Mr. Speaker, if I were to answer that member's excellent question, you would have to let me speak for the next 10 minutes.
It is rooted in the philosophical and historic fact that women did not work at a particular point in time. They were chattel and they were owned by their husbands. When women did go out into the workforce around and after the Second World War, they were doing “certain sectoral jobs”. Those jobs were seen as pink ghetto or women's work, and as such they were paid at a lower level because a woman was not supposed to be the breadwinner.
Today in Canada women have attained greater post-secondary education and greater abilities and credentials than men in many sectors. Yet, they do not seem to be able to get equal pay for work of equal value because that is sectoral. Women's work still remains.
One of the biggest things we need to talk about, if we want to talk about women having equal rights in the workforce, is that women have children and need to have good quality child care so they can work equal time or be as flexible as they want to be in the workforce.