'Justa' Homemaker: one Canadian's fight for recognition.

My kids tell me that I may not have been a rebellious teen-ager but now I'm making up for it. My husband tells me I'm a more ardent feminist than most of the women he works with - a comment I'm not sure is meant as praise. The truth as I see it is that I'm driven to follow through on what I believe, and that one particular feminist belief has led me to lobby Canadian government officials, write letters to editors, appear on talk shows, and research three books. Whatever it takes.

My problem is that I'm a homemaker. In my country that ranks me slightly above garden soil in the social hierarchy. One woman in my position took to signing her first name as "Justa," as in "Justa Housewife." I earned honors in school and university and I've taught school to (literally) thousands of kids; darn it, I'm used to a little respect. So it was a shock when a store clerk told me she couldn't accept my check because I didn't have a job, and again when my credit card was refused because I didn't have a note from my husband. I seethed when I learned I could not get life insurance and was not permitted to contribute to our national pension plan. All because I'm Justa.

But these slights are not the bottom line. As my mother says, the one issue that can fire up even the meekest of women is a threat to her child, and so I guess it's at least partly maternal drive that is fueling me. Why shouldn't I be allowed to define mothering and homemaking as my job, my career, and still be treated as a grown-up?

I am a feminist by conviction. When I publish something I often use my initials, "B.G.," instead of my name, "Beverly," so that people will judge my work, gender excluded. I seem to have imbued my kids with my convictions; one of them had already won several feminist awards at age twenty-one. I applaud as loudly as anyone when the specialist heart surgeon is a woman or when a woman is appointed a judge. A woman's place is not in the home, it's wherever she wants to be. But in my country (and elsewhere) her preference is not honored, or rewarded, if she chooses to be in the home.

It's partly a matter of culture and tradition. If a man says he's had a hard day at the office, people sympathize. If a woman says the children have given her a hard day at home, she's a whiner. If a nurse says she isn't paid enough we look at her salary and credentials and try to figure out what would be a fairer wage. If a mother at home says that having no personal income is difficult, society suggests she go out and get a job.

Out of culture flows policy. In Canada and many other lands the entry of most mothers into the paid workforce is a fact of life, and day-care facilities have sprung up everywhere to meet the need. Canada subsidizes the daycare expenses up to $6,000 per child per year till the child is fourteen - this to "offset the cost of working." That's a cultural and political change. But there is no matching help to moms who raise their kids at home.

The premise seems to be that since we are not "working," we have no costs to offset: our children eat for free, play with free toys, get clothes and housing at no cost. It's true, the mom-with-a-job is (probably) contributing to the gross domestic product, and she's helping create jobs by paying for child care. But (a) she is getting paid for her work, and (b) what the mom-in-the-home does also has societal value. She provides goods and services that enable both the paid workforce and the next generation to function.

I don't begrudge women with paying jobs the help of the state to rear their children; basically it's the children who need the help and who benefit, and all children are equal. But I want in. My children are also equal. In current Canadian law anyone who has a blood relationship to a child cannot be granted money for caring for the child, even though most surveys show that a blood relationship is a fairly good predictor that such a caretaker will love and stand by the child. Caregiving by mom or dad or grandma doesn't have to be better than day care to make my point, it need only be recognized as comparably safe and competent. People deserve options, as many a "working mother" would agree.

I've been making these points in letters to officials for some twenty years, and in that period things have actually gotten worse. (Maybe I'm a curse.) We have lost monetary value on the tax form as dependents of spouses: Whereas in 1957 a married man could deduct one-third of his income in support of a spouse at home, the deduction now allowed is less than one-seventh of a median income. The expenses of child-rearing were once recognized in tax law, but today parents can no longer deduct children as dependents, and the family allowance we once received has in many cases disappeared.

Who supports this cause? On my street there are two moms at home with children, four moms who work full- or part-time outside the home, and two who do salaried work from their homes. Some use nannies, some use sitters, some depend on day care. We cheer one another on because as neighbors we see when one of us is getting overstressed (and we all are from time to time). We babysit for each other and bake for each other. Friends, and as such mutually supportive.

Not so those who speak for women. The major women's groups in my country (and, it seems, in the United States), do not agree on whether to value homemakers. Some have written me saying the choice of being a homemaker is naive; better if women all have independent incomes, in part to brace themselves for divorce or widowhood. Full-time mothers are often excluded from official meetings about childcare (they're only for operators of day-care centers), and generally aren't invited to meetings about women's issues, attended only by women working outside the home. My government officially funds only the women's groups that ignore the needs and rights of homemakers.

I am not arguing that I am a better mother than others, or that raising kids at home is better than day care. Not at all. It's true that women were once more or less chained to the sink, and that was bad. Today - unless we can freely choose where we want to be - we are chained to the office desk. Speaking strictly as a feminist, I think that belittling women's work in the home was and is wrong. Allowing women to enter the professions was right, but it moved only halfway. To say women now have value because they can do what was men's work still says that only what was men's work has value. Women's work has value wherever it happens; if it is in the home in a very traditional role, it is as good as any other role. Women have to be seen not only as equals of men but as equals of one another.

If this way of thinking makes me a radical, so be it. My formal complaint to the United Nations accusing my government of official discrimination against homemakers has been accepted and will be heard by the UN's Division for the Advancement of Women, an arm of the Commission on the Status of Women, when this body meets in New York March 2-13. Two Canadian women's groups, Kids First and Mothers Are Women, have officially backed my complaint, and Endeavor Forum in Australia will support it with a matching one against their own government. I have received encouragement as well from Parents Rights in the United States, Unione Intercontinentale Caslinghe in Rome, Great Britain's National Assembly of Women, and the World Movement of Mothers in Paris. There's irony here, in that what was traditional, a societal norm, is now seen as aberrant. But that's okay. I'm up for it.

Beverly Smith is a free-lance writer, a former teacher of French in grades seven through nine, and the mother of four children, ages seventeen through twenty-three. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.