Question Period Note: Recent Evidence on the State of Gender Equality

What is the state of gender equality in Canada?

• Since 2015, the Government of Canada has made gender equality a key government priority and recent data shows progress for women in areas such as political representation, labour force participation, and hourly wages.
• For example:
o In 1970, only one woman held a seat in the House of Commons. Today, there are 100 women Members of Parliament. Gender parity has almost been achieved in the Senate, compared to 2015 when only 36% of senators were women.
o In 2020, women earned an average 89 cents for every dollar earned by men. This reflects a 3% reduction in the gender wage gap since 2015, based on the average hourly earnings of all workers. In 2020, women 15 years and older represented nearly half (47.1%) of the labour force in Canada, compared to 37.6% in 1976 — a percentage increase of over 25%.
• However, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to roll back these gains.
o In March 2020, women lost jobs at almost twice the rate of men. As the economy began to open in May 2020, men gained back jobs at more than twice the rate of women. As of March 2021, women were within 2.2% of pre-shutdown employment levels and men were within 1.0%.
o Research suggests that the pandemic may have rolled back gains in women’s economic opportunities, given the fact that more women, particularly those in low-paying jobs, moved out of employment during the pandemic.
• The Government will continue its progress to build a feminist, intersectional Action Plan for Women in the Economy that will work to push past systemic barriers and inequities.

• Some recent studies have shed light on factors related to gender equality:
o A recent Power Gap analysis conducted by the Globe and Mail found women, and especially racialized women, are underrepresented both at the highest levels of decision-making and in other leadership positions in public-sector workplaces in Canada. The study looked at the representation of women in municipal and provincial governments, universities and publicly-owned corporations and found women are hitting the glass ceiling as mid-level managers, well below the executive level. The study also found that men made more than their female counterparts with the same title, and the gap steadily widened on the way to the top.
o A Statistics Canada article published in December 2020 showed that women accounted for 14% of all new apprenticeship registrations in Canada, up from 6.8% in 1991. Moreover, women have been increasingly enrolling in apprenticeship programs traditionally occupied by men. In 2019, over one third (35.6%) of women who entered an apprenticeship program that year were in a male-dominated trade, such as electricians (5.4%), interior finishing (5.3%) and carpenters (5.1%). From 2009 to 2019, women’s representation among new entries in male-dominated trades increased from 3.7% to 5.9%. Despite this progress, in 2015, women apprentices were nine times more likely than men to report harassment or discrimination during an apprenticeship.
o A study released by Statistics Canada in August 2020 showed that Canadian men and women have similar rates of job mobility and job stability. The results also showed that although the labour force participation rate of women has increased significantly from 1978 to 2018 among women aged 20 to 54, gender segmentation has persisted as most new hires continue to work in typical male- or female-dominated jobs. Finally, the findings suggested that the gender wage gaps are smaller among new hires than within the entire workforce; however, five years into a new job, the gender wage gap widened in most occupation groups.
• COVID-19 has impacted women in Canada differently and more severely than men.
o In March 2020, the monthly decline in employment for women aged 15 and older (-6.9%, -623,000) was almost double that of men (­3.7%, ­373,500). In May 2020, as the economy began to reopen in much of the country, employment increased more than twice as fast among men (+2.5%, +217,000) than women (+1.1%, +85,300). As of March 2021, women’s employment remained 2.2% lower than pre-COVID February 2020 levels, compared to 1.0% for men.
o Young women (aged 15-24) have been particularly hard hit by economic shutdowns during the pandemic. From February to April 2020, employment among young women declined by 37.6%, compared to 31.0% among young men. As of March 2021, young women remained further below their pre-COVID February 2020 employment levels (-9.5%) than young men (-3.0%).
o As of March 2021, the employment level of core-aged mothers whose youngest child is under 6 years old was 88.7% of their pre-pandemic February 2020 level (or a deficit of 130,500 jobs), compared to 90.1% (or a deficit of 130,900 jobs) for core-aged fathers whose youngest child is under 6 years old.
• The unequal division of unpaid domestic and care work experienced prior to the pandemic has been compounded by the current situation. Research conducted by Statistics Canada in June 2020 reveals that women are more likely to report that they perform most parental tasks during the pandemic. This research also indicates that homeschooling during the pandemic has fallen mostly to women, with almost two thirds (64%) of women reporting that they mostly performed homeschooling duties or helped children with homework, while 19% of men reported being mostly responsible for this task.
• Data collected by Statistics Canada showed that between March 2020 and January 2021, a sample of 14 police services reported a 20% decrease in sexual assaults, including those committed by non-family members (-22%) and by family members (-9%), when compared to the same time period 12 months ago (i.e. March 2019 to January 2020).
• The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) reported that a total of 160 women and girls were killed by violence in Canada in 2020. The police identified an accused in 148 of these homicides – 128 of the accused (90%) were men.
• The impact of the pandemic was felt unevenly across service providers. According to a crowdsourcing survey conducted by Statistics Canada among organizations who provide services to victims of violence, 31% of respondents indicated that the number of people they served had increased between March and July 2020, while 46% responded that they saw a decline in the number of new clients and 31% responded that they saw no changes.

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