MIND THE GAP
Workplace gender inequality isn’t just a “women’s issue,” it’s bad for the whole country.
Gender inequality constrains Canada’s vitality, even though progress has lulled us into a complacent regard for what are still quaintly called “women’s issues.”
True, by 2015, most provinces and territories had chosen female premiers. And in the relatively young era of Canadian-born governorsgeneral, the country has been served by three extraordinary women in that role. Women now account for a majority, or close to it, of medical, law, MBA, journalism and other graduates heading to vocations key to the country’s progress. By 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) could report, in its latest study of gender issues in Canada, that a significantly larger portion of women aged 23 to 64 had attained a post-secondary degree (55 per cent) than men (46). And so, by sheer force of qualified numbers, women will sooner than later become full participants in decision-making, in both the public and private sectors.
That will effectively double the powers of innovation and execution of the entire workforce. A society on that route can make a strong bid to for global competitive advantage.
Just the same, it’s worth asking, “How would you feel about raising a daughter in today’s Canada?”
In 2015, Canadian women are paid about $8,000 less per year than men for work of equivalent responsibility. The definition of equal compensation matches women and men of similar skills and qualifications who have similar or identical job responsibilities. On that measure, the pay gap for Canadian women is roughly twice the global average, which is about $4,000.
McMaster University, like so many public-sector institutions, has elaborate protocols to ensure pay equity. Yet in April, Hamilton-based McMaster gave its female faculty a raise after a two-year internal study showed that female faculty were paid $3,515 less than their male counterparts, on average, in 2012 and 2013. The calculation took into account tenure, seniority, age and variations among the different departments in which faculty teach.
The McMaster experience is a loud wake-up call. If gross unfairness in compensation can emerge at one of the country’s most progressive employers, the inescapable conclusion is that it is widespread in the economy.
“There is an essential economic need to increase awareness and take swift action in supporting career growth for women in Canada,” says Jill Earthy, cofounder of WEB Alliance, a network representing more than 10,000 professional and entrepreneurial women in B.C.
Recognizing the importance of the issue, the Vancouver Board of Trade has partnered with WEB Alliance on several initiatives to increase the number of women in top decisionmaking roles in the workplace, and their leadership impact in it.
In advanced countries with aging workforces, the rationale for a truly empowered female workplace is overwhelming. Bringing that sea change about will require determined, persistent effort at achieving workplace fairness and flexibility by employers that understandably fret over skills shortages.
“Workplace cultures that are less overbearing and are conducive to the reconciliation of work and family life of both parents will help address the looming labour shortages,” says Willem Adema of the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. The OECD draws a straight line from a female workforce that is fully involved in decision-making to more substantial GDP growth.
The gender gap — in workplace conditions across the board, not just pay — is a pressing business issue affecting employee turnover and efficiency and employer loyalty. Unfairness in pay is corrosive, demoralizing a workforce, sapping it of productivity and innovation.
Canada is at a competitive disadvantage to its economic peers, ranking a miserable 19th in gender equality (a measure of compensation, hiring and promotion practices), according to the latest report by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
On that same measure, the UN Gender Inequality Index ranks Canada a lowly 23rd. On the gender pay gap alone, Canada is a laggard, ranking 19th among the 34 OECD member nations.
Women, less able or willing to climb the career ladder than men, are far more likely to work part time (27 per cent of the Canadian female workforce) than men (12 per cent). Consider the 12 per cent of Canadian women living in poverty, unable to afford the tuition to upgrade their skills; and the critical shortage of both affordable housing and affordable daycare (the latter costs about $14,000 per year per child).
It’s apparent the diminished household income of those relegated to part-time work is not related to work ethic.
Finally, and most shockingly, the WEF ranks Canada 100th among the 142 countries it studies in women’s health and survival. This is a factor of the above and other factors, including the continued high Canadian rate of spousal abuse; precarious employment (part-time work, insufficient hours of work, crummy pay, no benefits and no job security); income inequality across the entire economy and the unique hardship to which aboriginal women are subjected.
“Everything’s connected,” physicians say in explaining the phenomenon of “referred pain,” in which your left toe, of all things, hurts after a mild concussion.
Thus, the shortage of daycare spaces finds metalworking shops unable to recruit dedicated employees. And a legion of underpaid women is not only an affront to our core value of fairness, but is a drag on the consumer economy.
We’ve long known that these are not “women’s issues,” but universal ones. It’s time we stopped ghettoizing them and removed these shackles on our economy.
Practical steps for reform The B.C.-based WEB Alliance that champions progress of women in the workplace offers several practical measures for improvement in its report, Women as a Catalyst for Growth: A B.C. Action Plan, released in May. These include:
An overhaul of working conditions to accommodate work-family flexibility; hardly a new idea, but a sound one that has to be repeatedly called for as long as it keeps not happening.
Short of affirmative action, an employer system for identifying extraordinarily talented and dedicated women for hiring and again for promotion. In that way, the pipeline of talent to replace key personnel who retire or are headhunted away becomes more robust, filled with “plug-and-play” leaders who can promptly take on more challenging assignments.
Diversified supplier bases that include women-run businesses, and investments in businesses owned or run by women. If you’re in the auto business, you can do both by purchasing the products and the shares of Guelph, Ont.-based Linamar Corp., one of the world’s largest auto-parts suppliers and headed by Linda Hasenfratz, whose stock has outperformed Berkshire Hathaway Inc. by a wide margin over the past five years. Ideally, though, it is the smaller, start-up businesses being created in record number by women entrepreneurs whose success you can help assure.
Rework the early-education curriculum to stop dissuading girls from careers in engineering, information technology, scientific research and entrepreneurship.
The feds: AWOL on women’s issues When the current federal government came to power in 2006, one of its first acts was shuttering 12 of the original 16 Status of Women field offices across Canada. That set the tone for the effective gutting of the Chrétien government’s GenderBased Analysis (GBA) initiative of 1995. GBA was intended to constantly monitor progress in women’s advancement in the federal civil service; to consider the impact on women — half the population — of all proposed legislation and to provide continued training in workplace gender equality to federal personnel with hiring, supervisory and promotion responsibility.
Today, GBA has zero funding because, according to the governing Tories, these functions are considered a prerequisite to employment requiring no special training.
About 1,500 federal civil servants are thought to have received such training — in a total federal workforce of about 263,000 employees.
That is the mindset of a government that has, despite pressure from Canadians and the opposition parties in Parliament, seen no need for a special inquiry, much less a full-blown Royal Commission, into the catastrophe of nearly 1,200 Canadian aboriginal women who have vanished or were murdered since 1980. dolive@thestar.ca