Women and the Canadian Welfare State: Challenges and Change

Margaret Kechnie teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at Thorneloe
College, Laurentian University, and is the co-editor of Changing Lives:
Women in Northern Ontario.

With the publication of this book, Evans and Wekerle have provided
academics, activists, and students with a collection of articles rich in
scholarly perspective and practical insights. The collection, which was
sparked by the lack of a material appropriate for a course on “Women
and Public Policy,” is intended to assist instructors interested in
pursuing gender issues and policy as they relate to the so-called
welfare state. The thesis of the collection as a whole is that the
transformation of the Canadian welfare state is occurring at a very
rapid rate and that the changes have important consequences for women.

The book is divided into four sections: Welfare State in Transition,
Challenging the Bases of Claims, Women’s Work and the State, and Women
Challenging the Welfare State. Evans and Wekerle begin by looking at the
way in which the Canadian welfare state has been “hollowed out” as
programs such as unemployment insurance and medicare, which were
introduced in the 1960s and 1970s to alleviate some of the worst effects
of the inequalities resulting from a free market economy, were gradually
eroded in the 1980s and 1990s, with harsh consequences for women. In the
same section, Marjorie Cohen examines the roots of the deficit crisis,
which has been used by the state to justify its support of social
programs.

The balance of the collection carries on the strong analysis begun by
Evans, Wekerle, and Cohen. While the themes examined in the various
articles deal with the key issues in current welfare state debates, they
go beyond these debates by revealing the changes taking place in social
institutions that define women’s lives. Women and the Canadian Welfare
State invites much-needed discussion about the restructuring of the
Canadian welfare state.