Comparisons of employment barriers between visible minority and Anglo-Saxon women in different occupations

• Main Author: Lamba, Harjeet
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Scholars Commons @ Laurier 1995
• Subjects: Race; Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies; Women's Studies; First Nations
• Online Access: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/147; https://scholars.wlu.ca/context/etd/article/1146/viewcontent/MM11447.PDF

Minority groups tend to face disproportionately higher rates of unemployment, underemployment and restricted job mobility than non-minority groups. In recognition of the inequalities borne by these groups in the labour force, Judge Rosalie Abella produced a report iterating the most “efficient, effective, and equitable means of promoting employment equity.” The federal Employment Act in 1986 was produced in response to the report. Four designated groups were identified: women, visible minorities, disabled persons and First Nations people. Due primarily to the weak enforcement mechanisms of the federal legislation, the impact of this Act has been insignificant. Ontario developed its own employment legislation in 1994 which has been short lived. One significant difference between the federal and provincial legislation was that the provincial version had more stringent enforcement mechanisms. A brief review of the Act is provided in the paper. There is statistical evidence to support the need for the employment equity legislation. The focus of this study is on barriers experienced in the workforce by women in two different ethnic groups, Anglo-Saxon and visible minority, and in two different occupational categories, professional and unskilled/semi-skilled. The study endeavours to probe the interplay of ethnicity, gender and class as they impact on women in the workforce. Thirty-six interviews were conducted in total. Qualitative design, more specifically, elements of the naturalistic inquiry paradigm were employed for the study. The author argues that this type of design is most suitable for studying the multiple realities of people. The author recognizes the complexities of defining visible minorities and the need to make more distinctions between and among the specific visible minority groups. However, the terms used were mainly to remain consistent with the Employment Equity categories of visible minorities. The broad categories in which visible minorities are defined is not a limitation of the thesis, but ...