The real threat to equality is poverty, not hijabs

At five in the morning, when the city is still asleep, a woman boards the bus from Montréal-Nord to Laval. She wears a hijab and a Dollarama uniform. Her shift in the warehouse will last ten hours, with heavy boxes and broken backs. No politician cares about her wages, her injuries, or her dignity. Yet they will spend the entire election season debating the cloth on her head.

 

At a daycare in Saint-Michel, an educator soothes crying toddlers. She holds a degree, years of experience, and the patience of a saint. Her annual income? Barely $38,080 if she is an immigrant woman with a diploma below a bachelor’s. Her male, non-immigrant counterpart with the same education? $69,200. This is not equality. This is exploitation disguised as neutrality.

 

In a hospital in Laval, a nurse in a hijab works double shifts. She fights exhaustion, she holds patients’ hands as they breathe through pain. Her education is the same as the doctor standing beside her. But the numbers are clear: a non-immigrant man with a bachelor’s degree earns on average $96,500. An immigrant woman with the same degree takes home $53,650. That gap of more than $40,000 is not an accident. It is systemic theft.

 

In Longueuil, a cleaner leaves her children at school before taking the bus to scrub classrooms for minimum wage. With only a high school diploma, a non-immigrant man makes $42,320. She, as an immigrant woman, survives on $25,320. The difference is the price of rent, of food, of dignity.

 

Everywhere you look in Québec, the pattern is the same. At the CEGEP, at the warehouse, in the daycare, in the hospital—immigrant women earn less, are pushed harder, and are blamed more. While they lift this society on their shoulders, politicians from CAQ and PQ turn their lives into a battleground of symbols. They defend Bill 21, the law that bans public servants from wearing religious symbols, including the hijab. And they still say it is not strict enough. They want more bans, more exclusions, more humiliation.

 

Meanwhile, the real crises continue. 15,000 sexual crimes are reported every year in Québec, 90% committed by men. 30,000 mothers are forced out of the workforce because childcare is inaccessible. 10,000 women are turned away from shelters when fleeing domestic violence. Yet the politicians claim equality is threatened by a scarf on a woman’s head.

 

This is not equality. This is hypocrisy.

 

Bill 21 and the parties that defend it do not liberate women—they chain them. They use the language of feminism as a mask for racism, patriarchy, and capitalist exploitation. They silence the voices of the very women who clean the schools, care for the children, heal the sick, and run the warehouses that keep Québec alive.

 

True equality in Québec will not come from banning hijabs. It will come from raising wages so that a woman does not need two jobs to feed her family. It will come from universal childcare so that mothers are not punished for having children. It will come from shelters that welcome every woman fleeing violence. It will come from solidarity among workers—immigrant and non-immigrant, women and men—against the system that divides and exploits us.

 

Let CAQ and PQ shout about “symbols.” We know the truth. The real symbol of inequality in Québec is not the hijab. It is the pay stubs of immigrant women, the eviction notices, the hospital shifts, the daycare waiting lists, and the shelters with closed doors.

 

Our struggle is not against a piece of cloth. Our struggle is against a system that feeds on our exploitation - and we will not be silent.