06) NEEDED: AFFORDABLE, QUALITY, ACCESSIBLE, PUBLIC, NOT-FOR-PROFIT CHILDCARE

By Johan Boyden and Marianne Breton Fontaine

     International Women's Day has always been an important event for young women, an occasion to celebrate past victories and focus on the struggles ahead.

     The fight for accessible, affordable, universal, quality, public child care has especially been brought into focus for us, as young parents. Like other issues, it is clearly a gendered problem. But childcare is not only a women's issue, nor the only issue facing young women.

     Consider violence against women, where it is young women are especially vulnerable, or young women's control over their bodies. On campuses, women's student organizations have made a bold effort to ban anti‑choice groups that terrorize women students.

     Body‑pride campaigns have also pushed‑back against the plague of stereotypes aggressively promoted by big corporations in their marketing, making young women feel disempowered and uninformed about their own person. Formerly taboo sexual education classes have also made cracks in the wall of silence about healthy sexuality, but sex ed still suffers from cutbacks, and is often homophobic or trans‑phobic.

     One of the most basic class issues is pay equity. The CLC released a study a few years ago that showed the wage gap between young men and women, for the same work, had narrowed slightly. Not because young women were making more, but because young men were making less! Women still make about 73 cents on the dollar every man earns.

     The issue of women's wages brings us back to the question of child care. Although we had already started thinking about childcare, our baby was born prematurely. Months later, as our world began to re‑stabilize, we realized we had a problem. Marianne had to go back to school, maternity benefits were ending for both of us, and somebody we trusted had to look after our new baby boy.

     Quebec has a $7 a day childcare system that is internationally recognized, the product of many years of struggle, but $7 a day still adds up fast. In other parts of Canada, parents have to pay $30 to $60 a day. This is out of reach of most young families, not to mention single mums.

     Affordable, accessible, quality, public, not‑for‑profit child care may seem like a mouthful. But each demand makes sense. For us, the problem wasn't affordability, it was access. The waiting list that our little boy is on is very long. He will probably only find a placement when he reaches kindergarten age. Other options would have cost a lot more. If Marianne had returned to work to pay for day care at "market rates", her wages would have been eaten up by just the child care bill.

     In the end, we get by (with the help of family and friends, adjusting life, bringing baby everywhere). Meanwhile, workers at child care centres are some of the lowest paid in the country, and they often are not unionized. Only recently did Quebec childcare workers win the right to organize. Especially at the big places, management is pressured to cut corners to raise profits.

     For decades, corporate politicians have promised action. Even Brian Mulroney had a better plan (though never implemented) than the current Tory tax credits. Hopes for a Canada-wide child care plan were dashed by the election of Harper in 2006. This fact itself shows the sexism promoted by the system.

     In our view, to eliminate sexism we need to overturn the basis of capitalist society, and win socialism. But public childcare would not be incompatible with capitalism. It would be a major victory, opening more possibilities for advancing a real people's agenda. Shortly after IWD we may be into a federal election. It will be another occasion to advance the issue of child care.

(The above article is from the March 1-15, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)