Petticoats and PrejudiceJoin now to read essay Petticoats and PrejudiceThrough the narration of white settler society construct, that is, the notion that Canada is a nation founded by the French and British, only certain interests are taken into account. Daiva Stasiulus and Radha Jhappan’s article “The Fractious Politics of a Settler Society in Canada,” demonstrate how this construct is problematic in Canada’s nation building process. Ultimately, both Stasiulus and Jhappan demonstrate how white settler society construct has been a main cause of social inequality and lack of diversity both historically and presently in Canada.
The authors begin by outlining the historical problems which white settler society construct presented. First, they point out that as white settlement began in earnest, the confiscation of the Aboriginals land was justified in terms of their failure to qualify as a ‘civilized’ community (98). As Stasiulus and Jhappan outline, the violence that went into colonizing the Aboriginal community, is therefore seen as justifiable because the Aboriginal communities’ different world-views, cultures, notion of property and ‘pagan’ beliefs are presented as evidence for their unfit ownership to the land.
A second limitation of white settler society construct that Stasiulus and Jhappan outline is that fact that settlement and immigration in Canada was considerably more ethnically and racially diverse than the white British settler agenda suggested. Indeed, it was this diversity which compelled the conscious construction of a racial/ethnic hierarchy. What was soon implemented was a ‘white Canada’ immigration policy that was designed to aggressively recruit what was considered the ‘best classes’ of British men and women. Non-European immigrants would be excluded unless their cheap labor was needed, in which case they could be granted lesser access to settlers and citizens’ rights.
Finally, Stasiulus and Jhappan point out that the assumptions of the white settler society construct were not only racist but also androcentric. The authors argue that they focused primarily on men’s activities in the public sphere (in production and in government), and women are regarded as little more than breeders to reproduce ‘the nation, the empire and the future race.’ In reality, the authors point out that, women played multiple roles, depending on their race/ethnic class. For example, Caribbean women were only immigrated to Canada not as reproducers but as domestic workers. Clearly, these factors not only determined the kind of work women preformed, but also as the authors point out, their role in controlling and oppressing other women.
Issues that Stasiulus and Jhappan outline, raise questions about the concept of Canada’s nation. Nation is an entity bound together by a common territory and culture. The concept of a ‘nation,’ is indeed a social construct because it is subjugated to different meanings over time. In talking about nation as a social construct, we must talk about who has the power to define and organize the region. As the white settler society construct demonstrates, in the nation building of Canada, it was the British and French settlers who possessed this power of defining and organizing the region. Thus, it was only these peoples interest that were taken into account while the Aboriginal peoples’ interests were disregarded. Furthermore, in the founding of Canada, Aboriginal people are not seen as founders and their rights are therefore erased from narrative accounts.
In defining nation as a social construct, we have to look at who has the power to decide who is coming in and what job they will perform. Although the term nation suggests that there is a sense of solidarity, we have to continue to question how this solidarity is enforced. Historically, white settler society construct enforced this solidarity in such a way where people (for example, that of women, most specifically racialized women) continued to be seen as outsiders. Today, through Canada’s immigration policies, white settler society construct continues to permeate throughout much of Canada’s nation building.
Sedef Arat-Koc’s article “In The Privacy Of Our Own Home: Foreign Domestic Workers As A Solution To The Domestic Sphere In Canada,” forcefully demonstrates how immigration policies are constructed on the notion of white settler society construct. According to Arat-Koc, Canada is facing a “crises” in the domestic sphere. For Arat-Koc, this is demonstrated in three major ways. First, Arat-Koc states that the behavior of men in homes has changed very little in terms of their contributions to the housework and parenting responsibilities. Second, Arat-Koc states that the childcare situation in Canada is in a state of crises where the quality and dependability of childcare in Canada is unknown. Third, Arat-Koc argues that Canadian employers and the
the public have begun to take advantage of the rise of men. They are now able to hire more domestic workers based on their abilities, which is no time to consider them as part of the solution. “Arat-Koc argues that a large portion of the jobs that the government offers domestic workers is based on the assumption that the job will be more comfortable and less stressful than it already is. That assumption is based on the fact that most domestic workers do not even have the skills needed for a productive career. They are simply out of town or in low paying jobs to begin with and the federal government provides no work. “Arat-Koc believes that the domestic worker needs to be brought into the workplace to solve her career problem, not more, where the job is often a bad one.
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“In the past decade, the role played by women has increased, a much higher proportion of women working outside the home and also in the home labor force” (p. 38).
An important point, even though we know that less than half of all women would benefit from a reduction in the gender pay gap, Arat-Koc is correct to believe that women are far more likely to take childcare roles than men are. However, Arat-Koc concludes that this is not an accurate representation and that, as she pointed out, the percentage of young women who have been brought into the workforce due to a lack in choice does not support the premise that the job is necessary or safe for them.
We can, therefore, use Arat-Koc’s work to further understand the role played by women at home and to point to these changes as a step toward reducing the pay gap and to address the gaps in the workforce that are due to over-representation of women at home. For example, our research on Canadian women at work provides examples of the way the public recognizes this fact. It shows that 40% of mothers in the U.S. describe their children as “family members” when they have children, meaning that we believe that children born to mothers raised in the US are not considered family members. ‟In fact, the number of women who are employed as a domestic worker is down to 12% of the number of women reported by the Canadian labour force in 2011-12.[2] However, this information is not necessarily representative of the entire Canadian population, because many workers are not included. Even though it is easy to come away with an idea as to why there is increased lack of representation of women at home over a large portion of workers, Arat-Koc insists that this is not an accurate portrayal of the situation and that the women whose work is employed in the home labor force are not entitled to equal pay regardless of their contribution to the family.