Cohabitation and marriage in Canada. The geography, law and politics of competing views on gender equality

Abstract

In this chapter, we look at unmarried cohabitation in Canada with a focus on regional differences. The high level of unmarried cohabitation in Quebec is known since the 1980s. Consequently, a substantial part of the research on unmarried cohabitation in Canada has actually focused on Quebec, and most of the research that has not focused on Quebec has dealt with Canada as a single unit. We use data from census and two surveys to examine the individual factors that could explain the differences in the spread of unmarried cohabitation between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Analyses lead to conclude that the differences arise from the institutional settings rather than being related to individual characteristics. Quebec law uses unmarried cohabitation and marriage to accommodate two competing views of gender equality-one that rests on the assumption that spouses should be as economically independent as possible during and after marriage, while the other contends that equality implies dependence even after separation or divorce-whereas in the rest of Canada, law implements only the second one, more in marriage, but also in unmarried cohabitation. The analyses also point to differences within English Canada that, as far as we know, had not been noticed in previous research: unmarried cohabitation seems to be more common in Eastern Canada than in Western Canada, which might be related to immigration.