren. Emily van der Muelen suggests
that criminalizing prostitution works mainly to marginalize prostitutes' work, exposing them to greater risks than a legal
regime makes possible, and therefore disputes the abolitionist strategy.
Organizing economic security and workers' rights for immigrant
women are the focus of the chapter by Jill Hanley and Eric Shragge, who
propose both policy solutions and organizing strategies for the sector
of precarious immigrants. Leah Vosko's closing chapter sweeps most
themes together to wrap up the collection.
The anthology is a badly needed contribution to public policy
debates in Canada, which too rarely address the gendered causes and
consequences of policy. The collection is a strong and integrated
example of the richness and urgency of a feminist public policy agenda.
SUSAN PRENTICE
University of Manitoba
