8 - Gender Inequalities in the Workplace

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The final two chapters of this book are concerned with pursuing equality between men and women. It is this egalitarian pursuit through legislation and the courts that has probably resulted in the most visible social change in modern industrial societies over the past twenty-five years. Restrictions and barriers for women that a mere fifty years ago were thought unassailable have crumbled in recent times. Women have to some degree gained access to practically all of the principal social institutions of civil society. Perhaps the most important change has been in the labour market. In Canada, for example, 22 percent of women were in the labour force in 1931 compared with 54.8 percent in 1998. Similarly, in the United States, labour market participation increased from 30 percent to 55 percent from 1950 to 1998. These statistics mask some of the complex differences among women. Women of colour, for instance, have a much longer history of high rates of labour market participation, as have women heading single-parent households. But the dramatic increase in labour market participation by women in general revealed by these numbers suggests why, from a social justice perspective, the labour market emerged thirty years ago as a major site for regulating inequalities between men and women.

Much of the first wave of legal reforms was directed at removing undeniable barriers for women participating in the labour market. These reforms were typically preceded by influential public enquiries.