Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada explores why health care is a woman's issue and seeks to address gender equity in health services. Written by members of Women and Health Care Reform (WHCR), this collection establishes the importance of including gender in discussions and decisions surrounding health sector reform. In twelve concise chapters, Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada addresses a wide range of issues, including obesity, maternity care, mental health of health care workers, and private health insurance. This thought-provoking collection is an essential read for students and researchers in the fields of women's studies, health sciences, sociology, and nursing, as well as for anyone who is looking for a new picture of health care in Canada.
How important are female workers for economic growth? This paper presents empirical evidence that an increase in female labor force participation is positively associated with labor productivity growth. Using panel data for 10 Canadian provinces over 1990–2015, we found that a 1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation among women with high educational attainment would raise Canada’s overall labor productivity growth by 0.2 to 0.3 percentage point a year. This suggests that if the current gap of 7 percentage points between male and female labor force participation with high educational attainment were eliminated, the level of real GDP could be about 4 percent higher today. The government has appropriately stepped up its efforts to improve gender equality, as part of its growth strategy. In particular, the government’s plan to expand access to affordable child care is a positive step. However, we argue that to maximize the policy outcome given a budget constraint, provision of subsidized child care—including publicly funded child care spaces—should be better targeted to working parents.
This paper analyzes the role of the tax and benefit system in spurring the impressive increase in Canadian female labor participation in the last decade. Using annual panel data for 10 large industrial countries over the period 1980-2001, I find that reforms in the Canadian tax and benefit system in the mid-1990s account for at least one-third of the observed increase in female participation in the period 1995-2001. The analysis indicates that policy initiatives similar to the "family-friendly" policies introduced in Canada could boost female participation in other countries and help policymakers meet the challenges of population aging.
Job creation and growth with inclusion are imperatives that resonate today in every country. While some advanced countries face the challenge of supporting aggregate demand with limited fiscal space in the aftermath of the Great Recession, many countries have to address ways to generate growth and create jobs in the face of the strong ongoing global megatrends of technological change, globalization, and significant shifts in demographic trends. The latter includes rapid population aging in some parts of the world, and the entry of a large number of new workers into the labor force in others. Low female labor force participation represents a significant missed opportunity to strengthen economic development and growth in many countries.
Why are there pronounced gender differences in rates of criminal victimization? Does gender influence the response of the criminal justice system and other parts of the community to offenders and to crime victims? What part does gender play in the etiology of illegal activities committed by both males and females? Understanding Gender, Crime, and Justice takes a contemporary look at such questions and considers areas that are often neglected in other books on gender, crime, and justice. In the last three decades, there has been an explosion of theory and related research relevant to gender, crime, and justice. Author Merry Morash, a well-known feminist scholar in the field of criminal justice, acquaints readers with key breakthroughs in criminological conceptualization and theories to explain the interplay between gender and both crime and justice. Understanding Gender, Crime, and Justice pays especial attention to race, ethnicity, and immigrant groups, and provides a unique comparative perspective. Key Features Includes first-person accounts from crime victims, workers in the justice system, male lawbreakers, and women engaged in prostitution to give insight into a diversity of experiences and standpoints Parallels the effects of gender and sexual orientation in laws, in patterns and causes of victimization, and in the responses of the justice system to both victims and offenders Integrates international examples to place U.S. experiences in a comparative perspective and to show gender inequities on a worldwide scale Provides numerous photos--unique for a text of this type--to portray people of all sorts in various regions of the world Includes Web site recommendations for further exploration of chapter topics Understanding Gender, Crime, and Justice is an ideal textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses that focus on women and criminal justice. The book is also a valuable asset for gender courses in sociology and for women's studies programs.
Caring For/Caring About explores the complex nature of caring in Canadian society today by examining current research on women, home care, and unpaid caregiving.
In The Canadian Labour Movement, historian Craig Heron and political scientist Charles Smith tell the story of Canada's workers from the midnineteenth century through to today, painting a vivid picture of key developments, such as the birth of craft unionism, the breakthroughs of the fifties and sixties, and the setbacks of the early twenty-first century. The fourth edition of this book has been completely updated with a substantial new chapter that covers the period from the great recession of 2008 through to 2020. In this chapter, Smith describes the fallout of the financial crisis, how Stephen Harper's government restricted labour rights, the rise of the "gig economy" and precarious work, and the continued de-industrialization in the private sector. These pressures contributed to fracturing the movement, as when Unifor, the largest private sector union, split from the Canadian Labour Congress, the established "house of labour." Through it all, rank-and-file union members have fought for better conditions for all workers, including through campaigns like the fight for a $15 minimum wage. The Canadian Labour Movement is the definitive book for anyone interested in understanding the origins, achievements, and challenges of the labour and social justice movements in Canada.
While much is known about prostitution and sex work from studies of female sex workers and their customers, relatively little is known about men who sell sex, either to women or other men. Particularly poorly understood are their motivations for doing so, the circumstances in which the sale of sex occurs, the meanings attached to the acts by both sex worker and client, and the HIV-related risks involved. Each chapter, written by a national expert, is based on months and even years of interviews with male sex workers, including young boys and elderly men in some countries. The workers discuss why they do the work, what it is like, and what their behavior means to them. For example, those who have regular sex with men often strenuously affirm their heterosexuality, though there is considerable variety in their attitudes. Each chapter relates the experiences of the male sex workers to the political economy of their neighborhood and assesses the implications of their work for HIV transmission and the AIDS epidemic. The researchers and the sex workers discuss the value of different kinds of health promotion interventions.
This collection surveys the key debates and issues that currently face fashion journalism, going beyond traditional print media to consider its multiple contexts and iterations in an ever-evolving post-digital media environment. Bringing together a diverse range of contributors, Insights on Fashion Journalism explores the characteristics, complexities, shifts and specificities of the field. The book is organized into three sections, mapping fashion journalism’s established and emerging practices and exploring its parameters from mainstream to marginal. Section One focuses on the complex relationships between those who practice fashion journalism, the fashion industry and the media context in which they operate; Section Two considers the ways in which fashion journalism responds to the socio-political and cultural contexts in which it is created, as well as the impact these contexts have on tone, content and style; and Section Three investigates how language is employed in different media. Approaching fashion journalism through a critically diverse lens, this collection is an asset for academics and students in the fields of fashion studies, journalism, communication, cultural studies and digital media.
