Question Period Note: Gender Wage Gap

How is the Government of Canada working to address the gender wage gap between women and men?

• Addressing the persistent gender wage gap is crucial to advancing gender equality and women’s economic security.

• The Government of Canada has put in place measures that support women’s labour market outcomes, including proactive pay equity legislation, pay transparency measures and the Early Learning and Child Care initiative.

• We are committed to building on this progress and to continue supporting women’s economic security.

There are a number of factors that contribute to the gender pay gap:
o Societal norms and biases influence the value of jobs and wages, so that sectors and jobs where women and men work are differently valued, with work done by women being undervalued;
o Gender bias and discrimination (intentional and unintentional) in business practices prevent women from achieving their full economic potential, such as advancing to senior management positions; and,
o Insufficient options for child care and elder care result in women doing more unpaid caregiving and having less time for paid work.

When comparing median hourly wages of women and men (aged 15+) working full-time in 2019, women earned 88 cents for every dollar earned by men suggesting a gap of 12 percentage points. The gap has remained stable since 2017.

Earning inequalities between women and men tend to increase with age because women experience more employment interruptions than men, and because older women generally have lower levels of educational attainment and work experience than younger women. That said, a study released in January 2020 by the University of Ottawa and the Labour Market Information Council ¬(with the support of Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada) suggests that an annual earning inequality also seems to appear immediately after postsecondary graduation and widens notably in the first five years in the workforce.
o When comparing annual earnings of women and men with the same credentials, the study found that women earn 2% to 21% less than their male counterparts in the first year after graduating.
o When comparing annual earnings of women and men with the same credentials and within the same field of study, the study found that five years after graduation, women earned less than their male counterparts in every field of study at all credential levels – with the biggest annual earning gaps in the STEM fields.

Furthermore, Indigenous women continue to experience persistent obstacles to their economic wellbeing, as demonstrated by labour force participation rates and prevalence of low income:
o In 2019, 75% of Indigenous women (this excludes those living on reserves and other “Aboriginal settlements” in the provinces as well as those living in the territories) in the core working ages of 25 to 54 participated in the labour force, compared to 84% of Indigenous men.
o In 2016, the prevalence of low income among Indigenous women was 25% compared to 14% for the total population of women and girls in Canada.

Existing Supports

Proactive Pay Equity legislation creates a regime that will ensure that women and men working in federally-regulated workplaces, including the federal private sector, the federal public service, parliamentary workplaces, and Ministers’ offices, receive equal pay for work of equal value.

Pay Transparency measures will provide Canadians with more information on pay practices of employers in the federally-regulated sector. This would include converting existing pay information filed by federally regulated employers under the Employment Equity Act into more user-friendly online content, with specific attention paid to making existing wage gaps more evident.

Initiatives such as the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, the Apprenticeship Incentive Grant for Women; Women in Construction Fund; and the Pre-Apprenticeship Program are helping to address work force disparity.

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