Gender, the State, and Social Reproduction: Household Insecurity in Neo-Liberal Times

Margaret Conrad is Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at
the University of New Brunswick. She is the author of Atlantic Canada: A
Region in the Making and co-author of Intimate Relations: Family and
Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1

One of the major contributions of feminist scholarship has been to
identify and explore “social reproduction,” defined here as
maintaining and reproducing people on a daily and generational basis.
While corporations take “human resources” very seriously indeed,
social reproduction (giving birth, feeding, clothing, sheltering,
nursing, nurturing, and socializing) has only recently received the
attention it deserves in part because so much of the this “caring”
work has historically been done “voluntarily” by women within family
and community contexts. Twentieth-century welfare state programs
shouldered some of the burden of social reproduction, but were seriously
undermined by neo-liberal governments that emphasized unregulated
markets, lower taxes, and individualism. Recognizing that women bear the
brunt of deregulation and privatization, participants in the
Toronto-based Feminism and Political Economy Network began in the 1990s
to explore the redistribution of social reproduction work across the
state, market, household, and voluntary sectors under the impact of
neo-liberal policies. Most of the 10 essays in this volume are the
result of this highly successful collaborative effort.

Care was taken to make this collection accessible and comprehensive.
The first four chapters offer valuable contextual information on the
evolution of feminist political economy scholarship; on the Canadian
federal system that makes social reproduction policy a political
football among various jurisdictions; on global power relationships that
enable Canada to import cheap immigrant labour to do caring work; and on
the role of unions in nudging society toward better work–life balance.
With one exception—an essay on how privatization served as a strategy
for eliminating pay equity in health-care services in British
Columbia—the remaining essays focus on Ontario, which, under the
premiership of Mike Harris (1995–2003), embraced neo-liberalism with
uncommon zeal.

The evidence from this well-grounded research demonstrates that women
do shoulder most of the burden of neo-liberal policies and challenges
the notion that community, family, and friends can make up for the cuts
in social spending to support the work of social reproduction in
Canada’s highly urbanized and individualized society. A call to
action, this book is also a starting point for anyone interested in the
theoretical foundations and experiential complexities of social
reproduction in Canada.