The salary difference, though, is.... The public system is not just providing a base for those with low income. The Canada Pension Plan is a pension program that replaces earnings. What I can tell you is that when you look at retirement income replacement rates in terms of retirement income as a percentage of pre-retirement income, the levels that you see from statistics and data--and you could invite them as well--show that even women with lower earnings levels have had comparable replacement rates--so have been making up some of the gaps that have been left by the public system through pensions and so on.
On the issue of the effect of the recession, as I did note, for those with a registered pension plan, women are now slightly more likely to have a defined benefit plan, which is less affected by market trends.