Urban-South Asian Women In Canad Article Analysis

Summary
It is apparent that women as a group continue to experience poverty and hardship more significantly than men. One of this week’s readings illustrates how women continue to juggle paid and unpaid work, insecure employment, have multiple jobs, and seasonal work with few work supported health benefits. It is evident that even in the twentieth century women face multiple barriers to employment. These barriers include: lack of good quality childcare, lack of affordable public transportation, inflexibility of employment and much more. The article by Reid and LeDrew states how, “more than 1,772,000 women in Canada live in poverty” (Reid and LeDrew, 2016, p. 54). The primary causes of women’s poverty are described as being labor market inequities, domestic circumstances, and welfare systems. However, overwhelming findings from the article states how women’s domestic responsibility limits

their job opportunities (Reid and LeDrew, 2016, p. 59). Therefore, it is imperative to understand intersectional framework, which recognizes the complex connection among gender, location, unpaid caregiving and cultural experiences and how that affects employability.
Context
This part of the inventory will focus on how cultural factors and expectations shape women’s employability in the Urban-South Asian community.

I’ve witnessed many South Asian women having two or three part times jobs and also fully manage childcare and domestic duties. Reid and LeDrew explain, “after immigrating to Canada, some South Asian women have the potential to earn as much or more than their husbands and often found work before the men” (59). It was interesting to learn how this could create conflict in family relationships because this meant women were self-sufficient and independent.
Additionally, South Asian women’s limited opportunities of jobs were further perpetuated by cultural expectations of women’s caregiving roles, which is linked with cultural values and norms. Reid and LeDrew examine how in South Asian culture, the family is seen as the fundamental building block from which all else grows (Reid, LeDrew, p. 61). Therefore, it is important to understand how South Asian women’s caregiving responsibilities impact both their health and their

employability.
Engagement
The second reading about aging and economic security in Canada examines how old, single women and growing number of visible minority and immigrant seniors lack the financial resources that ensure a secure and stable standard of living in old age. This article helped me reflect back on my experience of working as an income assistant worker with seniors and realizing how complex of patterns of poverty for immigrant seniors were. There were many times where I had to tell clients that they were not eligible for OAS, GIS or CPP because they came to Canada in later life.
I was bound by policies, but I wish I had read this article prior to working in that setting. This article highlights how intersectionality of multiple dimensions of social identity, such as immigrant status, gender, and visible minority status affects their economic security status. Furthermore, the article emphasizes the critical need to examine the large differences between the levels of poverty between immigrants and Canadian-born citizens and across other visible minority groups in Canada.