- the Review states that the increased acceptability and availability of part-time employment is a disincentive to full-time work. Part-time work is less than 30 hours of employment. Two-thirds of all part-time workers are female. It is clear from other sources that the part-time employment of women is a response to the conflict between family and work responsibilities. However, the Commission suspects that many persons abuse the U.I. scheme by claiming a percentage of U.I. benefits while working part-time. No data supports this opinion.

The method proposed for resolving all these abuses is to increase the entrance requirements (i.e. to more than the present minimum of 8 insured weeks); and to develop a 3-phase benefit structure that will provide income protection based on long labour force attachment and/or high regional unemployment, while limiting the duration of benefit entitlement in low unemployment regions and for short-term labour force attachments. The Review states that:

"... increased entrance requirements will affect low wage earners although some of these may be expected to be secondary earners."

"... increased entrance requirements will affect males and females equally... males and females will be almost equally affected by the 3-phase benefit structure." (underlining ours).

The Commission clearly considers secondary earners as unimportant contributors to family income and women as less important than men in their priority system.

Although the Review does not explicitly label women as the major abusers of the U.I. program, the text clearly implies that they are and that this should not be allowed to continue. What appears to be ignored is that female workers contribute to the plan and are thereby entitled to benefits under the operative rules; that the labour market itself determines the employment patterns which are described as unstable; that society requires certain standards of parenting and family maintenance behaviour in addition to certain work behaviour; that balancing the responsibilities of labour force and family is difficult without support and acceptance of the problem; that the economic system involves both the labour force and families; and that governmental agencies would do well to support both rather than supporting one at the expense of the other. The trade-off which has been devised as a way to solve the Commission's dilemma of balancing adequate income protection against work disincentives, is going to hurt women in their quest for equality of opportunity in the labour market and in training programs.

^1. E. Rosen, op. cit., p.12

^2. Ibid., p. 15 .