Women's wage gap getting wider in Canada

Report says more work needs to be done to fight income inequality for all

Canadian women are being shortchanged on job opportunities and pay and it’s making income inequality worse, Oxfam Canada said in a new report Monday.

The anti-poverty agency said Monday that despite enjoying higher levels of education than ever before and an increased access to the workforce, women continue to face barriers to good employment and fair wages, and as a result are more likely to be poor — both in Canada and abroad.

“Women workers may be good for business, but the bottom line is that they are getting shortchanged,” said Dana Stefov, a co-author of the report and the senior women’s rights policy adviser with Oxfam Canada. “Women currently subsidize the economy with labour that is cheap, undervalued and often even free.”

Women’s wage gap getting wider in Canada, new report says
“Addressing the unequal economics of women’s work is essential to closing the gap in earnings and opportunities between women and men, and between rich and poor,” the report said.

The report cites some alarming statistics to back up its claim. Of the 500 occupations currently tracked by Statistics Canada in its monthly labour force survey, women earn less than men in 469 of them, Oxfam says, even among people with similar educational levels performing similar work.

Women in Canada are three times more likely than men are to work part time, and that’s not generally by choice but rather “because family care responsibilities fall to them,” Oxfam says. According to Statistics Canada, the typical Canadian women does 3.9 hours worth of unpaid care work per day. That compares with 2.4 hours for men.

Higher education pays off more for men than women, report suggests
Oxfam estimates that if they were paid fairly for that sort of unpaid work, Canadian women would earn an extra $192 billion every year.