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Working women and day care

Broadcast Date: March 28, 1967

With the first Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada about to get underway, the CBC quizzes a group of stay-at-home mothers about motherhood, feminism and day care. With more and more women entering the workforce, day care is beginning to become a reality of the "working girl."
This CBC Television clip talks to both traditional mothers and a day nursery worker who disputes the notion that day care "means that tax money is being spent while mothers are off earning money for baubles or extra television sets."

Working women and day care

• A few weeks before this clip aired, the federal government launched a commission to look into the status of women during Canada's centennial year. Nicknamed for its chairwoman Florence Bird, the Bird Commission was charged with exploring a number of issues, including women's increasing role in the labour force, sexual discrimination, abortion and day care.


• According to Statistics Canada, 1 in 4 women held down some kind of work outside the home in 1967. That number had doubled from 1962.
• By the late 1960s day care (then known as day nurseries) had largely shed its charitable status and its association with organized religion. It was still considered a service for single working women and families who couldn't afford to keep their children at home.


• Though it would be a few years before child care advocates began to push for more and better day care, the demand for spots was already exceeding the supply. As Barbara Chisholm describes in this clip, there were up to 70 children for every spot in Toronto at the time.


• In 1967 women in the labour force could take only six weeks of maternity leave, which meant that they had to arrange child care for their infant children or leave their jobs. This changed in 1977, when the Canada Labour Code was changed to allow for 17 weeks of maternity leave. The following year the same law was amended to prohibit layoffs due to pregnancy.


• In 1985 the federal government added 24 weeks of unpaid maternity leave to the legislation, meaning employers had to hold a woman's job for 41 weeks. The leave was also opened up to either the mother or father.
• In 2000, parental leave was extended to 12 months as part of the federal Employment Insurance program — at an estimated cost of $9 billion a year.


• Other federal benefits introduced to aid working families included the Child Care Expense Deduction in 1971 (which allowed parents to a tax deduction for a portion of their child care expenses) and the Canada Child Tax Benefit in 1997, which was a supplement targeting working class families.

Working women and day care

Medium: Television

Program: Newsmagazine

Broadcast Date: March 28, 1967

Guest(s): Barbara Chisholm, Margaret King

Host: Gordon Donaldson

Duration: 8:25

Last updated:
July 21, 2009