Canadian society is understood to widely represent things like equality, freedom, and acceptance, but this is not the case for pay equality. Canadian law prohibits the discrimination in employment of persons based on their race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Although employers are unable to discriminate against women in the hiring process there is still a large wage gap between women and their male counterparts. Gender pay inequality has been widely discussed in various news outlets as a large problem in Canada, which has yet be properly addressed. It has been found that women earn less than men due to a variety of factors. Women are more likely to work part-time, are not properly compensated for maternity leave, more likely to work low wage jobs, female dominated sectors are generally payed less, and are not compensated for time spent taking care of family. Though there are ongoing conversations about gender equality in many aspects of society roles such as parenting and childcare jobs continue to be female dominated. These female dominated roles are undervalued and often overlooked by society and is one of the reasons pay inequality continues to exist in Canada.
The gender wage gap is quite substantial especially for women of color who experienced racial discrimination compared to the non-colored women. In fact, there is disparity in the types of jobs worked by white women and women of color. The wage gap extends to many types of women, as educated women who work full time are still being paid less than their male counterparts. This paper will analyze the gender pay gap as discussed in the Huffington post as a multifactorial problem that extends to gender racial pay inequality. While discussing different ways in which gender pay inequality continues and how it may be combated in the future.
It used to be the case that women were paid less because they only worked in certain sectors and the fact that is a non-issue for it were the men were considered the breadwinner of the family. Though it is no longer the case that men are the primary breadwinner within today’s society, the gender wage gap suggests otherwise. Though women are more likely to be found in part-time employment it has been found by Statistic Canada that “Canadian women who work full-time still earn 73.5 cents for every dollar men make” (Patel, Huffington Post). This data suggests that though women are as equally qualified as men and work the same hours they are still unable to obtain the same wage due to other factors. Factors such as education level cannot be said to be a contributing factor as women are generally more educated than men (Patel, Huffington Post). There are movements arguing for gender equality but the issue has yet to be addressed in employment. Men and women working in the same sector are still not paid equally. In fact, the wage gap problem extends to female dominated jobs being undercompensated and undervalued in the job market.
In the case of unmarried women under age 65, some of them accumulate incomes that almost reach equality with men and reach about 15% of the wealth of men, regardless of whether they have children or not (Nembhard, The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities). Studies also show that those women of color experience greater barriers to wealth accumulation compared to white women. This only shows that gender wealth inequality is rampant among non-white men and women than among whites. Furthermore, there had been several reported cases where women are left to raise African American children and they have often have limited resources, not just in terms of lower incomes, but having lesser wealth (Nembhard, The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities).
On the average, the women in Canada earn about $8,000 less than men, which shows that it is two times greater than the global average of $4,000 (Patel, Huffington Post). In this modern age and time, there are still some women who believe that earning lesser income than the men is the norm. In fact, the major reason why men are still earning more than women is because most women have accepted it as a reality (Patel, Huffington Post). Most women still feel that they are inferior to men and are afraid to ask for a raise, take additional work and take a leap, or start even their small businesses. While it may seem to be easier said than done, it is a common knowledge that not all women have sufficient resources or enough opportunities to allow them to ask for promotions or even higher wages. This is even despite of the fact that these women are even more educated than men, there are some women's groups in Canada who can keep up with men in terms of their professional careers (Patel, Huffington Post).
One of the ways of increasing the wealth of women is through entrepreneurship. In fact, several women owned businesses had grown during the 1990s and there was a rapid increase of businesses owned by women of color (Nembhard, The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities). While there may be some of the women of color who owned businesses that flourished, particularly owning corporate businesses in non-traditional industries including wholesale trade, manufacturing, business services, or auto dealerships. However, it is less likely that minority women will be able to own businesses in the same industries. One of the strategies that will strengthen business ownership of the women is by implementing micro lending and micro-business development programs not just in America, but throughout the world (Nembhard, The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities).
Through the years, the economic status of the low-income people of color and women is unstable. In effect, it is less likely that the economically marginalized populations will raise children. Thus, the economic well-being should be prioritized, particularly on the women since will need viable and community-friendly economic structures that will offer them support for their daily endeavors (Nembhard, The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities ).
History shows that black self-employed female worker had to undergo several hardships before they were able to negotiate with the labour market due to colonialism, slavery and pre-industrialization (Knight 107). Some of these black women had to go through the underground economy before they were able to penetrate several economical infrastructures and spaces (Knight 107). Thus, ethnic entrepreneurship has included self-employed black women who had become symbols of liberal feminist notions of entrepreneurship.
It can be said that the black women have higher labour force participation rate and at the same time, hold higher unemployment rate due to poverty and illiteracy. As a result, a higher percentage of their income came from government transfer payments (Knight 107). Majority of the proportion of blacks were employed in semi-skilled occupations and other businesses including manufacturing, health and social service sectors.
In the case of the women in Ontario, they have made significant progress in areas such as labour force participation and education. But despite of such fact, they continue to earn less compared to the income of men. The number of women who are represented and hold lower-paying occupations and industries has created significant gender wage gap in the country (Ministry of Labour 2). In fact, these women form part of the disproportionate number of employees who earn only the minimum wage and occupy part-time positions, and continue to be underrepresented in majority of high- paying positions. Several sectors of the labour force in the country had been traditionally dominated by the male occupation. Thus, closing the gender wage gap will give more advantages to the Canadian economy (Ministry of Labour 1).
The experts believe that the existing productivity gap between the male and the female works has placed the women to be at a disadvantage since most of them are under-employed and/or not trained to their full potential. As a result, it increases the percentage of productivity losses to the economy of the whole country. During the past decade, the productivity in Ontario had stopped growing (Ministry of Labour 1). Several reports had shown that there has been a widening productivity gap in comparing Ontario and Canada as against the United States (Ministry of Labour 1). In fact, the Royal Bank estimated in 2005 that if the women in Canada had the same labour market opportunities as that of the men, their personal incomes are estimated to increase to about $168 billion more for each year. Out of the $168 billion, almost $126 billion is derived from equalizing the labour market experiences of the female population who had been born and raised in Canada and that of the male population born in Canada (Ministry of Labour 1).
Although it may seem to appear that women are co-equals of men in terms of having the same capabilities in their professional careers, the art of negotiation is not always an easy task for the women. Even when it comes to working in the same industry, the inequalities are inevitable in the case when women neglect to ask for raises since such task is beyond than training the women to be better negotiators (Patel, Huffington Post). The women may be viewed differently by their employer when they ask for raise in their salaries, as compared to men who do. Therefore, when a woman asks for a raise, she earns the wrong perception of being pushy, aggressive and undesirable by her bosses regardless of gender (Patel, Huffington Post). It takes enough courage and self-determination for the women to see their worth and to condition their minds that they deserve more. Women should not let the stigma that they are inferior to men to deter them from being on top.
In fact, some experts believe that the women can be faulted for not asking for a raise since they have the misconception that society is programmed to consider gender as a status marker and an excellence marker which concluded that the kind of work that female employees provide in not as high quality than that of their male counterparts (Patel, Huffington Post). Thus, it can be concluded that social inequality is both a social justice and an economic issue. In effect, gender and inequality can also become public and political concerns since inequality can result to group tensions and social instability (Galabuzi 20).
Works Cited:
Galabuzi, Grace Edward. Canada’s Economic Apartheid. The Social Exclusion of
Racialized Groups in the New Century. Ontorio: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.
2006, Print.
Knight, Melanie Black Canadian Self-Employed Women. Canadian Women Studies,
23.2 (2004):104-110.
Ministry of Labor. Closing the Gender Wage Gap: A Background Paper. Web.
Retrieved on March 16, 201, from, file:///C:/Users/abc/Downloads/Closing%20the%20Gender%20wage%20gap%20a%20background%20paper.pdf>.
Nembhard, Jessica Gordon. Micro Enterprise and Cooperative Development in Economically Marginalized Communities in the U.S. Enterprise, Social Exclusion and Sustainable Communities: The Role of Small Business in Addressing Social and Economic Inequalities. Web. Retrived on March 2,2016, from
Patel, Arni. Canada's Gender Pay Gap: Why Canadian Women Still Earn Less Than
Men. Huffingtonpost.com Web. Retrieved on March 2, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/08/canada-gender-pay-gap_n_9393924.html.
