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Silvia Federici, Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender and Feminism (Oakland: PM Press, 2021) THIS COLLECTION OF short essays by Silvia Federici addresses an important political and theoretical [...]

WHEN FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP established itself in the universities in the 1970s, it confronted a sociology of 'the family' that idealized the white, heterosexual nuclear family and took for granted the [...]

A growing share of the population in Canada comprised of aging immigrants lacks the financial resources for a secure retirement. Disproportionately visible minorities, many foreign-born seniors, have limited access to income security programs, private pensions, and savings. We examine the resulting racialization of poverty among aging immigrants in Canada with particular attention to the effects of visible minority and immigrant status and gender. Our analysis of 2006 Canadian census information confirms that many aging immigrants struggle to achieve economic security, which allows for a stable and adequate standard of living. Foreign-born seniors are more likely than Canadian-born seniors to have incomes that fall below the low-income cutoff, one measure of poverty. The percentages of Canadian-born and immigrant men and women from different ethnoracial backgrounds who have low incomes also differ substantially. Immigrant women, particularly those who are visible minorities, are the most impoverished. We advocate an intersectional approach to understanding and addressing poverty among seniors. For aging immigrants, the chances of being impoverished depend on gender and ethnoracial background as well as on place of birth. Une part croissante de la population canadienne composee d'immigrants vieillissants ne dispose pas des ressources financieres necessaires pour s'assurer une retraite sereine. Une part disproportionnee des minorites visibles, de nombreux aines nes a l'etranger, ont un acces limite aux programmes de securite du revenu, aux regimes de retraite prives et aux economies. Nous examinons ici la racialisation de la pauvrete qui en decoule parmi les immigrants vieillissants du Canada, avec une attention particuliere aux effets du genre et du statut de minorite visible ou d'immigrant. Notre analyse des renseignements issus du recensement canadien de 2006 confirme que de nombreux immigrants vieillissants doivent se battre pour obtenir la securite economique qui leur apporterait un niveau de vie stable et adequat. Les aines d'origine etrangere sont plus susceptibles que ceux d'origine canadienne d'avoir des revenus inferieurs au seuil de faible revenu, l'une des mesures de la pauvrete. Les pourcentages de Canadiens et de Canadiennes et d'immigrants hommes et femmes d'origines ethnoraciales differentes qui disposent de revenus faibles different aussi considerablement. Les immigrantes, et plus particulierement celles issues des minorites visibles, sont les plus pauvres. Nous defendons une approche croisee pour comprendre le probleme de la pauvrete parmi les aines et y remedier. Pour les immigrants vieillissants, le risque de pauvrete depend non seulement du sexe et de l'origine ethnoraciale, mais egalement du lieu de naissance., Introduction Although the economic situations of many seniors (2) in Canada have improved since the 1980s, a large population of seniors does not have access to the resources needed to [...]

Social reproduction has received considerable recent attention from academics and activists aiming to stimulate and advance transformative political change. Yet, an understanding of social reproduction as "work" has sometimes slipped away, leaving behind important anti-racist feminist insights. Engaging with recent contributions from scholars in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, we argue that social reproduction is most useful as a concept, not as a theory, and is best understood as "work". We point out quandaries and ambiguities that have produced conceptual confusion in scholarship on social reproduction and argue for a conceptualization offered by feminist political economy. We conclude that social reproduction, when understood as work, can support efforts to build the mass movements and solidarity necessary for effective anti-capitalist politics if its relationship to, and contradictions with, the processes of dispossession and capital accumulation are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers started to study both domestic labour and household divisions of labour in the 1970s when there was a call for recognition of women's unpaid labour. There is still debate on the best way to measure unpaid work, but the United Nations and its member countries are committed to the measurement and valuation of unpaid work, particularly with regard to women's family car giving.

I met Thelma McCormack in the late 1970s at one of the first Learneds I ever went to. As a newly minted Ph.D., I was making one of my first [...]