Posted: Thursday, 5 March 2009

Working Women: Still a Long Way from Equality

While the gap between men’s and women’s wages did narrow from the 1970s, when women earned about two-thirds of the male dollar, the wage gap has stood at around 70% since then (70.5% for full-time, full-year work). But some things have changed. Women have done everything they were supposed to do to narrow the wage gap.

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Women of Colour: A Double Whammy

A racialized wage gap

In 2005, about one out of every seven working age women in Canada was a woman of colour and 80% of women of colour were immigrants. In 2005, even though the economy was doing quite well, 9.3% of women of colour were unemployed, compared to 6.6% of the working age population as a whole. Download in PDF

Child Care: it should be Child’s Play

The wage gap exists if you are single or not, a university graduate or not, have children or not. But women with children still pay a price. Women still bear the primary responsibility for child care, domestic work and caring for elders.

Early learning and child care must be brought to the top of the political agenda. We need a universal, high quality, public/not-for-profit system of early learning and child care. We need to prevent Big Box commercial child care centres from moving into Canada.

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Employment Insurance: It doesn’t add up for women!

Women are more likely than men to be employed in part-time and/or temporary jobs as opposed to full-time, permanent jobs: fully 40% of working women are in non-standard employment, compared with less than 30% of employed men.

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Pay Equity: What is a hardworking woman like you doing in a pay gap like this?

No matter how you look at it: Women still earn less than men in every sector of the economy.

Women working full-time, all year earn only 70.5% as much as men ($39,200 vs $55,700). Under the same conditions, that is working full-time all year, women of colour earn only 64% and Aboriginal women an appalling 46% as much as men.

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Will you still bleed me when I’m 64? Women and Pensions

The number of pensions has tripled in 30 years! The number of women in workplace pension plans tripled from 1974 to 2004. During this period, almost all the increase in workplace pension plan membership came from women joining unions and gaining decent pensions.

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Young Women meet GAPZILLA!

Thirty years ago, young people left home, got married, found a job and started a family. Things have changed. But have they changed for the better?

Even though women are more educated than men and more than ever are working full-time, the pay gap between university-educated young women and men persists. In fact, working full-time and full-year, a university-educated woman will only make 68% of the wages of a university-educated man.

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Manufacturing Jobs Matter to Women What is causing all these job losses?

Work relocation to the US and Mexico and the off-shoring of production internationally. Bankruptcies and plant closures.

Workplace downsizing – all so corporations can further increase their profits. Growing imports of manufactured goods. A decline in exports. The rapid rise in the Canadian dollar. Canada’s manufacturing sector is a critical part of the economy and accounts for two-thirds of Canada’s total exports and funds.

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Unions Are a Girl’s Best Friend

Unions make a huge difference for working women. In 2006, unionized women earned an average of $21.86 an hour or 93% of the wage of unionized men. Non-union women earned an average of $16.15 an hour, or 75.4% of the wage of non-union men.

Economic research indicates that the union wage advantage ranges between 7% - 14%. More and more women understand that unions raise their wages and work to narrow the gender wage gap.

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