Sexual Harassment Issues in Canada, Essay Example

Introduction

Canada is considered one of the most progressive, democratic and developed countries in the world; it promotes healthy policies of nation-building, and provides sound opportunities for immigrants seeking jobs, family reunification, and hostage. Within several centuries of the country’s existence, much change has occurred in the official policies concerning immigration and immigrant status. The 20^th century in Canada has been marked by increased attention to the rights of minorities, immigrants, and visible minority groups. All these facts should be certifying a firm movement towards multiculturalism and socio-economic integration, but in reality they do not.

There is a set of discrimination, racist and sexist policies, beliefs and stereotypes that preclude the Canadian society from becoming a welfare one; the increased predisposition to violence is dictated by the worsening condition of immigrants and strict legal regulations concerning their status in the country. The cultural purity and nationalist concerns of the Canadian government have led to the diminishing possibilities for immigrants coming to conduct domestic work in Canada. According to objective estimates, this kind of work is very unwillingly taken by Canadians because of its low status and payment; hence, the influx of foreign low-paid live-in caregivers and immigrant women who come to get married to Canadians or other immigrants entails negative consequences in terms of sharpening sexist, class, and racist contradictions within the state.

Women are suffering the discrimination, including violence, from employers on who they are dependent, or other sponsors undertaking responsibility for them for a sustainable period of time, about 10 years. Thus, it may be said that in spite of the popular multiculturalism strategy of the Canadian government, inequality, discrimination and violence towards the most vulnerable groups, that is dependant immigrants and live-in caregivers, is revealing itself at a wide scale in Canada.  The tendencies observed within the Canadian society in terms of discrimination and its revelation in violence, as well as causes for Canadian discriminatory policies, will be investigated in the present paper.

Limitations in Mainstream Feminist Theories

The mainstream feminist theories pertaining to the development of domestic violence in Canada, especially concerning the immigrant domestic workers and live-in caregivers, fail to find the roots to the existing problem because of lack of attention to the racism factor present in the formation of violence trends within a family (Dua 238). The traditional approach to finding the key to the problem of violence lay within the paradigm of a nuclear family, with the strict patriarchal, hierarchical and subordinate relationships in a traditional family. The nuclear family was seen as the major domain in which violence was produced and experienced by women, conventionally seen as a commodity of the man – head of the family, the provider and the conqueror (returning to the imperialism inherent in the Western culture, Canadian in particular) (Dua 243).

The gender division of labor, the impact of industrialization shifting the role of women and children in a family to a more equal one in the provision of sustainable conditions for a living: all this contributed to the formation of the conventional vision of the family unit with the anomalies and problems that may arouse in it (Dua 240). However, the women of color started to destructuralize the conventional socio-economic theory of violence resting on the mainstream vision of the deprived woman left with the role of the child-rarer and housewife. The minorities have shown how strongly the race and class can affect the emergence of violence in the hostile, strange community, and which is more important, how it may persist without any visible attempt to fight the state of affairs and change the dramatic situation.

The mainstream feminism theories never took into account that the rules existing for the dominant white community acted in a completely different way for immigrants. The reasons for violence emergence named by immigrants include not only an unfavorable situation in a family with a despotic male, but the whole realm of conditions in which the family exists, and the large set of challenges with which each member of that family has to fight on a daily basis. These factors may include the migration complexity, the isolation from the native community, the lack of economic and social support from the state, abusive relationships within a family, sexist and racist attitudes of the society residing in the neighborhood, and the overall neglect abused women meet in the legal institutions, including hospitals denying the incidence of violence because of its impropriety for the mainstream model of Canadian life (Bannerji 261).

It is painful to realize that the limitations found in the mainstream feminist philosophy open many ways for the violent trends to persist and intensify, especially in the marginalized groups that experience lack of governmental support and problems with representation. As it was mentioned by Das Gupta, it was only at the end of the 1970s that the women of color started to claim for their rights (one of the first efforts to claim official recognition was the creation of Women Working with Immigrant Women, which nevertheless was soon bureaucratized and had little real effect in facing the real needs of women of color) (Das Gupta 199).

That fact also revealed one of the biggest challenges for mainstream feminist ideologies in Canada: the formalities were intensely discussed, while the true problems could not be addressed because of the lack of representation of really suffering immigrant women in the organization. The issues were debated, but not imperative changes or calls to action were announced by the government, which marked only the nominal attention to the problem without genuine concern of what the multiculturalism really led to and whom it helped in reality. The nominal approach that took care only about the presence of officially legitimized anti-discriminatory policies shaped much of the modern situation with racism, class and gender discrimination, including immigrants who are initially in the vulnerable position.

Complication of Domestic Violence by Class, Racism and Globalization

Domestic violence is still a present-day reality, no matter what the government and the disinterested society might wish to think. It is exercised in many families, both in naturally Canadian ones and the ones of immigrants. It is practiced in many ways, including aggressive and non-aggressive methods. The first kind of violence is seen in the unexpected impact of globalization on the vision of Canada by its citizens. At the same time with the accelerating tempos of globalization and overall integration, Canadians have realized the necessity for preserving national purity, and have become nationalists taking care of their ‘breed’. The task for growing the forerunners of a strong nation is laid on women who act as mothers and wives, with the role of providers and masters attributed to men completely, without any sharing or complementary distribution (Dua 255).

Here the extreme nationalism brought about sexism, which meant that men had t govern the affairs of the family, work on prestigious jobs, while women should sit at home and raise the future of the nation. The role of immigrant women was surely not discussed at all – in contrast to men of color who were thought to be in sexual relationships with white women, thus contributing to the welfare of the state, women of color were considered only a tool for the labor market (Arat-Koc 208). As Bannerji correctly noticed, the country was feminized, giving the women a leading role in the country’s future, but in fact giving them no rights, only empty words (Bannerji 271).

Finally, it is essential to note one more decisive factor in the establishment of the awful situation with violence towards immigrant women and class minorities also considered marginal groups: it is the mainstream community culture that makes them keep silence about what is really happening around them. The account of Bannerji shows how scared the immigrant women may be to turn to the public with the call to help; it would mean that the society had to accept the fact that such destructive phenomena existed in their communities. More than that, the blame for deviant behaviors could be put on the immigrants themselves in the attempt to protect the cultural dignity of the Canadian nation (Bannerji 262). The author argued that in case immigrant women voiced the truth, they would think of themselves as responsible for its occurrence, which would be unbearable in the mainstream society treating them in a hostile way even without such revelations (bannerji 264). Hence, one should realize the pressure of the culture that itself tries to eliminate violence, but promotes it by common neglect.

Complication of Violence towards Live-In Caregivers

The aggravated cases of violence towards line-in caregivers have more legal than cultural or communal reasons. No matter how surprising and sad it may sound, but the state is intentionally depriving the immigrants of their rights and autonomy, thus creating the temptation for employers to create unsustainable working conditions, exercise harassment and violence towards the employees etc. The very nature of the current state of affairs in the field of domestic workers, namely caregivers work specificity is that they are rarely given the status of an independent immigrant (Arat-Koc 218). There are a number of considerations followed by the government, including the fear of independent immigrants bring their relatives as dependent ones, and the threat of immigrants’ wish to earn more in the status of independent ones (Arat-Koc 218).

However, the fear of giving autonomy to immigrants most often gives rise to the maltreatment and even law breaches by employers; there are many cases of obligatory long working hours imposed on caregivers and domestic workers, overtime tasks that are not paid, lack of privacy afforded in terms of allowance provision, poor quality of room and board, and even vulnerability to sexual abuse and harassment (Arat-Koc 218). Hence, one should think over the propriety of restrictive measures adopted by the Canadian government for the sake of the nation purity; it costs too much for the deprived and marginalized, disempowered citizens of other countries left without the right of voice, protection and resistance in Canada due to the legal effort of the officials.

The restrictive provisions about receiving language education (as in case of NLTP) is an additional factor contributing to the establishment of the violent environment for the dependent caregivers and domestic workers; women are initially treated as non-qualifying for getting training, thus being deprived of the opportunity to get permanent visas and higher-paid jobs (Arat-Koc 213). The male colonial model of the head of the family being male, even if it is in fact absolutely not so, deprives women in Canada of opportunities for self-expression and self-development, leaving them with a narrow scope of opportunities offered by such programs as Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) (Arat-Koc 220). Nonetheless, one should still remember that the LCP requires mandatory live-in conditions, and the necessity of a ‘release letter’ has been cancelled only recently, marking only a slight move towards loosing the tight chains of dependence that hold immigrants with their employers exercising violence and abuse.

Conclusion: The Anti-Oppression Movement

It is hard to define a truly effective line of action for the Canadian government in terms of fighting the discrimination, class and race segregation as well as exclusion of visible minority groups from the mainstream society. The reason for this hardship is that the state effort is evidently seen in resolving the issues, which actually leads to even worsening effects. The true nature of governmental concern is the duality of the nation, the split into Francophone and Anglophone representatives of the Canadian society; as it has been well noticed by Das Gupta, even those people who did not have Canadian citizenship but looked white, middle-class and English-speaking, were considered Canadians, and those who had their official Canadian citizenship but had some deviations in the appearance, a different style of dressing or a distinguished dialect, would be considered women of color (Das Gupta 190).

Therefore, one may see that despite all legal effort to give the minorities and immigrants a status of equality, the society is highly specific in the selection of suitable representatives for holding the name of a “Canadian”. The society is stereotyped, and no matter how much the state will spend on the introduction of multiculturalism in the country, it will never be multicultural per se. The social isolation on the basis of strong nationalism and cultural isolation for the sake of national purity will always draw the abyss between the immigrants, even if the latter have been living in the country much longer than other Canadians have.

However, there are surely some measures that should be taken to start changing the oppression model deeply embedded into the consciousness of all Canadians: the immigration legislation as well as the rules of immigrant acceptance have to be gradually altered to change the nation’s vision of immigrants and raise their status. Surely, the notion of the immigrant contribution to the nation’s welfare cannot be changed, because even despite the immigrants’ handling all costs for allowance and employment by themselves, there is still a widely spread opinion about them as a burden on the shoulders of taxpayers. However, the points system and the evaluation of domestic labor should be changed for the sake of the raising status for immigrants; once their qualifications are recognized equally highly as they are in their motherland, the immigrants will get more opportunities for employment, education and promotion in Canada (Arat-Koc 209).

The differential status and differential rights for immigrants, especially women, as it has already been mentioned in the previous sections, comes from the initial evaluation given upon entering the state. The human capital is clearly devaluated, being considered a pure commodity from the countries of the Third World, which is unacceptable under the conditions of fighting for equality of those who have initially been deprived of it upon entry to Canada (Arat-Koc 208). It is understandable that the labor supply is the main consideration for allowing great numbers of immigrants to come and reside in a much more advanced country than their own is, but the problem is aggravated with the introduction of strict points systems, the obligatory contracts with live-in employers, for dependent immigrants like family class ones etc.

Once the immigrants are provided a proper status within the hosting country, they will not put up with the violence and indecency imposed on them, and will report such occurrences without fear of being deported or, which is worse, being neglected and misunderstood. The social tolerance towards domestic violence is greatly influenced by the inherent nature of patriarchy and strict subordination of women to men in the mainstream Canadian society despite all globalization tendencies towards equality. Therefore, it is possible to suppose that domestic violence in a state tolerating male dominance in all kinds possesses a highly favorable environment to obtain aggravated forms concerning more unprotected groups of women, i.e. the immigrants.

Works Cited

Arat-Koc, Sedef. Gender and Race in “Non-discriminatory” Immigration Policies in Canada 1960s to the Present. Scratching the surface: Canadian, anti-racist, feminist thought. By Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson.  Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999: 207-233.

Bannerji, Himani. A Question of Silence: Reflections on Violence Against Women in Communities of Colour. Scratching the surface: Canadian, anti-racist, feminist thought. By Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson.  Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999: 261-287.

Das Gupta, Tanya. The Politics of Multiculturalism: “Immigrant Women” and the Canadian State. Scratching the surface: Canadian, anti-racist, feminist thought. By Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson.  Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999: 187-207.

Dua, Enakshi. Beyond Diversity: Exploring the Ways in Which the Discourse of Race has Shaped the Institution of the Nuclear Family. Scratching the surface: Canadian, anti-racist, feminist thought. By Enakshi Dua and Angela Robertson. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999: 237-259.