WOMEN MISSING FROM TOP OF PUBLIC SALARY LIST
An analysis by The Spectator’s Joanna Frketich shows only two women are among the area’s top 25 public sector wage-earners on the 2017 Sunshine List — two fewer than the previous year.
WOMEN HAVE NOT GAINED GROUND in closing the wage gap among the highest public sector earners in Hamilton and Burlington, remaining woefully under-represented at the top of the Sunshine List.
In fact, women have slipped slightly with only two among the area’s top 25 earners in 2017, compared with four the year before, reveals provincial public salary disclosure analyzed by The Spectator.
There are no women earning Hamilton’s top nine public sector salaries plus taxable benefits.
“We’ve still got a very significant gender pay gap,” said Fay Faraday, co-chair of the Ontariobased Equal Pay Coalition.
“We have a generation of women who were raised believing that they were equal and they’re hitting the workplace and realizing that the gender pay gap that their grandmothers and mothers fought against is still there and impeding them in their careers.”
SO FAR, THE SLIDE backward is continuing after the area’s highest-earning woman in the public sector — Hamilton Health Sciences chief operating officer Brenda Flaherty — retired and was replaced by Dr. Wes Stephen in September.
Flaherty was the only woman in Hamilton’s top 10 public sector salaries plus taxable benefits.
“You see how precarious the hold is,” said Faraday.
“To see that there has been no progress is not surprising. In terms of globally, the gender wage gap has not closed for decades. It’s part of the reason why you see this growing rejuvenated movement for equal pay.”
The gender pay divide is vast here with Flaherty topping the women’s earnings with $398,040 in salary and taxable benefits while the highest-paid man — Dr. Salim Yusuf — made $764,573 to lead the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences.
“The reason that we know about these gaps in the public sector is because there is this transparency through the Sunshine List,” said Sheila Block, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario office.
She says the results would be far worse for the private sector.
“Research has been pretty consistent that the wage gap for women in the public sector is smaller than it is in the private sector,” said Block.
“Some research out of our shop in 2014 showed the gap was about half what the gap was in the private sector.”
Locally, the issue is most stark at McMaster University — which stands out for having no women among the top 16 earners.
Generally, local public sector organizations have at least one woman among the top five.
“Educational intuitions have certainly been under the microscope in terms of the gender pay gap and it is an issue across the country,” said Faraday, who leads the coalition made up of trade unions, women’s groups and community organizations seeking to end gender pay discrimination.
It takes a search far down McMaster’s list to find the three top-earning women at 17th, 27th and 31st among the university’s highest salaries plus benefits.
It’s a big outlier, considering at least three women are in the top 10 at the area’s other major institutions such as Hamilton Health Sciences and Mohawk College.
“In terms of the gender-equity issue, there are many initiatives underway,” McMaster spokesperson Gord Arbeau said in a statement.
The university introduced faculty pay equity provisions in 2015 and an associate vice-president of equity and inclusion, Ariq al Shaibah, arrived on campus at the beginning of April.
A number of senior administrative positions are held by women and there are 22 female Canada research chairs at McMaster with “efforts underway to deepen that number.”
“It is an ongoing and important priority to deepen and expand diversity and equity in all areas of the university,” said Arbeau. “We have made strides, but work remains to be done and we are building and investing in new ways to help us move forward.”
For the first time, a woman is serving as dean of science at McMaster with Maureen MacDonald beginning her term nearly one year ago.
The university has had women deans in other disciplines in the past but MacDonald is currently the only one.
She said what broke the glass ceiling for her was the university’s provost at the time, David Wilkinson, refusing to take no for an answer when he asked MacDonald about applying for the dean’s job.
“I got the chance to be here because someone looked beyond the, ‘no,’” she said. “He didn’t simply accept when I said ‘I don’t think it’s the right opportunity for me, my family and my life right now.’ He just said ‘If you don’t mind my asking, Why?’”
Wilkinson was so troubled by MacDonald’s hesitation to apply for the job that he asked her how the university could make the position more accessible to women.
“He said to me ‘Can you come back to me with how this job could be structured so that someone like you would at least throw your hat in the ring so that we do have the possibility of appointing a female dean of science,’” said MacDonald.
She came back with a simple answer: Time commitment and boundaries.
“I didn’t think I had the time required or was willing to give the time to this job, which appeared to have no boundaries on its time commitment,” she said.
“I thought I would need some more staffing support, I would need to distribute some tasks, I would have to be transparent about my priorities and there would be enforceable boundaries.”
So far, MacDonald is still working on the balance, getting it right some days and going beyond the boundaries on others. But she’s getting better at setting limits.
“When I talk to other women, they are running the calculator of their time and commitments continuously,” she said.
“If I struggle with speaking up and I am in one of the senior leadership positions, what of the people who are in more vulnerable and in less-powered situations? What hope do they have to ever bring these conversations up?”
While McMaster is the most glaring example, women are under-represented among the top earners at most area public sector organizations.
AT HHS
AND Mohawk College, the top three earners were men in 2017.
Eight women have the title of vice-president on the HHS Sunshine List but only one of them is among the top-five-earning VPs — and it is Flaherty, who has retired.
“Even at the highest level of
Locally, the issue is most stark at McMaster University, which stands out for having no women among the top 16 earners. Generally, local public sector organizations have at least one woman among the top five.
“The reason that we know about these gaps in the public sector is because there is this transparency through the Sunshine List.” SHEILA BLOCK
Economist, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives “When I talk to other women, they are running the calculator of their time and commitments continuously.” MAUREEN MACDONALD
McMaster University science dean
Medical officer of health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson is the highest earner in the City of Hamilton and CEO Donna Cripps makes the most at the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network.
income earning, women are significantly disadvantaged relative to men,” said Faraday.
“What we know is that the gender wage gap doesn’t just happen at the top end of the income spectrum. It happens across the board, at every income level, in every industry and in every sector of the economy.”
At the area’s biggest public sector organizations — hospitals, school boards, post-secondary education, children’s aid societies and cities — men overwhelmingly are the highestpaid.
Men even top the list at organizations where women dominate the rest of the highest-paid salaries.
At the Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton, women account for seven of the eight highest salaries. But the top is executive director Dominic Verticchio, whose pay and taxable benefits of $202,309 in 2017 were more than $60,000 above the top-earning woman.
“Pay transparency discloses a number of different dynamics that drive the gender pay gap,” said Faraday.
“It helps identify all those glass ceilings, glass walls and sticky floors that prevent women’s career progress.”
Only two major area organizations have a woman in the top-paid spot.
Medical officer of health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson is the highest earner in the City of Hamilton and CEO Donna Cripps makes the most at the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network, which includes Burlington.
“Some of what you are seeing in the Sunshine List here reflects that pattern where women are excluded from leadership positions and they’re excluded from higher-income positions,” said Faraday.
“What you are seeing with the Sunshine List is the tip of the iceberg, which reflects a much deeper pattern of systemic discrimination in pay and access to work.”
The LHIN is the lone big organization to have women as its three highest earners but Cripps says it was unintentional.
“I think it’s a bit of happenstance what you’re seeing at the LHIN right now,” she said.
“What to me is important, is who is the best person for the job. It’s really immaterial to me what gender, I don’t think about it a lot.”
The Sunshine List reveals that women are more likely to lead smaller organizations with much lower pay such as the North Hamilton Community Health Centre, YWCA Hamilton and Mission Services of Hamilton.
“I think those kinds of patterns you’re noticing in the Sunshine List do reflect the impact of that systemic sexism where men continue to hold more powerful positions in society and continue to get paid more for their responsibilities,” said Block from the independent, nonpartisan research institute.
“I think you could argue that having leadership in a smaller organization has a lot of challenges and responsibilities.”
A big barrier to equal pay found by the Human Resources Professionals Association in a paper two years ago was women temporarily leaving the workplace on maternity leave after having children.
“They are at a disadvantage compared to those who chose not to take that path,” said Scott Allinson, vice-president public affairs at the association.
“At that point, they seem to be behind the employment path going forward and it starts to be a game of catch-up.”
The second impediment found by the association was women falling behind at the negotiation stage for salaries.
“Either they don’t negotiate or they are unsure of how to negotiate,” said Allinson.
“On the employer side, women are treated differently in the majority of cases in regards to negotiating salary. They are not treated the same as a man, so that is a problem.”
The report recommended starting in grade school to educate girls on negotiation skills.
“The government needs to take more of a stance of getting it into the curriculum,” said Allinson. “It’s giving women more confidence going into the workforce about asking for things and negotiating.”
A big part of the solution is pay transparency in the private sector, say those advocating for change.
“Pay transparency is going to be really important because that will air these differences,” said Block.
“It will make employers aware of these differences, make men aware of these differences and make women aware of these differences and really provide the kind of information people need to close the gap.”
ONTARIO
HAS JUST became the first province to have pay transparency legislation.
The bill passed Thursday requires all publicly advertised job postings to include a salary range, bars employers from asking job candidates about their past compensation and prohibits reprisals against employees disclosing or discussing their pay starting Jan. 1.
It also requires larger employers to track and report wage gaps based on gender or diversity yearly in their workplaces and to the province.
“The bill that has been passed is a very strong start for pay transparency in Canada,” said Faraday. “It’s an important new tool for closing the gender pay gap.”
Britain, Australia and Germany have also all recently forced companies to be more transparent about gender pay gaps.
“That movement toward pay transparency is about strengthening the tools for eliminating gender pay gaps because the gap is so entrenched and has barely shifted in generations,” said Faraday.
“It hasn’t shifted because there has been no light shone on what the practices actually are.”
The Spectator analysis shows women account for nearly one in three public sector earners making $250,000 or more in Hamilton and Burlington in 2017. The gap gets wider as the earnings get higher until it reaches one in 10 for the top 20.
“The Sunshine List shows how important it is to have transparency about wages,” said Faraday. “You see every year on the Sunshine List how women are lagging behind men.”
Ontario is the first province to have pay transparency legislation. The bill, which passed Thursday, requires all publicly advertised job postings include salary range, bars employers from asking job candidates about past compensation and prohibits reprisals against employees disclosing their pay starting Jan. 1.