Evidence of meeting #25 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gap.
A recording is available from Parliament.
May 14th, 2014 / 3:40 p.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
First, in one of your slides you were talking about how the union coverage rate is higher for women than for men.
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
I think you said that about 70% of the women were in unionized positions over the men. Is that right?
3:40 p.m.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Well, no, actually the 70%....
Women are concentrated in the public sector, and in the public sector overall, it has a high unionization rate. I'm sorry if I wasn't—
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Conservative
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Why is there such a gap, then? I mean, if they're unionized—
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Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
No. This is overall. Basically there are two things going on. There's where women tend to work, and more women overall work in the public sector, which is highly unionized. So it's two things combined that puts them together.
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
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Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
The public sector includes education, health care, and public administration, so there's a fairly high percentage of women in those industries, which tend to be highly unionized.
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
So in the unionized positions that the women are in, I know you're saying there are probably more women in there than men.
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
But for those positions that have men in them as well, the men and women....
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
I guess I'm wondering, are the women still paid less than the men in a unionized position?
3:45 p.m.
Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
That would be something we'd have to look at separately.
That is always the challenge with the data. Normally if you control for things you can control, I know overall it doesn't make [Inaudible--Editor]. But there are differences by the industry. With things like unionization, you may see women make lower wages, but they make less overall. But if you control for things, the amount of years of experience they have in the work place and the type of occupation, they get very close together. I could see if we have other studies on that because there have been a number of studies on gender wage gaps that I could easily make available to the committee.
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
I was just wondering because when we were talking about.... On one of your slides I think there was a gap in the wage. I was just curious because if it were unionized.... Not working for a union, I'm assuming that everybody starts at a certain level.
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Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
But women do tend to be in different occupations than men where there are often different wage scales but if you control for everybody in the same group, you wouldn't expect to see a lot of difference.
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Okay, thank you.
Then your other slide that I picked out here where you have one in eight women were self-employed in 2013....
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
So there are more men than women self-employed. Are there any stats on why that is?
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Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada
Generally at Statistics Canada the information we have is observing what's going on. The why is harder to get at. Often it's either because of the.... Sometimes it's stabilities. We often see in an economic cycle that if there's an economic downturn, people will go into self-employment. When the economy goes up, they'll leave self-employment and go to paid work where there are more benefits and more stability.
But I don't know of any studies that's concentrated in that way.
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Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Okay, thank you.
During the recent recession and then the increase in unemployment, I think on one of these slides it showed the women's rate of employment fell less steeply than the men.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
Susan Truppe Conservative London North Centre, ON
Would you say that the type of work in which the women were represented is maybe more stable during a recession?