Equal Pay Day in Canada pushes to close gender wage gap

Tuesday, April, 12 marks Equal Pay Day in Canada, which is meant to raise awareness of the ongoing gender pay gap, and the efforts to help close it.

Earlier this year, the province started work on new pay transparency legislation, and Grace Lore, a B.C. MLA and Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity is one of the people working towards equality.

“Part of it is discrimination, part of it is the disproportionate work women do in care work, in care responsibilities in their home. So we need to take an all hands on deck approach.”

Despite all the work done to address the gender pay gap in Canada, the federal government says women in the workforce earn roughly 89 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Currently, B.C. is one of only four provinces’ that does not already have pay transparency legislations, nor provincial pay equity laws.

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Dr. Julia Smith, assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University says the pay gap is one metric, but in order to address it, there are numerous other factors that need to be dealt with for women in the workplace.

“We can also look at metrics around women’s advancement in the workplace and see that men are often promoted quicker. White women tend to have a different career trajectory than women of color. Women experiencing motherhood are penalized, which is demonstrated by evidence that women who have children are paid less, don’t progress at the same speed as men or as women without children,” Smith explained.

The federal Pay Equity Act was enacted last fall, and the province is currently working on new pay transparency legislation, for which it does not have a timeline.

However, Lore says B.C. is on the right track, with issues such as wage enhancements, early childhood care, and wage transparency all part of the new legislation.

As for Smith, she hopes to see a fast and furious improvement in closing the wage gap, noting since the pandemic in many sectors the gap unfortunately increased.

“This year, we have seen progress, but I think that’s notable. The pay gap also increased in specific sectors during COVID, for example, in the health and social assistance sector, and that’s really troubling because those sectors are they female dominated, these are the women that were on the forefront of the COVID response, and they experienced a greater wage gap that year. It’s important to recognize the vicious cycle of the pay gap.”

In August of last year, the federal government introduced the Pay Equity Act which will be phased in over the course of three years.

The Act requires federally regulated employers to ensure workers receive equal pay for work of equal value and is meant to help women get fair compensation for their labour.

Once the act comes into effect, employers with 10 or more staff will have three years to develop and implement proactive pay equity plans.

The plan must involve studying whether work done primarily by women receives pay equal to work done by men, making adjustments to ensure there is wage equity and posting plans for staff to see by August 2024.

Pay equity commissioner Karen Jensen will be able to levy $30,000 fines for employers with up to 99 staff that don’t comply and $50,000 fines for those with larger workforces.

 

– With files from Yiwen Chen

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