Denial of the means of subsistence as an equality violation
| Jurisdiction | South Africa |
| Date | 15 August 2019 |
| Published date | 15 August 2019 |
| Author | Gwen Brodsky |
| Pages | 149-170 |
| Citation | 2005 Acta Juridica 149 |
Denial of the means of subsistence as an
equality violation
GWEN BRODSKY AND SHELAGH DAY*
The Poverty and Human Rights Centre
I INTRODUCTION
Poverty is an urgent equality issue for women all over the world. Canada,
since the Depression of the 1930s, has had a history of good social
programmes. And those programmes have been a central egalitarian force
in women’s lives. Public health care, childcare, affordable public
education, unemployment insurance and social assistance have all
provided ways of ameliorating women’s inequality, shifting some of the
burden of unpaid care-giving to the state, and making available more
opportunities for women to engage in paid work, education and
community life. Income security programmes, like employment insur-
ance and social assistance have also softened women’s dependence on
men, ensuring that women have independent income at crucial times in
their lives.
But this has changed in Canada. For some time now we have been
experiencing restructuring ‘Canadian-style’, including a race to the
bottom among provincial governments to eliminate the entitlement to
social assistance, narrow eligibility rules and reduced welfare benefits. In
recent years, successive governments have hacked away at the social
safety net. The cuts to social programmes have hurt women.
1
The picture of women’s poverty and overall economic inequality is
shocking in a country as wealthy as Canada. Women have moved into
the paid labour force in ever-increasing numbers over the last two
decades,
2
but they do not enjoy equality there, not in earnings, in access
* Gwen Brodsky: LLB (University of Victoria, Canada) LLM (Harvard) PhD (York,
Canada); Shelagh Day: MA (Harvard); Co-Directors of the Poverty and Human Rights
Centre, Vancouver, Canada. A version of this paper appears in Making Equality Rights Real:
Securing Substantive Equality Under the Charter prepared under the auspices of the Women’s Legal
Education and Action Fund, forthcoming (2006).
1
Paul Martin, the current Prime Minister, has been a key player in the International
Monetary Fund, and implementer of the IMF formula of downsizing government, cutting
social programmes and increasing privatization. Prime Minister Martin is on record as saying
that he knows that women are hardest hit by restructuring. As Finance Minister he presided
over the elimination of the Canada Assistance Plan. The CAPestablished enforceable national
standards for social assistance, and a formula for intergovernmental cost sharing for social
assistance.
2
Statistics Canada Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (2000)
[hereinafter Womenin Canada 2000]at12.
149
2005 Acta Juridica 149
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to non-traditional jobs and managerial positions,
3
or in benefits.
4
The gap
between men’s and women’s full-time, full-year wages is due in part to
occupational segregation in the workforce, which remains entrenched,
and to the lower pay that is accorded to traditionally female jobs.
Although the wage gap has decreased in recent years, with women who
are employed on a full-time, full-year basis now earning about 72 per
cent of comparable men, part of the narrowing of this gap is due to a
decline in men’s earnings, and not to an increase in women’s.
5
Women’s annual average income from all sources is about 62 per cent
of men’s.
6
This significant difference in income is partly attributable to
the wage gap, but also partly attributable to the fact that women work
fewer hours than men in the paid labour force because they cannot obtain
full-time work
7
and because they carry more responsibility for unpaid
care-giving duties.
8
In 1999, 41 per cent of women, compared to 29 per
3
Ibid 12 and 107. Women in Canada 2000 notes that ‘[t]he majority of employed women
continue to work in occupations in which women have traditionally been concentrated. In
1999, 70 per cent of all employed women were working in teaching, nursing and related health
occupations, clerical or other administrative positions and sales and service occupations.’ The
report also notes that ‘women continue to account for large shares of total employment in each
of these occupational groups. In 1999, 87 per cent of nurses and health-related therapists, 75
per cent of clerks, 62 per cent of teachers, 59 per cent of sales and service personnel were
women.’ The report also notes that ‘women tend to be better represented among lower-level
managers as opposed to those at more senior levels. In 1999 women made up only 27 per cent
of senior managers, compared with 36 per cent at other levels’ (at 107).
4
Ibid 278. Women in Canada 2000 states that private employment-related retirement
pensions provide 13 per cent of the income of senior women, as opposed to 27 per cent of the
income of senior men. While payments from public pension plans provide about the same
percentage of the income of senior women and men, since benefit amounts are tied to earnings
senior women receive less per year than senior men. Monica Townsonalso notes in Independent
Means: A Woman’s Guide to Pensions and a Secure Financial Future(1997) at 98–100, that pension
rules that discriminated against women in the 1970s and 1980s, by requiring women to work
longer to be eligible for a pension, or to retire earlier than men, still have a lingering effect on
the amount of women’s pension benefits or on access to a pension because when the rules were
changed those changes were not retroactive.
5
See I Bakker ‘Introduction: The Gendered Foundations of Restructuring in Canada’ in I
Bakker (ed) Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada (1996) 13–14; P Armstrong
‘The Feminization of the Labour Force: Harmonizing Down in a Global Economy’ in Bakker
Rethinking Restructuring 29–54; Women in Canada:A Statistical Report 3ed (1995) 86. See also K
Scott & C Lochhead Are WomenCatching Up in the Earnings Race? (1997) 2. Scott and Lochhead
state that ‘[p]reliminary analysis shows that the women who made wage gains over the last
decade were the beneficiaries of a pool of good jobs in the health, education and social service
sectors. However, as the structure of the economy continues to change, with the continuing
polarization of job opportunities, there is a real danger that women’s economic advances will
be halted. And such a situation would herald greater economic insecurity for all Canadians.’
6
Womenin Canada 2000 (n 2) 13.
7
In 1999, 25 per cent of part-time workers indicated that they wanted full-time work but
could not find it. Ibid 104.
8
Women’s care of children affects their participation in employment and, consequently,
their incomes. Women with preschool-aged children are less likely than those with
school-aged children to be employed. In 1999, 63 per cent of women with children under age
six were employed, compared to 74 per cent of women with children aged six to fifteen. Single
150 ADVANCING WOMEN’S RIGHTS
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