by Evelyn Drescher

As often happens our summer MAW Report is often one of the more political ones... or maybe it is just what happens when you have the Chair of the Research and Policy Development Committee write the MAW Report. But you will find much to celebrate and cheer in the following reports on things MAW has been doing during May and June.

The When Women Count Resource Manual: Released June 14th, Parliament Hill

You might have caught our name in some form of media between June 14th and June 23rd as a result the launch of the When Women Count Resource Manual on June 14th. On that day, MAW held a press conference on Parliament Hill in the Press Room at 10 am.

From that moment to the last interview on June 23rd, MAW was out there presenting, explaining, elaborating and providing context for the impressive almost three hundred page manual edited by Lisa Zanyk, illustrated by Willa Egrmajer and designed by Karen Temple. The Steering Committee would like to take this opportunity to thank all the women who played a role in its development, but a very special note of acknowledgement must be made to Lisa Zanyk for all her work in bringing this important Manual into being.

MAW sees the Manual as broadening the scope of the debate about caregiving in our society. We hope to deepen the collective understanding of the issue of unpaid work as something more than taxes and the "mommy wars" to which much of the current discussion seems limited. As we said at our press conference:

"The issue of unpaid work is new to the public policy agenda in Canada. It requires more data, more analysis, more research and more discussion. To have an informed public debate, however, we need information and the tools with which to educate ourselves. The When Women Count Manual is a contribution to both the process and the debate."

Special thanks to Randi Goddard who co-ordinated the Manual Launch in the early evening on Parliament Hill with grace and sophistication. Although intimate, it was a tremendous success. Randi Goddard, whose official title was Co-ordinator, was not above becoming label-maker, post-office gopher, and bean-stuffer upon a moment's notice. Randi is a skilled event organizer, with a rare ability to "smooth things over". The innovative invitation, designed by Karen Temple, was a small bag of dried beans with an invitation card stapled to it, which stated: "Unpaid work: worth more than beans".

Georgina Hunter handled the media publicity - which came in abundance, as testimony to her skill. The before-and-after media coverage was intense, and was handled smoothly by Evelyn and Sonya Nigam, and in Saskatoon by Peggy Proctor. The measures of success of the event were and are the publicity generated by the book, increasing awareness of unpaid work among politicians and policy makers, and the public. We are now busy in Ottawa filling orders. This is a manual that all of our members should be very proud of. It is available to members for $20.00 (for non-members the cost is $30.00).

Our official thanks go out to every person who contributed to this project - by participating in the Symposium, by writing or reading, by allowing your artwork to be used yet again, and to every person who has discussed unpaid work at any MAW meeting or on email, or over coffee, over the last years - every single thought and word has become part of the fabric of the work we have presented.

The Launch: Political Promise on the 2001 Census Questions
We were very honoured to have with us at the Launch, Marlene Caterall, Member of Parliament for Ottawa West-Nepean. Ms. Caterall has seen MAW grow from a local grassroots group to a national organization and she has always encouraged MAW in its mandate to support women and to bring our voices and concerns as mothers and activists forward. She knows unpaid work herself, having spent 13 years at home with her children. She also knows about balancing unpaid and paid work. Marlene Caterall was very kind in her praise of MAW's work and the Manual. She also explicitly promised her support to ensure that the questions on unpaid work are in the 2001 Census of Population.

MAW in the Media: Breastfeeding as Food Production
It wasn't the message that is central to the Manual, but it was one of the ones that carried the media coverage for over a week. Not only did it have Statistics Canada responding to the issue of how work is defined, but eminent feminist economists debated the subject at the International Association for Feminist Economists which was held in Ottawa from the 17th-19th of June. It also garnered a political cartoon in the National Post on June 16th, 1999. (And we all had a chuckle! Why not unionize breasts? We have nothing to lose but our breast pumps!)

Some of the media captured the issue well. Other pieces were critical and demonstrated the need for a manual like When Women Count clearly. In their efforts to be clever, or contrary, they showed that they just didn't get the point. There was only one occasion that MAW felt it important to respond: an article "Equal value, equal tax" in the Ottawa Citizen June 17th (and perhaps carried elsewhere) said that MAW worked with the Reform Party and inferred that MAW had a similiar position to them in taxation issues. In a letter to the editor (published June 22), MAW wrote:
"Mothers Are Women (MAW) does not work with the Reform Party, but lobbies and works to inform all political parties. In responding to the Motion put forward by the Reform Party on the issue of tax inequities this spring, MAW advocated: 1) that the principle of individual taxation and a progressive tax structure be affirmed, 2) that tax reform for single income families does not mean that less tax money will be given to child daycare programs and any such measures are seen as part of a national program directed at how children are cared for in our society; 3) that a fundamental commitment to women's economic autonomy in all her life stages be affirmed."

MAW hopes that you were able to catch one of us somewhere out there talking about the Manual and bring our issues to the public at large.

NAC AGM: A Friendly Amendment
This year MAW once again took part in the Annual General Meeting of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. We sent a delegate (Evelyn Drescher), and alternate delegate (Victoria Anderson-Selst) and two observers (Christine Comeau and Lisa Menard). (Please see Christina's NAC and Me and Victoria's Questions as Activism. Thank you to those members who helped out at NAC by sitting at the MAW table - a contribution of time which is as important as MAWs presence on the floor of the AGM.

Although MAW did not put forward any Resolutions this year, we did make a significant "friendly amendment" to a Resolution put foward by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) which the Research and Policy Development Committee felt did not honour the spirit of the Resolution passed in 1998 which required that NAC include women's unpaid work in all discussions of women's work.

Moreover in limiting the direction of family policy to "child care" (meaning daycare) and "taxation" as the Resolution did in its initial wording, we felt that resolution was reactive instead of proactive feminist initiative on what family policy should look like. In our amendment we offered wording that would clarify the objectives of a progressive family policy, included connections between paid and unpaid work, and broadened the framework in which a family policy from NAC would be discussed.

There were some attempts by child care advocates (Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Canadian Child Care Advocacy Association) to lobby MAW to remove references to unpaid work which MAW refused. MAW submitted the following amendment, which was accepted as friendly by the CLC as which passed. The Resolution with the MAW Amendment (in italics) read:

"BE IT RESOLVED THAT NAC, in coalition with the labour movement and child care activists, participate fully in national campaign to 1) win universally accessible, non-profit, high quality child care and [a] progressive family policy [based on the objectives of gender equality, child welfare and balancing paid and unpaid work]; 2) improve wages and working conditions of child care workers[;] and [3)] build public awareness of the importance of their work [including recognition of the linkages between the paid work of child care and the low value placed by society on the work of unpaid caregiving.]

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT NAC call together as soon as possible [a broad based] working group [of member groups]: [delete progressive family policy and taxation] 1) to begin the formulation of a progressive family policy that addresses the range of mechanisms available to all levels of government to help women balance their paid and unpaid work, including, but not limited to, taxation measures, extended maternity, parental and caregiving leave, child care, pension benefits and other economic security policies, education and training credits, and employment re-entry programs. 2) to provide a written report on its progress and its recommendations to the NAC membership at the NAC AGM 2000."

The Child Care Advocacy Association included a further friendly amendment which reiterated that a universal system of child care was central to NAC's priority campaign for 1999-2000. In our humble opinion, the point had already been made both within the resolution itself, and in the adoption of the Priority Campaign by the delegates earlier. But, it seems, it was felt necessary to say again. No problem.

A SPECIAL MAW AGM
MAW held its 1999 AGM at the newly opened Ottawa Centretown Community Health Centre complete with a large table, chairs, coffee, a flip chart, an agenda and our Annual General Report. It was not the change in local or the formality of the meeting that made this AGM different, it was the wonderful addition of several out of town members who had come for the Motherhood and the Muse workshop and stayed for the AGM on a Sunday morning.

In many ways the AGM was similiar to a regular Steering Committee Meeting. This was important, because it is difficult to describe the flow of business, humour, information, and decision-making of our meetings to others. We are hoping that taking part in the process of a MAW meeting made those out-of- town members feel more a part of MAW as well as reinforced for them the knowledge that you, our members, are very much "with" us at our meetings.

From the various items of business we discussed at the AGM, the three discussions that need to be related are: 1)the importance of renewed energy around Homebase and plans for future issues, 2) the idea of a Toronto area workshop in the Fall, and 3) a mandate for a new project proposal for MAW on unpaid work based on our very successful newsletters The Kitchen Table Revolution to be submitted for funding when the final reports for When Women Count Project are filed.

Evelyn Drescher is looking forward to not developing any family policies with her children, Nicolas (10) and Hilary (6) this summer.

From the Kitchen Table to the United Nations:
The Fundamental Justice of Counting Women’s Unpaid Work
by Evelyn Drescher

Unpaid Work as a Human Rights Issue:
Connecting the Activism of Beverley Smith and Marilyn Waring

In May 1997, Beverley Smith presented a unique challenge to the Canadian government. In a letter to Mrs. Mongella, Assistant Secretary General for the Commission on the Status of Women, Smith charged that the Canadian government discriminated against homemakers.

She cited various federal government policies as they affect women who do unpaid work in the home, including especially child care, ranging from discrimination in economic security and pension issues, to lack of access to training programs when seeking paid employment , to the penalties imposed on women as "dependents" within the taxation system.

Her charge of discrimination was first considered at the 42nd Meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, but was deferred for full consideration at the 43rd meeting in 1999. The 43rd meeting was also the meeting scheduled to review the Beijing Platform for Action paragraphs on the measurement and valuation of unremunerated work.

Beverley Smith took an extraordinary step as an independent activist working on the issue of the status of women at home for the last twenty years. However, her allegation of discrimination is made on the basis of human rights.

The argument that women’s unwaged work is a human rights issue has been made by Marilyn Waring in Three Masquerades: Politics, Work and Human Rights (1996). Waring has searched the relevant United Nations documents – for example, the Convention on the Elimination of all form of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESC) – for some sense of how "work" is defined in international law and of what potential use human rights jurisprudence might be in having unpaid work understood as Work.

Waring has asked how women’s unwaged work fits into the guarantee of cultural and economic rights for women. By demonstrating that the mechanisms are already in place at the UN to pursue this issue as a legitimate human rights issue, Waring calls us to action to first try domestic legal remedies in securing a definition of work which includes unwaged work, and. failing that, to test the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

Waring’s challenge is hinged on the logic that to be discriminated against on the basis of "work status" violates a woman’s human rights. If unpaid work is categorized as work, then women who do unpaid work must be accorded the same rights as is accorded those who do paid work.

Waring cleverly asks, if unpaid work is not defined as Work, then what is it defined as? She finds three possible answers: leisure, slavery or servitude. Each of these must be rejected in defining unpaid work.

The suggestion that unpaid work is leisure is untenable. If it is slavery or servitude then serious human rights issues are raised. The question for domestic and international law is, "what is the legal definition of work?"

Although Beverley Smith’s letter of complaint is less developed and pointedly articulated, the same principle objection underlies it. This is why, rather than brushing off the letter of a Calgary homemaker, the UN Commission on the Status of Women took the complaint seriously.

The Beverley Smith Complaint was heard by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March 1999. The Canada Government responded with a lengthy defense of Canadian tax, pension, and other family-related policies, and an assertion of fair and equitable treatment within these systems, concluding:

The Communication to the United Nations coincided with the regular work of the CSW assessing the implementation and further strategies related to unremunerated work in the area of Institutional Mechanisms on the advancement of women in the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA).

For a brief time, public attention in Canada was turned both domestically and internationally to the issue of unpaid caregiving. This interest, and corresponding calls for fair taxation, sparked public debate sufficient to motivate the Finance Minister to strike a House of Commons Subcommittee to examine Canada’s tax and transfer system as it applies to families with dependent children.

The Subcommittee is committed to hearing from select government departments, tax and policy experts, families, organizations, and activists. Sonya Nigam, on behalf of MAW, made a submission to this subcommittee on April 29, 1999.

Evelyn Drescher is policy consultant for Mothers Are Women, and coordinator of the When Women Count Working Group.

Editor’s note: The following article was written for the When Women Count Resource Manual which was released on the 14th of June, 1999. It’s so good we wanted to share a little of this excellent resource with you! If you wish to purchase a copy of the manual please contact MAW.

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