Women juggle many roles
Cariboo Press - Vernon Morning Star
June 11, 2008
By: Cara Brady

A woman's work is never done - paid or unpaid, in the formal or informal economy, large city or rural area.

Lumby was the smallest of four B.C. centres to take part in the Women's Employability and Health Research Project by Dr. Colleen Reid of the Coalition for Women's Economic Advancement.

The project, which started in the fall of 2005 and recently released its final report, was done on a feminist action (community-based) research model which examined the relationship between women's employability and health/ wellbeing. It looked at the social, economic, political and cultural determinants of health.

"The major finding of our research was that women are suffering health implications from the stress of juggling paid and unpaid work with insufficient resources in an isolated rural community," said Robin LeDrew, one of the local researchers. "The research involved women in every decade of life and was done through in-depth interviews. A group of women who had been involved in the project decided to follow up with action designed to meet the needs of local women."

…. "We find a big issue here is lack of transportation and that many women are caregivers for family members and find it hard to get support. I see WOW as a good centre to work from. There are a lot of creative people involved and the people here know how to survive," said Jarosinski, who is a family caregiver herself.

While traditional research starts with an answer and looks for data to support it, community-based research starts with questions to see what is really going on for an issue. The Women's Employability and Health Research Project found that Lumby and area women were concerned about caregiving, transportation, access to further education, child care, unemployment, the lack of jobs (well-paying or not), and access to health care services. There were four open community meetings which added more input to the research.

The research also showed that in the current economy, many husbands have to go away to work, leaving wives to deal with the family for most of the time. In other cases, women stayed in abusive relationships rather than struggling on their own on social assistance. All the women interviewed agreed that the hardest part was juggling the multiple roles of family, paid or unpaid work or caregiving and their own health.

"People want to do the best they can but it takes time and resources that we sometimes don't have," said Beck.

The report made recommendations aimed at government and business, including improved access to education and retraining programs, help with childcare costs, a rise in minimum wage and addressing inequality in the work place. Other recommendations dealt with improved health care in rural areas, perhaps through the use of nurse-practitioners, increased funding for home care service and improved recreational facilities. The report suggested poverty be addressed by providing adequate income assistance, food security programs and recognizing caregiving for Canada Pension Plan credits….