Revisiting Women’s Home-based Work in Rural Canada: The Double Day Exposed?

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 06. Inequality

Abstract

In the research on precarious employment, the rise of female home based-work in rural North America since the 1980s represents an intriguing case. It exemplifies the economic restructuring/decline of the region and is often portrayed as a promising pathway to economic development by the local governments and firms. Although a number of qualitative studies documented precarious nature of such employment in the 1990s, scholarly interest waned as this type of employment peaked by the 2000s. As a result, little is known about who are the female home-based workers in today’s rural areas, as well as how their gender relations within households compare with their urban counterparts’. This paper aims to revisit this important topic by investigating the determinants and consequences of female home-based work in contemporary rural Canada. Our analysis of data from the 2006 Census finds home-based self-employed women in rural Canada, in particular, tend to live in low income households. Rural female home-based workers in general also spend a large amount time in unpaid housework, reflective of their gender inequality within households, in rural areas and the labor market. Nevertheless, these women spend similar hours on paid work to their counterparts in other types of work. The findings confirm the pronounced double day faced by female home-based workers in rural areas.

Authors

• Lisa Kaida, McMaster University

• Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Memorial University of Newfoundland