Compressing “The Sandwiched”: An Examination of Reductionist Health Policies on Women in Canada

Abstract

Worldwide, policymakers are critically examining the escalating costs of health care. One proposed solution has been to move away from a centralized “general hospital”-type of treatment in favor of a family-based model emphasizing health as well as treatment. While I agree that such approaches constitute an innovative outlook on health care, I draw on a social ecological approach in order to attract attention to and lay out the argument for future research examining the unacknowledged and unstudied impact that such proposed policies will have on women. Undoubtedly, it is they who will bear the brunt of the proposed health-related responsibilities offloaded by governments. I examine the implications of such proposed policies on Canadians, particularly Canadian women, although the Canadian system is but an exemplar of the changing dynamics of caregiving in a broader world situation.

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Notes

About 25% of 45- to 64-year old men with children at home provided elder care compared with 32% of women in similar circumstances.

Seventy-three percent of “sandwiched” employees had children less than 20 years of age. Of these, 221,500 had at least one child under the age of 16, and 177,000 had two or more children under the age of 18.

29 hours versus 13.