Thank you very much. I want to thank the committee for providing Statistics Canada with an opportunity to tell you what we know about the labour market for women, and their education, in non-traditional fields.
My name is Christel Le Petit. I'm chief of analysis in labour statistics. Tracey Leesti is the assistant director of labour statistics.
I'm going to be talking about the labour portion for women. I'll be followed by Yvan Clermont, assistant director in the Centre for Education Statistics, and Kathryn McMullen, chief of analysis in the Centre for Education Statistics, who will complete the story with a picture of the education side.
As you see on slide number 2, as Mr. Green already mentioned, women have been increasing their participation in the labour market over the last 30 years. That is a really big movement, and it underlies a lot of the findings when we look at the increasing share of women in occupations. As a result, the gap between the number of men and the number of women employed has narrowed. The latest data from part of 2009 shows that men have been affected more by the downturn, narrowing that gap even further.
Women are participating more. However, they participate in different types of occupations than men. On slide number 3 you see the breakdown of where women work versus where men work. If we look at the four top types, we have sales and service; business, finance, and administration; social science, education, government services, and religion; and health. If we put those four groups together, 80% of women work in those occupations. For men, this number is only 37%. This was the proportion in 2008. It hasn't changed very much over the last 20 years or so. Women are participating more, but they go into different occupations.
As I said, they've progressed, and there are some occupations in which they even surpass men. Women used to be less than 50% of the workforce and are now more than 50% of the workforce in these occupations: machine operators and related workers in textiles; managers in arts, recreation, and sport; and insurance and real estate sales.
Women have also increased substantially in some other occupations, notably in health sciences; as judges, lawyers, and notaries; as physicians and optometrists; and as managers in art, culture, and sport. Those are some of the occupations where women have made the most increases in their share.
In terms of non-traditional occupations, which is the focus of this committee, internationally there is no standard for what a non-traditional occupation is, nor is there a standard at Statistics Canada. What we have done for today is use a definition that defines a non-traditional occupation as an occupation in which fewer than 25% of the workers were women in 1987. In 1987, 9.9% of the workers in non-traditional occupations were women. That proportion has increased. By 2008 it had reached 15.4%.
Keeping that definition of a non-traditional occupation, slide 6 shows where women have increased the most. As you see, there's really a mix of types of non-traditional occupations where women have increased their share. There are some professional ones, some technical ones, and some managerial ones. There aren't a lot in the trades, however. That's a key finding. They're increasing their share, but they're not increasing in the trades. When you look in a bit more detail at the trades, the types of trades women pick haven't changed very much. They would be seen as traditional women's trades: hairstylists, tailors, dressmakers, bakers, and cooks. When women go into the trades, they go into very specific kinds of trades.
In the more male-specific trades, we still see a very low proportion of women. These are trades such as refrigeration and air-conditioning mechanics, gas fitters, cement finishers, and bricklayers. There haven't been a lot of changes recently.
The committee also asked which are the non-traditional occupations in which women have not increased their share. Because women have increased their participation overall, there's a very short list of occupations in which they haven't increased their share. Of the 139 categories we looked at, women did not increase their share in only six.
This concludes my overview of the labour market. There are lots of reasons why women are working in certain occupations. One of them is education, and Yvan will continue.