Getting by in Hard Times: Gendered Labour at Home and on the Job

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

Covering the period of economic restructuring that began in the early
1980s and extended to 1996, this book brings together data collected
over a 10-year period from two related studies: the Steelworkers
Families Project and the Hamilton Families Project.

In the book’s concluding chapter, “Dreams and Dilemmas: Trying to
Make Sense of It All,” the authors quote a former Stelco employee who
says that she is “just getting by ... but I’ve no benefits, no sick
leave, no dental plan, no pension and no savings. I can’t afford to
get a toothache. If I get sick for just a week, I’ll lose my job, my
place, and we’ll be on the street. More and more people are in that
position. Things could get really bad here.” In a very real sense,
this is the essence of Luxton and Corman’s study. As Stelco cut its
labor force by two-thirds, wives of Stelco workers who had been
full-time homemakers were forced into the labor force to compensate for
the loss of good-paying male jobs.

Getting By in Hard Times shows how growing insecurities undermined
class politics while heating up gender, racial, and ethnic tensions.
More than a book about job loss and the ways in which neoconservative
politics has eroded the gains made by workers in the last 50 years, it
is an account of what Ontario workers have lost in terms of the quality
of their daily lives. The book’s appendixes and numerous tables
supplement the authors’ highly readable arguments.