a tha

erga

WITH TWO
CAREERS

By

BENJAMIN
SCHLESINGER, Ph.D.

[if ORDER to start any argu-
aoc a group of people,
women Pic of married working
Sores Only needs to be men-
€d to let out a flood of con-

tradict;
dictions, prejudices, false-

Odds,
mente fond, stereotyped argu-

bac ringing the women
ar ee the home, to toil in front

a Stove and mind the kids.”
stu dies of the facts? What have
Sent + Shown? What is the pre-

1,858,000 women
he labor force, com-
labor 8 percent of our total
Tough] Orce. Of these women
Percent halt Were married, 40
Were wi Single and 10 percent

idowed, separated or di-

DR,
es SCHLESINGER is assis-

- ie essor of social work

Reprinted see of Toronto.
Tom q ere are excerpts

ticles se Wo-part series of ar-

Zine Can
are u

Wrote for the maga-
ada’s Health and Wel-
nder the same title.

Vore,

among The largest age group

Was fo orking women (39%)

Tange ae in the 25-44. year

and oye, Percent were 45 years

Were y 4 and about one-third
Nder 25 years of age.

Un

brovaympered by social disap-
and Os employer opposition
Day ne With a need for two
What's ques to keep up with
Minimye really accepted as a
me on Standard of living, wo-
ing afte Come to look on work-
ly nat, T marriage as a perfect-
Of tha 2! State of affairs. Many

BE onle who critize this
Marrieg M to believe that most
Personay omen take jobs for the

Stimulation involved.

@ :
Sau ate adian Women’s Bur-
tly thar’a HOWever, showed

ee the majority of Can-
S work not for self-

fulfilment, but because they feel
they need the money. Many
working wives have just never
given up the jobs they held as
single girls. Others go back to
work in a time of economic Cri-
sis, to help pay off mortgages,
to save up for new Cars or fur-
niture, to establish a fund for
their children’s education or to
help pay medical bills and other
debts that their husband’s sala-
ries won’t cover.

Whatever their reasons for
working, women weren't noti-
ceably discouraged from doing
so during those postwar boom
years when there was full em-
ployment. There were occasion-
al grumblings, notably in
speeches to women’s clubs, when
earnest if almost completely in-
effectual attempts were made to
correlate wives who work with
the increase in juvenile delin-
quency and the multiplying di-
vorce rate.

“The current hysteria over
working wives,” says Marion
Royce, director of the Womens
Bureau of the Department of La-
bor in Ottawa, “not only is dis-
couraging, but in many ways,
very foolish. To give women’s
jobs to men you'd have to
change the whole occupational
structure.”

By far the greatest proportion
(more than one-third) of the wo-
men employed in this country
are in clerical jobs as typists,
stenographers, business-machine
operators, occupations for which
men are rarely equipped. The
bulk of the rest of women work-
ers are either in light manufac-
turing (such as garment factor-
ies) or in service jobs, a gener-
alized category that includes
store clerks, waitresses, clean-
ing women and so on, all low-
paid jobs which men would be
unwilling to take.

The professions in which wo-
men form the largest proportion
of workers are teaching, nursing
and social work, positions that
require long educational train-

Thirty percent of Canada’s working women do clerical jobs like these in a bank ledger-posting de-
partment; 23 percent are in service trades and 11 percent in manufacturing.

ing and for which most unem-
ployed men, who are mainly un-
skilled workers, would be total-
ly unfit. .

The effects on the family of
the mother-figure being absent
from home have been the sub-
ject of recent’ sociological stu-
dies. Most of them have found
that in this period of transition
when working outside the home
is still largely a novel idea, wo-
men themselves suffer a great
deal of emotion conflict. Socio-
logist Elizabeth Herzog, of the
U.S. Department of Labor, has
remarked, “Women today feel
guilty if they do work and guil-
ty if they don’t.” No phrase
sums up this feeling more suc-
cintly than the oft-heard apolo-
gy, “I’m just a housewife.”

Results of the 1958 Canadian
survey of working women show-
ed that 48 percent of women
were able to place their child-
ren with relatives or to arrange
their own working hours so that
one parent could be home at all
times. But for the rest, day-care
arrangements are far from easy.

Why isn’t the raising of a

CTU (Prague)
IN DAYS OF OLD...

family enough to give direction
and purpose to many of wo-
men’s lives?

(1) Raising a family, as such,
takes a very small proportion of

a women’s adult life. A large

percentage of North American
women are through with child-
bearing before thirties. Say 10
years, from early twenties to
early thirties, will see the last
child of three in school. One’s
working life is 45 years plus.
What of the rest of these years?
With 25 working years ahead of
her?

(2) Women’s maternal role,
including her biological one, is
of course an important factor
in her life and personality and
work. But it is one part of: her
life.

(3) By concentrating all her
efforts on her husband, children
and domestic work, a mother
may actually be more likely to
fail as wife and mother than if
she also had a life as a human
being in her own right.

A few months ago, the United
Church of Canada issued a re-
port on “Married Working Wo-
men” and among the recommen-
dations made by the Commis-
sion on the Gainful Employment
of Married Women were the
following:

The Commission draws atten-
tion to the following problems
of special concern when mothers
work. It should be noted that
all the recommendations apply
whether the mother is presently
married, unmarried, widowed or
divorced: ;

(a) There are times in the day
when the working mother with
school-age children may face
particular problems which could
be solved with the provision of:
(i) noon-hour or other meals;
(ii) after school supervision for
homework or recreation.

(b) Since it is sometices nec-
essary for the sole parent or
both parents of very small child-
ren to work outside ‘the home,
there exists a need for adequate
provision of the following ser-
vices: (i) day nurseries; (ii) good
trustworthy day-care homes
(outside the home); (iii) reliable

home-care service (within the:

home).

The Commission knows that
these problems could be solved
practically and that such solu-
tions would immeasurably bene-
fit the children, and lighten the
load of the wage-earning mother.
It recognizes that, in a limited
way, some of these services are
already provided by the Church
or other agencies, yet there is
much evidence that the need is
not being fully met.

It is the judgement of the
Commission that, except in spe-
cial circumstances, these ser-
vices should be provided by gov-
ernment or community organi-
zations rather than by the
Church.

There are many implications
which can be related to the in-
creasing trend of married work-
ing women, but space does not
permit to analyze these trends
fully. This social transformation
in our society, during the last
half century, must have reper-
cussions which reach out broad-
ly into our whole Canadian so-
ciety.

The number of Canadian mar-
ried women in the labor force
will increase yearly; this trend
cannot be stopped. However, we
have to continue studying this
phenomenon in order to gauge
its effect on the individual, the
family, the community and the
nation as a whole. We also have
to help the children of working
mothers to lead a normal and
healthy life in the Canada of
tomorrow.

March 12, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5