CAREGIVER DISCRIMINATION, GENDER, AND THE LAW: AN ANALYSIS OF EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CAREGIVERS IN CANADA.

As workers struggle to combine work and family responsibilities, discrimination against workers on the basis of their status as caregivers - also known as family responsibilities discrimination - is on the rise. Although both women and men feel the pinch, caregiver discrimination is particularly damaging for women, as care is intricately tied to gendered norms and expectations. In this paper, we explore how work and caregiving clash through in-depth analysis of caregiver discrimination cases resolved by Canadian Human Rights Tribunals from 1985 to 2016. We identify the issues involved in disputes, the nature of discrimination experienced by women and men, and how gendered norms and expectations about work-life facilitation inform disputes and case outcomes. We find that although women are both more likely to bring claims of caregiver discrimination and obtain favorable outcomes, the experience of bias and legal interpretation of claims is highly gendered. Women bring claims involving both implicit bias on account of their caregiver status as well as claims over the practical challenge of seeking accommodations for care, while men's claims are largely restricted to accommodation-based disputes. In adjudicating cases, tribunals are more likely to see women - as compared to men - lacking credibility when making their claims, demonstrating the extent to which legal actors question the competence and legitimacy of female complainants. In contrast, men struggle in demonstrating the legal basis of work-family interference, often failing to convey how paid work seriously interferes with their family responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]