Evidence of meeting #52 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Alison Hale  Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

This is a very rich dataset.

Not surprising, as people know, if you look at older cohorts to younger, as this committee has seen, the younger cohorts have higher participation in the labour force and so it was—

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

I know that. Is it possible to have that data? I think it's important that we have it.

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

March 26th, 2015 / 11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

In my next question I'm going to talk specifically about university researchers. We know that while young women are 51% or 52% at the undergraduate level, and it's much less if we look at computer science, engineering, etc., we know we lose young women from the undergraduate level to the graduate level, and then we lose our professors at the assistant, the associate, and the full professor rank.

We know that women don't progress through at the same rate. While there may have been 52%, the older data was 20% at the assistant level, and 13% at the full professor level.

If we're talking about science and technology, can we have data on this?

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

You're going to a very specific level of granularity here. You're getting to an individual level where I'd be sort of....

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

University research is—

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

It's a level of confidentiality because then you start divulging personal information about individuals. It's a caveat on it that....

The information we gave in this presentation, because of the level of detail and the richness of the data, can be done at five-year age groups or ten-year age groups. The equivalent presentations could be done quite easily.

What you are talking about is looking at a very specific level of granularity.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

In academia, if we look at the Canadian Association of University Teachers, this is a huge number across the country and we need to make sure that our women are progressing through the ranks at the same rate as our men.

11:35 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc

If I understand the exchange, Ms. Hale will see if that is possible from a Statistics Canada point of view and if not, then if I may suggest, perhaps as a recommendation, a future study.

Is that okay?

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Yes.

11:35 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc

Thank you.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I know you've worked really hard because this hasn't been done, as you said, and these are approximations. I know you can't ask about recommendations, but the concern of course is that what gets measured gets acted upon, and if we're not collecting that data and we have approximations for each of these areas, it's a concern.

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

These aren't approximations. They were measured within the survey.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

But we don't have STEM being collected on its own.

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

It's how it's defined, so we've given a definition of STEM so that people can say, “Okay, I agree with that definition.” It's a variable that we've derived, so someone can say, “I derive it differently.” It is there, so I wouldn't want people to think that....

For instance, someone could say they want to use ages 25 to 28. That's a choice. Someone could say they would include physics teachers as part of STEM, and someone else would say they wouldn't. But we have physics teachers identified.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

I'm going to move on then. Maybe we need to actually start to identify what needs to be measured.

11:35 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

Yes, how you want to identify....

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Yes, okay.

The last thing I want to ask is whether there has been any attempt to drill down as to why men are still earning more than women in STEM fields. When I used to be at the university, a young woman at that time would earn on average $6,000 less when she left than the young man sitting beside her for the same degree. I'm going to ask what your dream study would be to really understand the issue of women in STEM and the equal pay gap.

11:40 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

I haven't actually thought of what that would be. It's not really my area of expertise. We have done a number of studies into gender wage gaps. The last one that was done, and we came to this committee—

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

In STEM?

11:40 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

Not recently in STEM, specifically. When you control for a number of issues, there are some things you can't control for because there are choices made.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Right, I understand that. When was the last time that was done, looking at the wage gap in STEM?

11:40 a.m.

Director, Labour Statistics Division, Statistics Canada

Alison Hale

I don't know if it's ever been done specifically in STEM, but it might have been.

11:40 a.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you.

11:40 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Hélène LeBlanc

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that great discussion.

Mr. Barlow, your turn for five minutes.