Q&A with Kate McInturff, senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
What are some of the milestones we have reached in Canada in terms of gender parity?
The areas where we've come close to achieving parity between men and women are health and education. Men and women in Canada have high life expectancy and high levels of access to health care. They also have very high levels of education. We've also seen a significant increase in the share of women in paid work. There are 2.5 million more women in paid work today than there were 30 years ago. Most of that growth has been in full-time employment and has come with the increase in education and the change of some of our expectations around women's roles.
Where do we still need to make improvements?
While we've seen a huge increase of women in paid work, we still see a significant difference between women's and men's rates of pay, even when you correct for education, occupation and years of experience. Women are earning, on average, 20 per cent less than their male peers, working full-time. And that is not simply a question of women in lower-paying fields – even though that is also an issue – or fewer years of experience.
What causes this gap?
I believe that employers' attitudes towards women haven't quite caught up with women's education. We are all very comfortable with ideas of women going to college and university, but when it comes to promotion and putting them into senior management positions, it's not happening at the same rate as for their male counterparts. Catalyst Canada produced an interesting report two years ago looking at what's called the 'sticky floor,' not just the glass ceiling. They found that among MBA graduates, from day one, women were paid less, and within a year or so following graduation had less high-profile portfolios and were given fewer opportunities to interact with people in the C-suite. This is due to the attitudes of their employers right from the get go, counting them out of higher-profile assignments.
What else do we need to keep in mind?
We need a better understanding of the double burden of unpaid care work. Women in Canada still perform double the number of hours of housework and childcare work as men. After those women put in a full day at work and come home to housework or care work, you can see that this starts to eat into the time they could use for preparing for a meeting the next day or putting in an application for a promotion, for example.
What can be done?
One of the key instruments available to both the private and the public sector is the increase in transparency of pay and promotions. I believe that no one sets out to be discriminatory, but research clearly demonstrates it is still happening. We need organizations and employers to be willing to track how they are paying and promoting men and women to identify gaps. The second step is putting some kind of mechanism in places to ensure the gaps are found and addressed. There are some suggestions on the table, including more proactive regulations and government oversight to ensure that men and women are being paid equally.
What else is important to know?
While it is discriminatory to pay women in senior management positions less and promote them less, we need to realize the impact of the wage gap across the spectrum. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers in Canada are women. If we look at the lowest end of the wage spectrum, that 20 or 30 per cent difference in pay can be a matter of being able to buy groceries or not. For women who may be earning $20,000 or $30,000 a year, that wage gap makes a huge difference to their ability to provide for themselves and their families. For me, that is an imminent and pressing concern that needs to be addressed.
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