Well educated immigrant women in Toronto are saying that child care is their primary obstacle to a productive and fulfilling life in Canada.
“We immigrant women made great sacrifices to come here, but we did not come here to be idle and beg. We did not come here to be baby machines. We came here to work, and we want to be part of building a nation,” says one non-working master's graduate from Bangladesh.
Another woman asserts that “it is medieval to think that child care is just a sop to some special interest group.It’s a fundamental right. You can’t have rights as a woman if you don’t have child care.”
With long waiting lists for childcare, immigrant mothers are hindered from improving their English, seeking work or updating their credentials in order to be able to work in the country. These women are organizing in order to help one another out by collecting information about the problem and lobbying the government for subsidized childcare.
Read the full article in the Toronto Star.
