Home care is about women

Above all else, home care is about women both as paid and unpaid caregivers. Over 80 per cent of all home care is delivered by unpaid family members, primarily women. Two-thirds of all home care recipients are women. According to Statistics Canada, 61 per cent of those providing informal care to seniors were women and 70 per cent of the recipients of eldercare were women. Moreover, 60 per cent of the caregivers had been providing an average of almost five hours per week to the same person for more than two years.

Women performed the bulk of tasks such as meal preparation, personal care, laundry and housekeeping. They were also more involved in providing emotional support in eldercare situations. And they are the people who are expected to step in and take over when family members can’t get the care they need.

Women in the paid labour force — many visible minorities and recent immigrants — are disproportionately represented in nursing and homemaking occupations. Nearly 500,000 job openings will have been filled in this sector between 1995 and 2000. Currently, there are more than 75,000 visiting homemakers and more than 50,000 nurses working in home care. Under the public system, they benefit from pay equity and other legislation that does not apply to private, for-profit employers. The incursion of private health care corporations erodes years of work for better wages and working conditions.

In 1996, 2.8 million Canadians provided informal care to someone with a chronic illness or disability. Women stand to gain the most from a national home care program that has stable funding, regulated standards, and a trained labour force for the public delivery of care. Those assurances can only come from a federal Home and Community Care Act to ensure consistency of care in all regions of all provinces.