A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

Women in Quebec are responsible for 80% of consumption.
Why and how is this? I would like to know more. I think they really mean 80% of the consumption of household goods, which is still impressive, but not as impressive as saying that women are responsible for 80% of consumption.

6 in 10 women in Quebec had a paid job in 2005, compared to 4 in 10 in 1976.
Okay, I can buy that. Second-wave feminism and 80s inflation pretty much required that women hold jobs, and keep them. See below.

During the last thrity-odd years, men's working and economic activity has slowed, and there are more men than women collecting EI.
Doesn't the second part just make sense? Traditionally more men than women were working. You have to work to collect EI. If you don't work, you don't get EI.

Women are taking fewer part-time jobs by choice.
I think that this means that women are not forced to take jobs with fewer hours, since they are so powerful that they can so what they want, more or less.

The growth in female participation in Quebec is largely, if not mainly, due to the aggressive day-care policies in place here.
Because of this, women can have it all: a career and children, but not without certain other personal and societal costs. Actually they say that this isn't true: birth rates in developed countries where many or most women work are higher than in developed countries where they stay at home. There is more money coming in with which to raise them, and more support such as day cares and flex hours. The article also says that women spend the same time on child care in 2003 as in 1965 even though far more of them were working in 2003. Excuse my ignorance, but why would you need as much or MORE child care if you aren't working outside the home, in general?

There are as many working women with small children as there are with no children..
Women witrh small children are dropping out of the workforce in Alberta and in other provinces, which are cutting back on child services for women. According to the article, this goes hand in hand with the social conservatism in the rest of Canada, or as many francophones would say, English people. <tangent>Some people would also suggest and social conservatism means anti-woman, so English people don't like or support women.</tangent> Feminism (and unionism) is stronger in Quebec than elsewhere.

The cost of living requires women to work (which is true everywhere). If women didn't work, the poverty rate would increase by one-third.

Here's something interesting: In 2003, 29% of female workers in Quebec were the breadwinners in their households. The average annual salary was $41 200 and they made almost twice what their husbands made ($21 300). This does not include single working mothers.
Maybe women aren't doing that badly with respect to the so-called wage gap between men and women. Warren Farrell's 2005 book Why Men Earn More comes to mind. More on that later.

Quebec women can earn more money faster than men do, thanks to the Loi sur l'équité salariale.
This law was, among other things, supposed to compensate women for unrecognized work that was generally done by only by women. More specifically, it correct salary gaps due to systemic discrimination based on the gender of those who occupy jobs in job categories that are predominantly female. I would have to look up the details of what constitutes women's work; I would like to know what this work was, and if men ever did this work under similar conditions, did they also become entitled to the money? In any case half a million women were to get cheques of $2000 each. Half of all businesses forced to comply have not yet done so.

Women have more money than ever, hire more women than ever and all have become bigger consumers. More women are buying big-ticket items than ever.
The house, the car, the appliances are being bought by women. This would obviously contribute to the 80% statistic above if they are isolating household spending. But 80%? Why aren't men spending money on these things? What are they spending what little money they have on? Beer and hookers? Don't men take care of their families? (You might want to ask the fathers out there this question, and not just the mothers, or women's organizations.)

Women are better investors than men. They take fewer risks. They are now able to bankroll other ventures. Male investors ask what it is. Women investors ask what it's for.
This appears to be in line with what people think they know about men and women. I am surprised that more women weren't playing the stocks years ago. Some say that the dot-com crash would not have happened if more women were asked to be the venture capitalists in the 90s.

The battle isn't over for women yet, though, not by a long shot. Because despite all the things that women have going for them, they haven't not reached what so many people think is the most obvious thing to define: economic (and social) equality. For instance:

Women's overtime is often unpaid. More women than men work two jobs, which lead some to suggest that women need to moonlight in order to have the same quality of life as men.
I don't think that female moonlighters are doing it to try to catch up to John, but I understand what they are saying.

Women still onl earn three-quarters of the money that men earn.
I DESPISE THIS STATISTIC. This is the biggest reason why people do not trust them. They do not tell the real story. Women and men do not work in the same jobs. They do not make the same choices. They do not make the same sacrifices. They do not have the same training or experience. So why the hell SHOULD they make the same money? However, all of those things are changing, especially the training, and by extension, the experience. And further, when you do compare apples to apples, the gap dramatically decreases, disappears entirely or in some cases, works in women's favour. In my experience, I have never actually observed a pay disparity in favour of men when all is taken into account unless it was in women's favour, although such advantages were quite small. Seriously, read this book.

There are more women in poverty than men.
Probably for similar reasons.

Angelo Soares says that in Quebec, we are far from having achieved the ideal working conditions for women.
I would ask him what those are, and if anyone else has had or deserves such perfect conditions.

Men do less at home. This includes both housework and raising children.
The assumption is that having more women in positions of power is what women, men or society actually want or need, which I partly doubt. Francine Descarrières says that an equilibrium will not be achieved until the division of chores at home is natural. Does this mean that within a given home, the man does one set of tasks and the women does the rest? Does it mean that they both do everything half the time? What does this perfect balance for all households look like?

I agree that women are currently the biggest economic growth vehicle. I also agree that there are many unique challenges that women face. But as you can see, I am skeptical of many of these statistics that are trotted out as givens; I won't take them at face value, and neither should you.