Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to speak to this committee today about the economic leadership and prosperity of women in Canada.
My name is Kate McInturff. I am a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Today more women than ever are attending university and college. They are going into the workforce in greater numbers and entering new fields, yet young women graduating today will still be paid less than their male peers. They will be promoted less often to the ranks of senior management, and they will spend twice as much time doing unpaid work at home.
What is at the root of the persistent gaps in women's employment, pay, and promotion?
It has been argued that women, particularly women with young children, do less paid work as a matter of choice and that this is the source of their gap in pay. Yet when we look at the results of the labour force survey, we find that 69% of women with children under the age of 6 are employed. That's only 1% less than the employment rate for women overall.
It has also been suggested that in households where there's a male breadwinner, women will be more likely to choose not to work. Yet again, if we look at labour force survey data, we see the opposite is true. If you look at the choices families are actually making, you will find that in families where the fathers are working, the mothers of young children are actually more likely to be employed and more likely to be employed full time. In families with young children where the dad has a job, 63% of moms work full time.
Whether by choice or out of economic necessity, the mothers of young children are working women. Many of these working women are working full time while performing twice the number of hours of unpaid work at home. That time deficit plays a significant role in the inability of more women to move into demanding, higher-paid, and higher-profile jobs.
What can we do to address the time deficit faced by women in Canada?
While some of the answers are easier than others, I'm going to start with one of the most obvious: safe and affordable child care. Economists from across sectors have demonstrated the benefits of affordable child care, benefits reaped by children, benefits to women's economic security, and benefits to the overall economic health of a community.
Women in sectors as diverse as health care and mining report that the lack of access to affordable child care is a significant barrier to doing the work they want to do and achieving their professional goals.
What is the difference child care can make?
An analysis of the impact of subsidized child care in Quebec found that by 2008 the program had directly contributed to a 3.8% increase in women's labour force participation. The program also provided a broad economic benefit to Quebec's economy, increasing Quebec's GDP by 1.7%. An equivalent boost to Canada's GDP would contribute an additional $31.9 billion to Canada's economy.
Opening the door for more women to engage in paid work is a first step. However, once there, women continue to face the persistent problem of unequal levels of pay and unequal rates of promotion. Canada's gender pay gap is the eighth largest among OECD countries. Women's median employment incomes are 34% less than men's incomes. For some groups of working women, the picture is even worse. Visible minority women earn 17% less than non-visible minority women and 25% less than visible minority men. The picture is similar for first-generation immigrant women and for aboriginal women.
Here again it has been argued that women's paycheques may be smaller because they choose to work fewer hours; however, that is not entirely the case. Comparing the wages of women working full time, full year, to the wages men earn working full time, full year, we still see women taking home 20% less than their male peers.
One of the reasons for this has to do with industries in which men and women work and the value we place on that work. Women and men tend to work in different industries. A recent study by Statistics Canada found that women with university degrees today are most likely to work in the same fields they worked in 20 years ago, education and nursing. Men tend to work in technology and finance. One reason for the pay gap is that workers in male-dominated fields are paid more in general than are workers in female-dominated fields. This is to say that both men and women working as computer programmers will earn more than will men and women working as elementary school teachers.
However, even within the same industry, women and men experience pay gaps. For example, in the female-dominated education sector, male elementary school teachers still earn $10,000 a year more on average than do female elementary school teachers. So what can we do to make a difference?
When we look at wages across sectors, across industries, and across regions, there are patterns to pay and equity. One of the patterns I've been able to identify, looking at regional differences, is that where there is a proactive pay equity policy in place, the wage gap narrows. For example, if we look at median employment incomes in Canada's largest cities, women in cities with large public sector employers with proactive pay equity policies in place see the smallest gaps in their earnings. Yet these same cities do not have the highest overall incomes, a fact that runs counter to the idea that closing the wage gap is merely the result of higher overall wage increases. Indeed, the city with the highest average incomes, Edmonton, also has the biggest pay gap, with men bringing home $21,000 a year more than women on average do.
Narrowing the wage gap is a matter of fairness. It's a matter of non-discrimination, and it provides a clear benefit to women's prosperity and to the economy. Estimates from the World Bank suggest that closing the gender wage gap in industrialized nations like Canada could boost our GDP by as much as 9%.
Narrowing the wage gap can also make the difference in whether or not women and their families live in poverty. Poverty rates are highest among families that depend on a female income earner. This is true not only of families led by single mothers but also of two-parent families with children in which the woman is the sole income earner.
Consider the women in the lowest-paying of female-dominated industries, the service sector. Women working in retail sales in Canada earn just over $12,000 a year annually. Their male counterparts earn $18,000 a year. That $6,000 pay gap can mean the difference between having enough for rent and food and not having enough.
There are solutions to these problems. I've mentioned just a few here, but I would be happy to speak further about the public policies that have been demonstrated to make a real difference in the lives of women and in their economic well-being.
However, I want to close by reiterating what every small-business owner knows. There is no free lunch. Without a stable, upfront investment, any enterprise will falter, and the same is true of our investments in the policies and programs that can increase women's economic well-being in Canada. With adequate and stable support, our economy and the women in Canada will reap multiple dividends including significant GDP growth and the concomitant increase in government revenues. Without that investment, we are setting up our own programs to fail just as inadequate access to credit and financing causes small enterprises to fail.
Right now, in the last fiscal year, the budget for Status of Women amounted to 0.03% of direct federal program spending. As a percentage of federal program spending over the last several years, this is very little.
Let me repeat. The federal government allocates three-one hundredths of 1% of its total program spending to a department that is tasked with ensuring equality and the full participation of women in the economic, social, and democratic life of Canada.
Gender inequality is a crucial barrier to growth, to good governance, and to well-being. An investment of political and financial resources into increased economic security for women in Canada will pay dividends, not only in the quality of life of Canadians but also in the economic stability of the country.
Thank you.