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SECOND-CLASS
SALARIES
THE GENDER PAY GAP HAS
BEEN MAKING HEADLINES FOR
DECADES – SO HOW MUCH
PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE?
By Liz Bernier
Seventy-four cents on the dollar. That’s a figure cited al-most
endlessly in conversation about the Gender Pay Gap.
For every dollar earned by a male worker, a female worker
earns an average of 74 cents.
That infamous stat was born of a 2011 Statistics Canada report,
which found that the gender wage gap in Ontario was 26 per cent
for full-time, full-year workers (a.k.a., 74 cents). It’s become a two-digit
indictment of the institutionalized barriers to gender parity
in the workplace.
But fortunately, we’re not on a fixed income here.
That stat has seen some positive movement over the past few
years. More recent Statistics Canada data – this time, from 2015 –
puts the figure at about 87 cents nationally for full-time, full-year
workers: so for every male-earned dollar, women are now pulling
in 87 cents.
There is some variability in the numbers, because the size of
the wage gap depends on the measure of earnings that is used –
and there are many intervening factors at play. But regardless of
how one slices and dices the measurement criteria (accounting
for part-time workers, measuring salaries vs. hourly wages, etc.),
the outcome is always constant in one respect: there is more than
a 10-cent-on-the-dollar gap between female workers and their
male counterparts.
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ FEBRUARY 2018 ❚ 23
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