Sociological Issue – Women and Poverty in Canada

The key to success in sociology is practicing your sociological imagination. 

This assignment requires you to pick a film of your choice and explain how it can be understood/analyzed using a sociological imagination.

About Mill’s promise of sociology and the relationship between the individual and society/social structures. 

Answer:

The most familiar and talked about idea is that social class and race determine the level of poverty in society. However, the condition of women in the state of Canada puts forward the fact that gender is also a key factor in determining who is poor. Although the present analysis is regarding the situation of Canadian women, the scenario is almost same with the women of other states/counties whatever be the ratio. It has been found that the Canadian women are more prone to live in an extremely poverty ridden condition than men. An infographic statement says that almost 21% of women living in Canada who are single mothers, survive in poverty and ailment as informed by Walsh et al., (2016).

They invest double time in doing unpaid work than men do invest, such as meal preparation, child care, household works. The social structure of the society demands women to
play the role of a dependent wife and a responsible mother. This stereotype of an ideal women is deeply sown into the psychology of society has led to such situation as per the view of Smith-Carrier & Lawlor, (2017). Mothers are forced to limit their further education and spend rest of their lives on child rearing. It is mainly due to want of affordable childcare around Canada. This causes them to take up poorly waged or part –time jobs, precarious employments to earn livelihoods for themselves and their children. The wage difference based on gender is the reason behind why women are poorer than men.

Keeping in view all the aspects concerning the social position and economic status of women in Canada, the basic reasons behind their impoverishment and how they could get over such conditions have been summarized in a short documentary film presented by the National Film Board of Canada in the year 1987. In this short documentary film, Rosemary Brown who was the then social activist and educator directly speaks to the students of high school regarding the issue of poverty among women. The major purpose of the film is to outline the role and position of women in society and work force. It also provides possible solution to the ‘feminization of poverty’ through the voice of Rosemary Brown found from Nfb.ca, (2018).  

Investigations suggest that poverty in women especially in single women who are stressed with the burden of child upbringing and educating, is consequently related to the poverty in children. Due to the deplorable condition of their mothers, the children suffer the most, from lack of nutritious food, poor health condition and lack of proper education. Hence, it is clear that it is equal to investing in children when invested on women, claims Walsh et al., (2016). Unfortunately, the situation is not the same, as women are considered since the distant past as something dispensable who could be made to work at nominal wages. The most surprising fact that Rosemary Brown points out in the documentary is that, education cannot be directly related to earning money, but lack of education definitely earns poverty.

 The film also captures that after the World War II, the condition of women changed to some extents as few women started going to the cites and got employed in the official works. Unfortunately, this was only with the richly parented women who had a little better education than the ‘have –nots’. The situation of the poor women remained the same who were paid only $ 4 for a 70 hours’ job. Rosemary Brown points out that in the 60s women started voicing for their rights in the labor union. Upholding the Canadian reality at the time when the documentary film was released, Brown claims that there were 500,000 families parented by women single handedly in a disastrous economic condition with less secured, less skilled jobs without any improvement (Nfb.ca, 2018).

According to the infographic status by the year 2015, almost 36% of aboriginal women of Australia are going through severe poverty. 26% women in Canada having some physical disability fall under the ‘below poverty line’ as per the view Smith-Carrier & Lawlor, (2017). Although there are certain benefits, policies, grants and services designed to support people with disabilities, these programs do not efficiently address and resolve the issues disabled women face regarding employment and economic barriers. Rosemary Brown drags the attention of the students towards the condition of senior women or old aged women after they are either widowed or divorced. They become so much dependent on either the minimum pensions inadequate to lead a standard life or the little amount of retirement savings. Ultimately they are equally driven towards poverty and poor health.

It would be supportive to drag the attention towards what view C. Wright Mills hold regarding the idea of ‘sociological imagination’. The term was coined in the year 1959 by the same author in his book ‘The Sociological Imagination’. Mills defined the term as an awareness of the association or the relationship between wider society and personal experience (Mills, 2000). It is far from a theory, rather it is an outlook of the social world where people live in and intends to instigate social members to look at their lives unusually unlike other normal days. The sociological imagination drives people to contemplate how their lives or biographies are the result of an old historical process in a wider social context.  It is nothing but the process of asking oneself the sociological questions thinking away from the regular routines of life.

Mills’ ‘sociological imagination’ is strongly relevant even today retaining its influensive qualities. It allows the people to understand their own experiences and in the society and gauge their fate in the contemporary period to change it.  The lesson one can receive by linking oneself with a wider social context might either prove terrible or magnificent as argued by Mills, (2000).  The process of realizing the relationship between history and biography can lead towards further modification in society. Sociological imagination can be conducted by asking some basic questions such as-

• What is the structure of the society as a whole?
• Where does this society stand in human history?
• What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period?

Human beings can identify the issues, troubles and their root cause in the society by asking certain questions. This is similar to what Rosemary Brown concludes by saying in the documentary field “No Way! Not Me”. She asks women to shed off their romantic dreams of a happy marriage waiting for the right person and invest their time in career making with right education. She advices the present generation of young women and men too to learn from the history in the past, relate it to their present condition in the society in order to change the situation in future. The issue of ‘feminization of poverty’ can be reduced when women will start holding full-time jobs with adequate payments for their service. The allotment of specific roles to women will be changed and improved if they are lifted from the status of mere wives and mothers (Nfb.ca, 2018). She asks the young women to take part in the political field because when the parliament and the judicial system will have maximum number of women participants, the situation will stoop down to change.

References

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.

Nfb.ca (2018). No Way! Not Me. [online] National Film Board of Canada. Available at: https://www.nfb.ca/film/no_way_not_me/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Smith-Carrier, T., & Lawlor, A. (2017). Realising our (neoliberal) potential? A critical discourse analysis of the Poverty Reduction Strategy in Ontario, Canada. Critical Social Policy, 37(1), 105-127.

Walsh, C. A., Hanley, J., Ives, N., & Hordyk, S. R. (2016). Exploring the experiences of newcomer women with insecure housing in Montréal Canada. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 17(3), 887-904.