Publications

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Edited Textbook

Leslie Nichols’ new edited textbook Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach (Women’s Press/Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2019) provides an updated analysis of Canadian women’s experiences in the labour force. It adopts an intersectional perspective to examine social conditions such as gender, age, race, and immigration status that come together to influence women’s socioeconomic well-being and success at work. Topics addressed in the book include women’s participation in unions, occupational health and safety, and unemployment; immigrant, young, and black women and women with disabilities; and women working in journalism, childcare, university teaching, firefighting, and manufacturing.

The book challenges traditional social norms and notions of women’s place in society and in the workforce. While highlighting women’s progress in general—far more women work today than a century ago—the book also underlines the many ways in which traditional gender norms remain entrenched in workplaces, government policies, and the home. Women continue to do so much unpaid household labour that their ability to undertake education and full-time professional work is impaired. Government policies, like society as a whole, fail to acknowledge that this unpaid labour is essential for the Canadian economy, as women are bearing and raising future labourers. Policies like Employment Insurance penalize women for their essential economic role as mothers, and immigration policies regard women as mere appendages of their husbands with no economic value. Meanwhile, misogyny, sexual harassment, and even sexual violence remain prevalent in many work environments, such as journalism and firefighting.

The book shows how many of the forces that work against women’s full socioeconomic equality have gotten worse under neoliberal policies that began in the 1980s.

Under neoliberalism, women have lost ground as they struggle to continue fulfilling the expectations of them as homemakers and mothers, with diminishing government support for that role. As Canada continues to strive to be a very diverse society and include previously marginalized people in the workforce—immigrants, racialized people, people with disabilities, Indigenous people—the systemic inequality of those groups only becomes more salient.

The book’s 28 authors come from diverse academic and social backgrounds. Many of them have both academic expertise and direct personal experience with the issues they write about, including disability, racialization, journalism, and sex work.

Working Women in Canada is the only contemporary textbook on this topic. To support teachers, the book includes a list of thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter and a glossary.

Endorsements for Working Women in Canada

“This lively, informed, and up-to-date introduction to women’s work in Canada brings together chapters on employment and labour market issues, the experiences and circumstances of different groups of workers, and a range of sectors. Useful, interesting, and provocative, it promises to be a popular resource for teaching.”Meg Luxton, Ph.D., School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, York University

“I found Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach a very comprehensive, up-to-date book that examines the multiple intersectional realities that women face in the workplace and economy today. The book presents an anti-racist and anti-colonialist perspective, plus it educates students about diversity issues in the workforce. It is also written by an impressive array of authors: experts in the field of women and work in Canada today.”Wendee Kubik, Ph.D., Women’s & Gender Studies and Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University

Edited Journal Volume

2018: Women and Precarious Work: Health Implications. Women’s Health and Urban Life 14(1). Served as primary editor for this special edition and wrote one article (see below).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2020: Nichols, Leslie. Canada’s Self-Employed Workers: Differential Treatment under Employment Insurance and the Special Benefits Program. (Under review).
2020: Nichols, Leslie, Belinda Ha, and Vappu Tyyskä. Canadian Immigrant Youth and the Education-Employment Nexus. Canadian Journal of Family and Youth 12(1): 178 – 199.
2018: Newcomer Women’s Experiences of Immigration and Precarious Work in Toronto. Women’s Health and Urban Life 14(1): 7–30.
2018: Women and Precarious Work: Health Implications. Women’s Health and Urban Life 14(1): iii–vi.
2018: Combining Diaries and Interviews in Time Use Studies. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 38(9/10): 766–779.
2018: Nichols, Leslie J., Taraneh Etemadi, and Vappu Tyyskä. Time Poverty of Pakistani Immigrant Women in Toronto. South Asian Diaspora 10(1): 31–44.
2016: Motherhood and Unemployment: Intersectional Experiences from Toronto and Halifax. Canadian Review of Social Policy 76: 1–24.
2016: Lived Experiences of Unemployed Women in Toronto and Halifax, Canada, Who Were Previously Precariously Employed. Alternate Routes 27: 162–186.
2013: Analyzing Policy Frames for Unemployed Workers’ Supports within Canada. AG: International Journal of Gender Studies 2(3): 219–245.
2012: Orloff versus Misra et al.: Assessing Feminist Approaches to Gender, the State, and the Transition to Employment Insurance in Canada. MP: An Online Feminist Journal 3(6): 172–207.
2012: Labour Market Policy in Canada and Denmark: “Flexicurity” and the Possibilities for Progressive Labour Market Reform. Socialist Studies: The Journal for the Society of Socialist Studies 8(2): 163–188.
2012: Alliance Building to Create Change: The Women’s Movement and the 1982 CUPW Strike. Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society 19: 59–72.

Peer-reviewed Book Chapters

2019: Young Women: Navigating the Education-Employment Divide. In Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols. Toronto: Canadian Scholars/ Women’s Press.
2019: Unemployed and Underemployed Women in Canada. In Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols. Toronto: Canadian Scholars/Women’s Press.
2019: Immigrant Women’s Work: Paid and Unpaid Labour in the Neoliberal Economy. Co-authored with Vappu Tyyskä and Pramila Aggarwal. In Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols. Toronto: Canadian Scholars/Women’s Press.
2019: Women, Work, and Intersectionality: An Introduction. In Working Women in Canada: An Intersectional Approach, edited by Leslie Nichols. Toronto: Canadian Scholars/Women’s Press.
2016: Impacts of Unemployment on Women in Toronto and Halifax. In Reading Sociology, edited by Patrizia Albanese, Lorne Tepperman, and Emily Alexandra. Oxford University Press.
2016: Motherhood and Unemployment: Immigrant Women’s Experiences from Toronto. In The Migrant Maternal: “Birthing” New Lives Abroad, edited by Anna Shultes and Helen Vallianatos. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.
2015: Immigrant Women in Canada and the United States. Co-authored with Vappu Tyyskä. In Immigrant Experiences in North America: Understanding Settlement and Integration, edited by Harald Bauder and John Shields. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Reprinted in Gender and Women’s Studies in Canada: A Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs and Carla Rice. Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2018.

Peer-reviewed Report

2016: Turcotte, Joseph F., Leslie Nichols, and Lisa Philipps. Maximizing Opportunity, Mitigating Risk: Aligning Law, Policy and Practice to Strengthen Work-Integrated Learning in Ontario. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

Newspaper Article

2016: Phillipps, Lisa, Joseph Turcotte, and Leslie Nichols. The Downsides of Post-Secondary Co-op Work Placements. Globe and Mail, Oct. 27.