Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the committee for the invitation to speak today.
My name is Kate Mclnturff. I'm a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The committee has already heard that women are highly under-represented in most STEM fields and in the skilled trades. I'd like to spend my time today talking about why that is the case, and what kinds of public policies are needed to increase women's representation in these occupations and to address the challenges that are most pressing.
Men and women in Canada work in different fields, for different numbers of hours, at different rates of pay. Women are three times as likely as men to work part time, twice as likely to work for minimum wage, and nearly 100% likely to be paid less for the work they do.
The fact that men and women tend to work in different fields isn't unusual. Canada is fairly typical in terms of labour force segregation in OECD countries. The problem lies in the fact that there are women who want to work in non-traditional fields and they are being pushed out or meeting insurmountable barriers to achieving their goals. The problem lies in the fact that the women who make it into those male-dominated occupations are making less than their male peers, as we've just heard, and facing obstacles such as a hostile work environment. The problem lies in the fact that women's work in both male- and female-dominated sectors is undervalued.
Women want to work in skilled trades. Over the past 10 years, young women under 30 have gone from being 13% of new registrants in skilled trades training programs to 18% of new registrants. That's a 5% increase. However, the share of young women in the same age group completing those programs has increased by only 1%. This suggests that a significant portion of those new entrants are meeting barriers during their training before they even enter the job market.
I've met some of these women. When I taught at the University of Ottawa, I found them in my classes. They told very similar stories. They were inspired by a teacher in high school, a mentor, or a parent, and they entered trades training programs with high expectations. They were going to be the next Mike Holmes, but what they found was persistent discrimination, sexism, and exclusion.
Women who do manage to make it through their training and into jobs in skilled trades continue to face gender-specific barriers. Efforts to increase the presence of women in Canada's mining sector are a good example.
Women make up 20% of those employed in mining and oil and gas today in Canada. That percentage has remained unchanged since 2006 in spite of initiatives to support women's participation in the field and broader economic policies that have tried to support growth in that sector. Why? Reports by women in mining have identified some of the barriers that women face to working in this industry. Top of the list is a hostile work environment. Next on the list is the lack of mentors and women in senior management positions. Finally, there is the lack of child care and flexible work practices.
Women in mining, oil and gas, like women in other skilled trades, also face significant discrimination in their wages. The wage gap in oil and gas in Canada is one of the largest of any sector in our labour force, with women earning 65¢ on the male dollar, working full time, full year. Women working in construction trades fare little better. They earn 72¢ on the male dollar. Female electricians earn 79¢ and female plumbers earn 82¢ for every dollar earned by their male peers, working full time, full year.
ln the face of this level of discrimination, it should come as no surprise that most of the women who go on to work in skilled trades are concentrated in female-dominated fields such as food service and the beauty trades. The men who complete registered apprenticeships are concentrated in programs for plumbers, electricians, mechanics, and carpenters. So even within the skilled trades, we see gender segregation very clearly.
The wages in these different skilled trade fields are also very different, with male-dominated occupations paying double the rate of female-dominated occupations in the skilled trades. Let me give you an example. The average full-time wage for a chef or a cook is $29,000 a year. For a hairstylist, it's $22,000 a year. Contrast this to the average full-time wage for a plumber, which is $55,000 a year, or for an electrician, which is $60,000 annually.
Why? Because cooking and hairstyling are still viewed as women's work, and women's work is valued less than men's work.
The persistent and endemic undervaluing of women's work is a problem. It is, I would argue, the most urgent problem facing women in the workforce today.
Earning $22,000 a year is not enough to meet the basic needs of a family—not even close. An average market basket of goods, as determined by Statistics Canada, runs closer to $35,000 a year. A woman who is struggling to pay for food and rent cannot wait for attitudes to shift of their own accord. They cannot afford to leave it to karma. They need change now, and they can have it. There is ample evidence from across Canada and other OECD countries that the wage gap can be narrowed and that women's work can be valued.
Research on narrowing the wage gap is conclusive. The mechanisms that narrow the wage gap are as follows.
Family-friendly policies are the first mechanism. Women's hours of household and care work have not fallen over the past 20 years as their hours of paid work have increased. Today women put in 3.9 hours of unpaid care work a day, compared to 4.2 hours of unpaid care work 20 years ago. Only now, that four hours of work comes on top of a full day of paid work for the majority of women.
This is double the amount of time spent on household and care work as performed by men in Canada. Unless we add more hours to the day, this puts an absolute limit on women's capacity to increase their hours of paid work and to go after those more demanding jobs that require them to work after hours or overtime. Women are five times as likely to take time off from work to look after family members. Without family leave and sick leave policies that address this reality, women are further marginalized within the workforce and see their opportunities for advancement and better pay reduced.
Solution number two is child care. Where affordable child care is readily available, women's labour force participation increases, the wage gap narrows, and the rates of promotion increase as well.
In Quebec, for example, women's labour force participation outstrips that of other provinces. Quebec has one of the smallest wage gaps in the country, second only to P.E.I. Women's employment in Quebec also held steady during the recession, while it dipped in other provinces. I think this makes an important economic point. This demonstrates the stabilizing effect of accessible child care on women's employment, which is all the more important when we see male-dominated sectors dip, such as, for example, the oil industry and construction. If we have women in stable employment, this means that families are better able to weather the storm during times of economic downturn.
Policy number three is regulation and wage-setting institutions. In every age group, in every occupation, at every educational level, the wage gap for women is smaller in the public sector than in the private sector. This is the result of regulation and wage-setting mechanisms, which require employers to track levels of pay and promotion and address gaps where they find them, because you can't fix the problem if you don't know it's there.
Engineers and electricians do not live in a vacuum. They live and work in the same society as everybody else. If we want to support women entering those occupations, we need to put in place proactive measures that are going to level the playing field for all women in Canada, wherever they choose to work.
Thank you.