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Week 3: Insights into Supporting Women
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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While women make up the majority of Canadians, outnumbering men by 500,000 people in the 2021 Census, 52.3% of workers in Canada are men compared with just 47.7% of women. And while this disparity might not seem like much, women are underrepresented in a multitude of other ways in Canada's labour market.
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When Canada first started collecting data on female labour force participation in 1976, the labour force participation rate has gradually improved going from 48.2% in the 1970s; to 60% in the mid-1980s; 70% in the late 1990s; and consistently exceeding 80% since September 2021.
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Women also typically earn a lot less. Since Statistics Canada began collecting wage data in 1997, the average hourly wage for men has more than doubled (+109.6%), and the average hourly wage for women has increased even more (+123.7%), and yet women still earn less.
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As of 2021, the gender pay gap for full-time and part-time employees is 0.89, which means women make 89 cents of every dollar men make. The gender pay gap for full-time employees is 0.90, which means women make 90 cents of every dollar men make.
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The irony is that Canada's largest definable population is also Canada's largest labour market minority -- minority only in labour market outcomes.
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There are a multitude of reasons why women are under-represented in the labour market and one of the chief reasons is their role in governing the country. Following the 2021 federal election, women made up 30% of members of Parliament (MPs). The representation of women is similar within provincial and municipal governments as well.
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Canada ranks 56th in the world in terms of the share of female parliamentarians. While women represent 30% of Canada's MPs, the following countries are at or near parity: Sweden (47.0%), Iceland (47.6%), Mexico (50.0%), New Zealand (49.2%), Nicaragua (50.6%) and the United Arab Emirates (50.0%).
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According to research shared by the Labour Market Information Council, Several explanations have been put forth to explain this gendered labour segregation, including:
- gender stereotyping and the devaluation of feminized skills
- the unequal gender socialization of emotional and relational skills during childhood
- the presence of a “glass ceiling” or “sticky floor” and the racialized “glass escalator”
- the disproportionate incentivizing of research on occupational segregation in feminized professions
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Understanding how women are under-represented in the labour market is valuable, but knowing what we can do about it is also of tremendous value.
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Much of what government can do has already begun through pay transparency regulations and the enforcement of human rights legislation.
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In coaching those in career transition, it's valuable to examine career pathways where wages don't have the same disparity. Occupations governed by collective agreements typically have structured salaries where there is little variation based on gender.
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Pursing employment with large companies that maintain a pay-grid of where the organization has made a pledge towards wage parity is also a strong approach.
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Commission-based occupations also provide a form of gender salary parody, whereby jobs pay a base salary and the salary is then based on performance. This said, just because it can be more fair, it's only going to really benefit those who excel in a sales and persuasion-based environments.
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An intriguing area of wage parity for women is in the area of self-employment.
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According to the Women's Entrepreneurship Hub (WE-Hub), 18% of all businesses were majority-owned by women in 2022, and 99% of these were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
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We-Hub is reporting some women entrepreneurs have responded proactively to the economic climate with inclusive initiatives. For instance:
- Half of early-stage and a third of established women entrepreneurs intensifying their use of digital technologies to adapt to business conditions during the pandemic.
- In 2020, majority women-owned SMEs (26.1%) implemented marketing innovations at a higher rate than those owned by men (9.8%).
- Women-owned SMEs were most likely to foster inclusivity by providing opportunities for equity-deserving groups, such as women, Indigenous Peoples, Black and racialized people, and 2SLGBTQA+ communities.
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When marketing women to employers, as with other under-represented groups in the labour market, note examples. Demonstrate how your client or student has demonstrated these skills is the past; has transferable skills; and qualities and abilities these individuals can bring to their work that their male counterparts can't.
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As we proceed from that first point nearly 50 years ago, when Stats Canada first started tracking the participation of women in the labour market, we've seen slow, but upward progress. In supporting each individual to thrive in the labour market we can help bring transparency and fairness to everyone in the labour market regardless of gender.
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We’ll be discussing the contribution women can make at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday July 15th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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We're no longer using the Motivating Mondays URL to connect due to security concerns. Instead we're hosting the sessions on a new Teams Link we share in this newsletter each week. On the morning of Monday July 15th, 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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