Women, Citizenship and Canadian Child Care Policy in the 1990s. Occasional Paper No. 13.

This report analyzes developments in Canadian child care policy in the 1990s at the federal, provincial (Ontario), and municipal (Toronto and Peel) levels, highlighting problems that are associated with a male model of citizenship. The report discusses the child care policy process as one in which state bodies are challenged by the diverse and largely women-driven child care advocacy movement. First, the report outlines some of the major developments of the 1990s that have created increasing hardship for women; foremost among these is the diminished accessibility to child care due to stagnation of or cutbacks in the funding of child care services. Connected to this is the ongoing concern among advocates for not-for-profit child care about a shift of services to the private and unregulated sector, arguably lowering quality. Also at issue are the poor and deteriorating working conditions of mostly female child care providers. These considerations are intended to highlight the importance of linking social class and gender inequality in an analysis of social policy. Second, the report discusses the effectiveness of different strategies of child care advocacy, raising some of the most persistent questions among feminists concerning political citizenship (i.e., whether it is possible to obtain social rights for women through the state, and if so, what the conditions are which make it possible). The report concludes by asserting that most women's and advocacy organizations are dismissed by governments as "special interest groups"; based on their outsider status in official politics, and lacking stable alliances, these organizations are drawn toward political solutions that may prove palatable to governments in the short run but may undermine general claims for child care as a universal rather than a targeted service. (Contains a 114 references.) (EV)