Midwives win discrimination ruling
Ontario midwives have won a human rights battle for pay equity. Now comes the battle to convince the Ontario government to quickly close the pay gap.
The gap is driving some midwives out of the practice, says Ottawa midwife Christi Baker.
In a landmark ruling released last week, the Human Rights Tribunal for Ontario ordered the Ontario government to close the pay gap confronting midwives.
In 2010, an Ontario government report found that midwives’ work was undervalued by 20 per cent, meaning midwives were earning 20 per cent less than their counterparts in comparable jobs.
That gap was not closed by the government at the time and has grown since.
The Association of Ontario Midwives went to the human rights tribunal in 2013, arguing that they face gender pay discrimination because their services are provided by women, for women and in relation to women’s reproductive health.
The tribunal agreed, and last week it ordered the Ontario government to increase midwives’ pay by 20 per cent as a first step to closing the gender pay gap and to conduct an analysis to determine the actual pay gap. Experts in the case before the tribunal argued the actual pay gap is closer to 48 per cent.
Ontario midwives earn $82,080 to $106,920 a year, based on payments per client for prenatal, postnatal, labour and delivery services.
By comparison, family physicians at community health centres who do obstetrics work earn $191,717 to $221,193.
When the Ontario government first brought midwives into the health system in 1994, they used family physicians at community health centres as a comparator, accepting that an entry-level midwife was positioned just above the top salary of a senior nurse, and the highest compensation level for a midwife was about 90 per cent of the base salary for an entry-level community health centre family physician.
Over time that gap has widened. Liz Fraser, an Ottawa midwife who is on the board of the Association of Ontario Midwives, said the province could appeal the tribunal ruling, but midwives are hopeful they will instead work to end gender discrimination against the health services provided by women, for women and in relation to women’s reproductive health.
Midwives in Ottawa and elsewhere will begin a campaign on Friday to convince MPPs to pressure the government to close the pay gap.
Baker, a midwife at Ottawa South Midwives, says some Ontario midwives are fed up with being undervalued and underpaid for the work they do.
“I have lots of midwife friends who are getting out because it is not worth it anymore.”
Baker will be among local midwives pressing Ontario MPPs this week to close the gender pay gap experienced by the province’s 963 midwives.
Ottawa is home to one of three midwife-led birth centres in the province