Politique Familiale Ou Politique Nataliste: Un Enjeu De Taille Pour Les Femmes

La famille suscite, depuis quelques annees, un regain d'interet. Elle est devenue un des sujets privilégiés de la recherche scientifique et des médias québécois, et elle marque de plus en plus le discours politique. Depuis plusieurs années, le gouvernement québécois promet l'élaboration d'une politique familiale. A la fin de l'annéc 1987, il annoncait la création d'un Conseil de la famille; dans la měme foulée, il présentait en 1988 un budget destiné à mieux aider les familles, suivi d'un Enoncé de politiques sur les services de garde. Si l'intervention de l'Etat répond aux demandes maintes fois exprimées par les divers groupes de femmes et associations familiales, certaines des mesures mises de l'avant dans les discussions entourant le développement de cette politique, telles le recours au temps partiel et l'extension des congés de maternité, sont susceptibles de faire reculer les femmes sur le terrain glissant de l'emploi où elles se trouvent si elles ne s'accompagnent pas d'une politique ènergique d'égalité en emploi. Dans ce sens, la politique familiale pourrait bien passer à coté de son objectif avoué d'aide aux familles existantes et, pis encore, contribuer à l'appauvrissement d'un nombre grandissant de femmes et d'enfants.

After many years of relative obscurity, the family is once again in the limelight. On the one hand, the family has emerged as a legitimate object of scientific research, as indicated by the increasing number of scholarly publications which have appeared on this topic in recent years. On the other hand, the family not only has become one of the favourite subjects of the media, but has also come to occupy a prominent place in political debate.

For many years the government of Quebec had promised the formulation of a family policy. In December, 1987, after a long process of consultation begun in the early 1980s, a bill was introduced in the Quebec National Assembly creating a “Council on the Family” and the government declared that it was henceforth necessary to “think family.” Further, in 1988, the Quebec government presented a budget designed to “better aid the family” and distributed a Statement of Policy on Child Care Services which was to form the “principal axis” of its family policy.

The various women's groups and family associations that have long requested government intervention in various areas touching family life and the development of a true family policy—day care, parental leave, tax structure—can thus rejoice at the formal interest in the family shown by the government of Quebec. Today's women, still responsible for most domestic tasks and wishing to hold a job, are faced with double working day. Any intervention aimed at making it easier to reconcile family life with participation in the labour market, that is, permitting a woman to act as both mother and wage-earner, can only be welcome.

If the merits of such an approach appear evident, certain of the measures proposed during the discussion on family policy contain hidden traps for women in their progression toward autonomy and financial independence. For example, part-time work and prolonged maternity leave (with or without pay), which figure prominently among interventions designed to facilitate the reconciliation of job and family, can cause women to lose ground on the already slippery terrain of the labour market. The principal argument of this article is that “the family policy” announced with great fanfare by the government of Quebec is in jeopardy of failing to fulfill its principal objective—that of helping to support existing families. Further, and what is worse, the policy may have a negative impact upon the economic future of women by enclosing them in occupational ghettoes of precarious and poorly paid jobs. Taking into account the constantly increasing proportion of women who are the heads of households or families, the medium-term effects of the family policy could well be the impoverishment, rather than the amelioration, of the well-being of a growing number of women and children.

These negative effects are in part due to the implicit and often contradictory objectives pursued by the family policy. In Quebec as in other industrialized countries, the 1980s have been dominated by government fiscal crisis, changes in family structure and composition, and a sharp fall in the birth rate. It is not by coincidence that family policy, the explicit objective of which is to aid and support families, seeks at the same time to increase the economic responsibilities of families and to stimulate an increase in the birth rate. The first section of this article reviews this evolving socio-political context.

The second section describes the still precarious position of women in the labour market. In spite of their massive entry into the labour force, women continue to find themselves restricted to a limited set of occupations, to receive incomes that are significantly below those of men, and to suffer numerous interruptions in their working life. Any measure that has the potential to further marginalize the position of women on the labour market can only have the result of making them lose ground in their search for equality in employment. These effects are analyzed in the third section, which specifically examines the implications of the use of part-time work and the extension of maternity leave.

Finally, the last section suggests several avenues that need to be explored in order to establish a true family policy, one that explicitly recognizes the right of women to enjoy equality in their jobs and in their family life. These avenues include a redefinition of male and female roles, as well as the simultaneous establishment of complementary policy aimed at promoting equality between the sexes. In this respect, our conclusions converge with those of the Comité de consultation sur la politique familiale in its report entitled Collective Support Recommended for Quebec Parents (April, 1986).