Gender, segmentation and the standard employment relationship in Canadian labour law, legislation and policy

Using gender as its analytic lens, this article examines segmentation in th e Canadian labour market by focusing on the standard employment relationshi p. It illustrates how standard employment was crafted upon a specific gende r division of paid and unpaid labour, the male breadwinner norm, and was on ly available to a narrow segment of workers. To this end, it traces how fro m the 1950s the standard employment relationship was supplemented by a grow th in jobs associated with, and filled primarily by, women workers and it s hows how women's increasing labour market participation in the late 1960s a nd early 1970s shaped demands for equality in employment policies. Since th e 1980s, a deterioration in the standard employment relationship has underm ined both demands for and the basis of gender equality strategies and the a rticle concludes by raising the question of the normative basis for regulat ing employment in order to move towards strategies for reregulation.