Disabilities, gender and employment: social exclusion, employment equity and Canadian banking1

********** At present, the track record for ensuring equity for persons with disabilities, much less those with psychiatric disabilities, is far from shining. According to the 2001 Employment Equity Report, persons with disabilities represent 2.4 percent of the workforce, drastically below the labour market availability of 6.5 percent. The representation of persons with disabilities fell this year, continuing a declining trend that started in 1996. This group has experienced the least progress under the Act. (Wendy Steinberg, Policy Analyst, Canadian Mental Health Association). Wendy Steinberg's comments are part of the evidence she gave in February 2002, before the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities as part of the comprehensive review of the federal Employment Equity Act for the House of Commons (Longfield 2002). People with disabilities suffer from appallingly high rates of poverty, and paid work is frequently cited as a primary route out of poverty. However, many people with disabilities, who are in paid employment, are ghettoised into low status, low paid jobs. Canada's disability policies increasingly address how and why persons with disabilities are disadvantaged in, and excluded from, the paid labour force. In this paper, I focus on a key piece of Canada's disability and employment policies: the federal government's Employment Equity Act (first passed in 1986, then amended in 1995). The Act is intended to encourage organisations to improve their employment practices regarding four 'designated groups': women, persons with disabilities, visible minorities and Aboriginals. The Act covers the federal public sector and federally regulated private firms in banking, communications and transportation. I look at the 'Big Six' banks, which are among the biggest private sector employers in Canada, and employ a substantial share of the workers covered by the Act. Canada's national system of banks is dominated by the 'Big Six' banks (Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, CIBC, National Bank, Royal Bank and Toronto-Dominion Bank), which together employ 91 percent of all bank workers in Canada. My interest in the 'Big Six' stems from their prominence in the Canadian imaginary of 'Corporate Canada', especially given that the U.S. controls so much of the Canadian economy, particularly manufacturing (Britton 1996; Burgess 2000). The analysis for this paper is part of a larger, ongoing project investigating the employment of the four 'designated groups' in the 'Big Six' banks, here I explore employment by gender and disability status (women with disabilities, women without disabilities, men with disabilities and men without disabilities). I analyse the employment patterns for Canada as a whole, as well as Toronto because of its place in Canada's urban and economic hierarchy, especially in terms of financial services. In 2001, 38 percent of all 'Big Six' workers in Canada were located in Toronto (whereas the 2001 Census data indicates that 16 percent of Canada's employed workforce is in Toronto). My paper is framed around the growing literature on the social and cultural dimensions of workplace dynamics and the role of gender in the workplace and the organisation of firms. My analysis is informed by disability studies and feminist scholars' analyses of paid work. Disability scholars generally start from a position of problematising society rather than pathologising the individual disabled person. Disability scholars examine the social, economic and political factors that marginalise people with disabilities from workplaces, communities and society. They press for the inclusion and integration of people with disabilities, including access to the labour market and the workplace. A long-standing topic of feminist investigations is gender inequality in employment, especially occupational segmentation and the gender wage gap. …