Women still earning 24% less than men: survey

TORONTO Canadian working women report earning almost a quarter less than male counterparts despite gains in education and greater numbers in higher-paying professions, a new pay equity study shows.

Women took home an average pre-tax salary of $51,352 in 2019 compared with $67,704 for men — a 24-per-cent gap — according to a survey this year of 755 working men and women by Leger Research for a study commissioned by ADP LLC, which provides human resources management software and services. The report came out Thursday, ahead of International Women’s Day, which takes place on Sunday.

Men received more than twice the additional compensation of bonuses or profit sharing than women — $7,646 vs. $3,250 — according to the survey.

“Despite all the policy changes, all the social changes, women are still earning 24-per-cent less,” Natalka Haras, a lawyer for ADP based in Montreal, said by phone.

Haras said the study wasn’t geared to finding out why the pay gap persists, but a Statistics Canada study last year found that the distribution of women and men across industries, such as more men in higher-paying science- and finance-related jobs, and women’s over-representation in part-time work were the two main factors. However, it said nearly two-thirds of the gap was unexplained, and could be down to work experience and gender bias.

Government statistics show that the hourly wage gap disparity narrowed to about 13 per cent in 2018 from about 19 per cent in 1998, largely because of increased education attained by women, their penetration into more industries and the decline of men in unionized jobs.

Still, Canada’s gender wage gap in 2018 ranked 5th-largest among 29 countries at 18.5 per cent, according to a survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This year showed barely an improvement from 2019 when ADP found men out-earned women by about 26 per cent, still within the study’s margin of error of 3.4 per cent 19 times out of 20.

Employers intent on improving conditions should consider banning inquiries about a candidate’s salary history in job interviews and promoting parental leave policies, Haras said.