Status of Women Committee on May 12th, 2014

[Clare Beckton]

Ms. Beckton is fine.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay.

We've heard a bit about women choosing the occupations they're most comfortable with and also that either some of those may be lower-paid occupations or women are being paid less because those are occupations that women are filling. We don't necessarily know here, but in our last committee meeting we heard some very interesting testimony from Christine Day, the former CEO of Lululemon, who was talking about leadership coming from “living on the edge of what you're comfortable with”.

We used to think it was education that was the barrier, the problem, so we all started getting our girls into universities and getting them higher education and higher degrees, and now we've discovered that it's really not a supply problem, and it's not an education problem, so I'm wondering, what is it? Is it an attitudinal problem? How do you see us.... What is going to work to get women into a higher level of prosperity?

[Clare Beckton]

I think it is in part an educational problem. Why I say this is that women are still in many cases choosing to go the routes in university that will take them into the traditional occupations, such as public administration, teaching, and nursing, where they tend to get lower pay. They are staying away from industries like high technology, some of the kinds of engineering, and some of the scientific fields. That does stem from how women are acculturated during their years in school and how guidance counsellors advise them, because whenever I speak to young women, I find that they have not been encouraged to go into some of these non-traditional occupations that have higher pay.

That is one factor that does relate to the education system at the elementary and high school levels, because once they're into university and into particular disciplines, it's much harder to switch when job opportunities come up. If you look at where the jobs are right now, you'll see that a lot of jobs are in the high-tech and the scientific innovation fields, and these tend to be higher-paying jobs, so women are suffering economically from that.

The second level, of course, is that when they go into a lot of the industries, there are still many barriers within those organizations, and they're barriers that relate to how women are perceived in terms of leadership roles.

[Joan Crockatt, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Could you move that ahead? I'm conscious of the time, and I want to hear your answer about what your recommendations would be, then, based on your extensive experience, for how we actually can help women catapult into those kinds of leadership roles. You're also saying that our economy needs women in leadership positions. What do you recommend we do?

[Clare Beckton]

I think one of the things, for example, when you look at boards, is to make recommendations around how you get more women on boards. In some countries, they've gone for quotas. In some countries, they've gone for targets. In some countries—and Ontario is looking at this—they've gone for the comply-or-explain approach in terms of having diversity policies and getting more women on your boards. This can also be applicable to senior levels in industry. The federal and the provincial governments can provide leadership in encouraging an augmentation of women in these senior level positions and, in particular, board positions.

There are a number of programs now. Diversity 50, which is part of the Canadian Board Diversity Council, certifies 50 people a year who are board-ready, and the majority of those are women. There are some diversity candidates and within the women, there's a stream of not just—

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

That's great. Very good.

[Clare Beckton]

Also, now I know that we're going to have more aboriginal women and men in that group.

It's these the kinds of things that can be.... As well, the federal and provincial governments can also lead by example.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Crockatt.

Mr. Casey, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Cornish, you got shortchanged there in my rambling question, so I want to come back to you and see if I can't focus the question a little better.

With respect to pay equity and the three most important things you would like to see the committee recommend—if you can limit it to three—what are the biggest elements within that issue?

[Mary Cornish]

I think the first one is to develop a plan, to commit as a government to analyzing the situation and to developing a plan similar to how the EU embeds, in its economic strategies and in its women's equality strategies, pay equity. Other countries have done this. They have planning. They integrate it into their planning. That would require the federal government to cooperate with provincial jurisdictions as well. So that's the first thing.

The federal sustainable development strategy talks about three kinds of elements that I think you could adapt. One of them is what is called an integrated whole-of-government picture of actions and results. In that strategy it's environmental sustainability, and here it's closing the gender gap. There's also the link between that and your expenditure planning. In other words, you're making some very concrete connections, and that includes—as I'll get to in a moment—effective measurement and reporting as part of that plan. So that's the first aspect of it.

The second aspect of it is incorporating into government decision-making a “closing the gender pay gap” analysis as part of the gender-based analysis you do. That means in fact saying, “Is the government policy contributing to closing the gender pay gap, is it doing nothing at all to the pay gap, or is it widening it?” We need to know that before we engage in government decision-making. That's another aspect of it that you would look at. That includes the budgeting, whether budgetary measures have those kinds of impacts, both in terms of trying to do positive measures.... I would see child care expenditures as something that would help contribute to closing the gender pay gap.

I think the other thing to look at as well is the leadership role that the public sector can play. Generally around the world, the public sector has had an equalizing effect. There is generally a lower gender pay gap within the public sector. It generally has more progressive employment policies than the private sector does. It has a whole equalizing effect through leadership, which I think is important to keep in mind. This is particularly in relation to where you have privatization; it tends to sometimes destroy that equalizing effect, because when women are laid off into the private sector, often they lose a variety of the benefits they had in public sector employment, which has led to their lower pay gap.

The other final one is the issue of pay transparency. This was one of the key things the European Union did in its latest Equal Pay Day, in February. They required that by December 2015, EU states will report on how they are making pay transparency an obligation with respect to employers. It could be done in a number of different ways.

So one of the other ways the federal government could act is in requiring federally regulated public sector employers, and also federal contractors in terms of contract compliance, to be transparent about their pay. President Obama just issued an executive order with respect to that on the Equal Pay Day in the U.S. in April, talking about it with respect to federal contractors in the U.S. over which they had direct power. But it's one thing that could be done here.

Essentially what the EU talks about is that women shouldn't be paid less because they don't know what males with jobs within the workplace are being paid, and that there shouldn't be pay secrecy policies, which often serve to reinforce pay inequities. Either women don't speak up because they don't actually know what the pay policies are in a workplace, or they may come in and actually be paid differently for the same work: the male was paid more before coming in, asks for what he was previously paid, and someone agrees to pay him that or puts him on a higher step. There's a whole series of reasons why pay transparency is now one of the more innovative ways of trying to get at the pay gap.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Young, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you very much for all of your testimony. You have hit some really interesting and very diverse points to this big question that we're trying to grapple with in this particular study.

I'm going to very quickly ask each of you a question, and I hope you can answer it within the limited time. If not, I hope you do know that you can send in additional comments, even after today. Our committee is obviously very open to receiving and hearing about your expertise and your experiences.

Just to follow up on what you were saying, Ms. Cornish, you were talking about pay transparency. I have experienced this myself—running my own consulting firm, etc.—where men were the boss and women were just bossy, right? As well, when women ask for equal pay, they're asking for too much or whatever, which I think is unfortunately, as you said, an issue that's still out there.

How do we grapple with that? What is your one recommendation, as a low-hanging fruit recommendation, that you can give to us in terms of how we do something around that area?

[Mary Cornish]

If you look at page 7 of the brief, it sets out some of the things that the European Union has done. Some of them include just making an employee write to request the information. If they request the information, they have to be given it. And it breaks it down, explaining within a workplace what the ranges of pay are with respect to various jobs. So that's one possible way of doing it.

Another is for an employer to report the average remuneration in jobs, and then to report it by gender. That's another way of doing it. It's a second way that the European Union talks about it. You're not talking necessarily about naming a specific person, but rather, what the job title is, how much it pays, and whether there is a difference—

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Transparency, obviously, is the issue here. But beyond transparency, given that you now know that you're not being paid as much, obviously, there are some steps or some tool kit things—training, mentorship and so on—that need to happen in order to address that. It's knowing one thing and getting to a place where you can actually have impact or change it. It necessitates a number of steps—that is what I'm trying to say.

[Mary Cornish]

Exactly.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Because I'm pressed for time—I have a number of other questions—can you put some thought to that or send that additional stuff to us, because I think that is a piece of action that we would love to see.

[Mary Cornish]

I'd be glad to.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

With that sort of action, knowing is one thing; doing is another.

For Ms. Beckton, then, I would like to ask about women in politics and public leadership. We've talked about mentorship and the importance of leadership for decades. As we know, there's a Women's Executive Network, that there are all of these things happening. How is it that we can use social media and/or the fact that we have an incredible amount of new media to take that big leap? In previous panels before this committee we've had young women who are doing amazing things.

How are we able to apply or take what is existing now and take that giant leap, which I think we can, from beyond the boardroom to do more mentorship in a very broad and public way?

[Clare Beckton]

I think there are a number of ways. I'm not a social media expert, but it's by bringing to the attention of a lot of the younger women some of the role models and some of the achievements, both of their generation and the older generation. It's bringing to public awareness, through the media, the kinds of things you described, the bossy notion, and how that has been brought to public attention, so that people start to think about what it means when you call a woman bossy, what it means when you call a woman aggressive. I think those are the kinds of things that can be done. But it's also to create the awareness of role models and to try to change some of that gender stereotyping that exists about what women should do or what their roles should look like compared to men's roles.

There's tremendous opportunity because young women are certainly influenced. Right now there's a lot of focus on beauty and body shape, and if it can be changed to also reflect on their opportunities and their roles....

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

So that is the next thing I want to ask about as a subquestion of sorts. Again, I don't think we have time for you to address it, but I would love it if Carleton University, or any of your groups or organizations....

We seem to be going backwards in our culture—and I say this as someone with a sociology degree—because here we are, on the one hand, saying that we want to advance women, etc., and yet on the other hand in North America and Canada young girls are being encouraged by our culture to be dressed and presented, as you all know, as skinny, and beautiful, etc. We just recently did a study on bulimia and eating disorders and all of that.

Why are we, 30, 40, certainly 60 years later, still needing to bust that myth, still working on it, and appear to be going backwards in fact? I know that the Status of Women minister is very concerned about this issue. I know that there are some huge sociological, cultural things that we're not getting at, beyond the mentorship, beyond all of these wonderful things that we're doing, that we need to get at as a society in order to really bust this out.

Again, we would appreciate some thoughts, even some program proposals on this. I know the department would love that.

[The Chair, NDP, Hélène LeBlanc]

There is just a minute left for them to answer.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Okay.

I'd like to ask Chief Kennedy specifically about her views on first nations education and whether her band, obviously, and others across this country should be running their own education systems, which is one of the things our government is pushing for. Could you give me a very quick response because I do have a question for Ms. Lahey as well.

[Chief Betsy Kennedy]

I think it's very important that we be given the opportunity to realize our own education, because we know what our people want.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

So you support first nations education programs?

[Chief Betsy Kennedy]

Yes.