Chapter 6

Question 1

breadwinner

Answer 1

An individual whose earnings support dependants. This term arose in the nineteenth century, when most families relied upon multiple sources of income.

It has always been gendered; even when women supported families, they have rarely been seen as “breadwinners”.

Question 2

child poverty

Answer 2

The phenomenon whereby those under the age of 18 live below the poverty line as established by the LICO.

Question 3

clan

Answer 3

A group of people united by kinship, whether actual or symbolic.
Before European contact, clans were the basic social unit and often connoted not only kinship, but particular social roles and responsibilities.

Question 4

common-law marriage

Answer 4

A system of customary marriage by which people who present themselves as spouses and fulfill certain criteria (established provincially) are entitled to legal recognition, though not necessarily all of the rights and responsibilities of legally wedded spouses.

Question 5

Divorce Act

Answer 5

Federal legislation introduced in 1968, and revised in 1985, governing the provision of divorce in Canada.

Question 6

extended family

Answer 6

A term used to refer to kin beyond the nuclear family, whether they share the same household or not.

Question 7

gender complementarity

Answer 7

The idea that men and women have distinct talents, characters, roles and spheres of influence that are not ranked hierarchically (that is, in a system of male dominance).

Question 8

grrrl power

Answer 8

A cultural phenomenon that emerged in the 1990s, emphasizing (in it’s adult form) female assertiveness, individualism, and the power of sexuality.

Question 9

Indian Act

Answer 9

Federal legislation of 1876, revised periodically since then, that governs and defines registered Indians (First Nations) and their reserves.

Question 10

LICO

Answer 10

The Low-Income-Cut-Off, a boundary established by Stats Canada that serves as Canada’s unofficial measure of poverty. Stats Canada establishes a number of LICOs based on family size and size of community and residence.

Question 11

Matrilocal

Answer 11

Determining residence by female kinship rather than by male. Thus a married couple would reside with the women’s family rather than the mans.

Question 12

New Woman

Answer 12

A feminine ideal that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century along with feminist activism and theory.

The New Woman would be independent, educated, and assertive. By the early twentieth century, commentators were concerned about the new woman as a symbol of societal decline.

Question 13

nuclear family

Answer 13

A twentieth-century term describing a family structure or household composed of a couple and their children. While it is a common historical form, particularly in Western Europe, it has never been universal.

Question 14

race suicide

Answer 14

A late nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century concept that argued, on the basis of evolutionary theory, that the “white race” was in decline; a particular cause, proponents argued, was the declining birth rate among middle and upper class white women and the “rampant” fertility of poor whites and racial “others”.

Question 15

residential schools

Answer 15

In the Canadian context, boarding schools first founded in the nineteenth century to help “assimilate” Aboriginal children.

Question 16

second shift

Answer 16

Housework performed after putting in a workday, or more broadly, the responsibility for the ‘job’ of housework in addition to paid employment (often put on women).

Question 17

separation of spheres

Answer 17

A nineteenth century ideology that distinguished between private and public in a new way, separating the world of family and love from the world of employment, politics, and competition.

Women were to be protected from the latter by their confinement in the private realm, while men could find respite there from the hurly-burly of their activities in the public realm.