I think so, but the failure to feel free to confide in employers is very much a function of the fact that most of the young women in that age group have incurred school debt upwards of $50,000, to get that law degree or that MBA while they're still in their twenties. They know, because they can see very clearly that Canada remains a deeply discriminatory society, that they have to incur that level of debt in order to safeguard their own personal futures and their own ability to choose.
The withering away of pay equity, the privatization of human rights commissions, and the lack of serious systemic gender-based analysis of all policies produced by governments directly implicate a woman's ability to go through school on any kind of an equal basis, to graduate with an equal amount of debt, or to earn an equal income.
Right now it looks as if there are more women than men in the schools. This is actually reversing, as we sit here and speak right now.
While the women are in school, they have to incur huge amounts of debt. They earn less during the summer. They come to school--all study programs--with less money to begin with. Then when they go to work they may earn exactly the same during the articling year, but the discrimination in terms of pay rate sets in quite quickly as well.
So they're paying back bigger loans with smaller incomes, and they're falling further and further behind. But they will hide the toll it is taking on them because it is better than what it was for many of their mothers.