This article analyses the gendered and differential benefits and costs associated with globalization. It explores current globalization-induced labour force changes in terms of their intersection with race, class and gender, suggesting globalization as a force in concert with other phenomena which marginalizes groups of already disadvantaged Canadian women. The implications of these changes are analysed from two perspectives - their impacts on the women and families facing exclusion from mainstream life and their broader sociopolitical effects. The article posits that these changes in concert with a retrenching welfare state and an increasing commodification of social roles may act to transform the nature of Canadian society, which has maintained a delicate balance between the inclusive social welfare schemes of Western Europe and those much less generous provisions in the US, a society which, until recently, widely conferred social citizenship and enabled access to a valued and acknowledged public sphere.