Women and the Canadian Old-Age Pension System

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the history of the entitlement of women in the Canadian old-age pension system. The paper points out that, although at first limited, the scope of Canadian women's enfranchisement in the successive public pensions schemes instituted between 1928 and 1985 did gradually widen, allowing more and more women to receive pensions. The working premise of the paper is that this progress was foremost the fruits of women's own labors, literally as well as figuratively.
Women in effect earned the right to a pension by earning a living in increasing numbers. The paper concludes that, in order to do this, women had to overcome the prevailing social mores, prejudices, institutional resistance and male-dominated cultural stereotypes.

From the Paper:

"Data from the 1901 Canadian Census records a total male population of 2,066,000 and a total female population of 1,957,000. Out of this 1,618,000 men but only 215,000 women were gainfully employed; in other words, 78.3 percent of Canadian males earned their living by working whereas only 14.4 percent of Canadian women did. (Series D107) Some thirty years later, on the heels of Canada's first full-fledged public pension, 78.5 percent of Canada's 4,206,000 men and 19.4 percent of its women were gainfully employed. The raw numbers are particularly revealing: 3,296,000 men but only 752,000 women reported having a job. Yet, even if these results are skewered by the Great Depression, there were still over three times as many women working in 1931 than 1901."

Sample of Sources Used:

• "A Brief History of Pensions." Pensions Backgrounder # 2. (2007). National Union. 4 April 2007. <www.nupge.ca.History_of_Pensions.PDF>
• "Building a Culture of Retirement: Class, Politics and Pensions in Post-War Ontario." Journal of the CHA. (1997) 8: 259 - 282. Academic Search Premier. 29 March 2007. <http://search.ebscohost.com.>Cooke-Reynolds, M. & Zukewich N. "The Feminization of Work." Canadian Social Trends. Spring 2004. Statistics Canada. 29 March 2007 <http://www.statisticscanada.com/english/kits/pdf/social/feminization.pdf>
• Cutler, D. & Johnson, R. "The Birth and Growth of the Social Insurance State: Explaining Old Age and Medical Insurance Across
• Countries." Public Choice, 25 (2004): 87 - 121. 29 March 2007.<www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/dcutler/papers/birth_and_growth_8-02.pdf>
• "Demanding More." The History of Canada's Public Pensions. 2007. Human Resources Development Canada. 29 March 2007. <http://www.civilization.ca/hist/pensions.cpp-m1928_e.html>

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