In Canada, researchers contracted by the Ontario Women's Directorate and policy analysts in the Ontario Ministry of Health have confirmed that women in health care and social service occupations receive low pay, work part-time and/or irregular shifts, and complain about stress and burnout. There may be a great deal for us to learn from the Norwegian initiative and experience, although it is important to keep in mind that the Norwegian context is a much more comprehensive welfare state, where there are very few private health care or social services agencies.

Many women who would be affected by the NKF proposals work in home-care and visiting home-making, others in municipal homes for the elderly or childcare centers. Their wages are low, their work is often part-time, and it is categorized as low-skilled or unskilled. Feminists and union activists in Norway have spent much time debating gendered ideologies of care, and how these do or don't coincide with cuts to state services, privatization and changes in the conditions of women's paid and unpaid labour (1). Though issues have included gender and class divisions of public and private "caring" labour, struggles for the six-hour work day, pay equity, pension reforms for part-time workers and gender quotas in public sector hiring and promotion practices, it would be an overstatement to characterize recent Norwegian health, education and welfare policies as feminist.

Norway is a small country with about four million inhabitants, most of whom are ethnic, white Norwegians. There is a small, but growing immigrant population in the large southern cities while a few thousand indigenous Same inhabit the north. Their history of colonization and domination by white Norwegians (as well as Finns and Swedes) closely resembles the treatment of native peoples in North America. It is important to note that Norwegian employers and the Norwegian state have not used immigration as a significant tool in post-war labour market policy. While a large number of workers in low-paid caring occupations in Canada are immigrant women, their counterparts in Norway are almost exclusively ethnic Norwegians.

The NKF represents 180,000 municipal workers in hospitals, homes for the aged, day-care centers, public transit, libraries, and various home-care programs. Since the mid-1970s the union has pursued several strategies to improve the conditions of female dominated occupations in the health care and social service sectors. But after years of centralized bargaining to effect a fairer wage distribution and ten years of equal pay legislation, large numbers of women in the health care, education and welfare system continue to work part-time for low wages, and have few opportunities for mobility or advancement.

In the early 1980s the NKF began to argue that recruitment to the female dominated "caring" occupations would become more difficult while the need for health and social services would grow with an aging population (2). The union further predicted that turnover and attrition rates would increase unless something was done about wages and occupational status. The main strategy proposed was to make employment conditions for women more similar to those for men: full-time and regular contracts, with recognized occupational status, training and credentials.

Norwegian researchers had also began to document some unsettling truths about girls' secondary schooling: it was dead-end, did not provide occupational qualifications, nor did it lead to certification or portable credentials that were of any value on the labour market. This contrasted with the very systematic ways in which "masculine" programs such as carpentry, plumbing, mechanics are directly linked into apprenticeships, and provide recognized certification (3).

Initially, the NKF focused its efforts on childcare assistants. Municipal governments are the largest providers of childcare services in Norway; municipal centers employ workers whose education is recognized and certified across the country, and assistants who often have little or no formal training or education beyond secondary school. Trained childcare workers carry out much of the administrative work, oversee relations with parents, and work directly with the children, while assistants work with the children, prepare food, supervise outdoor activities and so on. The division of labour between childcare workers and assistants is regulated by state policy and collective bargaining.