Labor Relations: Gender Inequalities, Precariousness, and Motherhood Penalty

Labour Relations
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Question One
There may persist gender inequality in the division of household labour and childcare because most of the men's job requirements do not give them room to take part in household duties, leaving the women with more roles in the household (Daminger, 2020). Secondly, gender inequality may exist because most couples tend to believe that there are roles meant for women, such as cooking, and cleaning and men are left with the outdoor task such as mowing the lawn and fixing the family car. Finally, most women consider themselves to be efficient in running the day-to-day activity of the household, leaving them with the responsibility of planning the family calendar hence taking up more roles when it comes to household chores and childcare.
Government and workplace policy can undermine the equal division of household labour because specific job requirements restrict one to only work from the office and cannot work from home. In such a situation, if the woman is the one working from home, she then takes up most of the household chores and childcare. If the man works from home, the man will participate in child care, and the wife will overcompensate for this, making her take up more roles in the household. A government and workplace policy only gives the mother a maternity leave during pregnancy, which automatically leaves her to take up more roles in the household during this period.
To remedy the gender inequality caused by the unfair distribution of household chores and childcare, the government and workplace need to introduce a paternity leave that runs within the same time frame as the mothers. This will ensure that women do not take up more household roles during maternity, but they will have their partners on paternity leave around to help them.
Question Two
Immigrant and migrant workers in Canada experience precariousness by being offered job opportunities through a temporary foreign workers program that does not allow them to permanently settle in Canada, thereby making them work for low wages for very long hours (Choudry and Thomas, 2020). Immigrant workers and migrant workers experience precariousness at the workplace because they are not allowed to unionized. Hence, they cannot fight for job protection and any collective bargaining agreement, which makes them be left to the mercy of their employers. Immigrants gaining employment in Canada through programs such as the Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) experienced precariousness by not being in control of their working conditions; hence they tend to be mistreated by the employers and endure all these because of the chance of acquiring citizenship after completion of the program (Pratt, 2012).
To improve the working conditions of workers in the LCP program, the program would have to be abolished, but this seems to be impossible because, through the program, immigrant workers see a chance at a better life by acquiring Canadian citizenship. To improve the working conditions of immigrant workers that cannot unionize and those on temporary work programs, the Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC) and traditional trade unions should collaborate and legally fight for the rights of the workers to unioniz...