Description:
Universally accessible, high-quality, affordable child care has long been the cornerstone of feminist advocacy for women's equality. Studies have demonstrated that access to publicly funded child care improves women's access to employment and educational opportunities. Despite many years of advocacy, Canada remains near the bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's ranking of child care systems. Lisa Pasolli's exceptional study of British Columbia social policy explains why it has been difficult to build consensus for universal child care. Using British Columbia as a case study, she argues that a consistent theme in debates about child care has been a "discomfort around working motherhood" that casts working mothers as a problem for the state to solve (178). Child care has been a residual social welfare program that has targeted pitiable mothers rather than a program to which female citizens are entitled. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Book Reviews