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| EMPLOYMENT |
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| POSITION VACANT: HOUSEWIFE Applications are invited for the position of manager of a lively team of four demanding individuals of differing needs and personalities. The successful applicant will be required to perform and coordinate the following functions: companion, counselor, financial manager, buying office, teacher, nurse, chef, nutritionist, decorator, cleaner, driver, childcare, supervisor, social secretary, and recreation officer. Hours of work: All waking hours and a 24 hour shift when necessary. Pay: No salary or wage. Allowance by arrangement, from time to time, with the income-earning member of the team. The successful applicant may be required to hold a second job, in addition to the one advertised here. Benefits: No guaranteed holidays. No guaranteed sick-leave, maternity leave, or long service leave. No guaranteed life or accident insurance. No worker’s compensation. No pension. (From a discussion paper on unpaid housework published by the New Zealand Ministry of Women’s Affairs in September 1988). Did you know that Canada’s first minimum wage laws were enacted to cover only women and children? The goal of minimum wages for women was to ensure that women workers would earn enough to save us from starving and/or becoming prostitutes. Another purpose of minimum wage for women was to prevent their wages from being so low that employers hired women rather than men. When minimum wages for men were introduced, they were set at a higher value than women’s. With the current lack of equal pay for work of equal value, wage discrimination is still happening in Canada. Women are still earning only 72% of what men earn. And we do not get fringe benefits such as paid vacations, dental plans, and insurance coverage to the extent that men do. Despite the hurdles and barriers, many single moms want to work outside the home for a number of reasons. You may feel that you cannot tolerate the rules and invasion of privacy which ‘welfare’ puts on your life. Or perhaps you feel that you could earn more than minimum wage or ‘welfare’ rates if you got a paying job. Or for any number of other reasons, you want to get a job outside of the home. There are programs and organizations around the province that will help you with employment counseling, job search techniques, resume writing, and other employment related issues. Perhaps while you are unemployed, you may want to consider increasing your job skills through more education or a job skills workshop. Call your local HRDC (Human Resource Development Centre) for information on this, as well as your local women’s centre or community resource centre for more information on employment programs. The Women’s Employment Outreach is a good place to start for those of you who live in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Women's Employment Outreach If you can’t find a job, it can become very frustrating. You may start to blame yourself despite the fact that there are at least 200 people looking for every (badly) paid job in Canada. Don’t blame yourself. It will just bring down your self-esteem. Blame this system and fight not only for a decent paying job, but also for a new social system. Remember, raising children and keeping a house is a job – it simply isn’t recognized with a paycheque. So don’t berate yourself if you find it too difficult to work full-time at a paying job and then come home to a house full of laundry, dishes, and clothing, not to mention mothering. The unpaid and unrecognized work that single mothers do is being noticed and measured in Nova Scotia. As part of its research, the Genuine Progress Index Atlantic (GPI), a non-profit research organization, that has existed since 1997, has measured the worth of unpaid work, such as, volunteering, housecleaning and childcare, and publishes its findings in reports. The researchers also look at other important things in society that are not recognized in our current way of measuring progress, such as water quality. These things are important to recognize because as the GPI Web site says: “what we measure is literally a sign of what we value as a society. If critical social and ecological assets are not counted and valued in our measures of progress, they receive insufficient attention in the policy arena.” Essentially if more people don’t understand and appreciate the value of unpaid work, our government will never change its mind on current policies. The GPI’s work may seem obscure but the more people who challenge the way things are now, the more chance there is for change. The following is an excerpt from their findings. When we cook our own meals, clean our own house and look after our own children, this unpaid work has no value in our current measures of progress. The GPI finds that if that work were replaced fro pay it would be worth $275 billion to the Canadian economy, and $9 billion in Nova Scotia. Non-employed single mothers put in more than 50 hours of productive work a week, worth $24,000 a year at current market rates. Employed single mothers put in 75 hours of work a week, spend three times as much of their income on childcare as married mothers, and have only an hour a day to devote exclusively to their own children |
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