Question Period Note: Gender Wage Gap

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

• Closing the gender wage gap is crucial to advancing gender equality and economic recovery. In 2020, women earned 89 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gap has closed by 3 cents since 2015, when it was 86 cents.
• Budget 2021 commits to the following initiatives, which will help address the gender wage gap:
o $30B over five years and $8.3B ongoing, to build a Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System;
o Supporting more women entering and succeeding in STEM and skilled trades, including $250M over three years to upskill and redeploy workers to meet the needs of growing industries;
o $470 million over three years to establish a new Apprenticeship Service, through which employers in the construction industry and Red Seal trades will be incentivized to hire underrepresented Canadians, including women and persons with disabilities; and
o Introducing measures to address potential biases and barriers in staffing processes, such as amending the Public Service Employment Act.
• These proposals build on existing Government initiatives, such as proactive pay equity legislation and pay transparency measures.

• A number of factors may contribute to the gender wage gap:
o Societal norms and biases influence the value of jobs and wages, with work done by women being undervalued;
o Gender bias and discrimination 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.
• A report released by Statistics Canada showed that the largest factors explaining the gender wage gap were the uneven distribution of men and women across industries and women’s overrepresentation in part-time work. Similar to other studies, a large part of the gap remained unexplained. The study also found the narrowing of the gap between 1998 and 2018 was largely explained by changes in the distribution of men and women across occupations and women’s increased educational attainment.
• According to Statistics Canada:
o In 2020, women earned $0.89 for every dollar earned by men.
o In 2018, when comparing average hourly wages of both part-time and full-time employees, Indigenous women earned $0.80 for every dollar earned by men (Indigenous or not Indigenous) while immigrant women earned $0.82 for every dollar earned by men (immigrant or not immigrant).
o In 2019, women aged 15-30 not in school full time and employed in full time jobs earned an average of $22.94 per hour, about 6% less than the $24.43 earned by young men.
• In Canada, women, Indigenous people, racialized people, LGBTQ2 people, and people with disabilities, continue to be under-represented in higher wage positions of influence, which contributes to the wage gap.
• Budget 2021: The Government proposed a public consultation to adapt and apply the Canada Business Corporations Act diversity disclosure requirements to federally regulated financial institutions. These requirements currently apply to federally incorporated organizations.
• Fall Economic Statement 2020: The Government proposed to provide $33M over three years, starting in 2021-22, to support the 50-30 Challenge – a call to action to businesses across Canada to increase diverse representation on corporate boards and in senior management. The Government also announced it will invest $6.6M to support a task force on modernizing the Employment Equity Act to ensure Canada’s economic recovery is equitable, inclusive, and fair.

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, including converting existing pay information filed by federally regulated employers under the Employment Equity Act into more user-friendly online content, making existing wage gaps more evident.
 

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