Status of Women Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2017

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I only have 30 seconds left, so I'll end it there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right. That's very good.

Now we will go to the next round of questioning with five minutes for Ms. Vecchio.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to start with Stats Canada once again. Can you clarify the cents versus dollars in earnings between women and men when it comes to occupations in the exact same sectors, the exact same job. Was it 92¢ or 96¢ per the dollar? Do you recall those numbers?

[Andrew Heisz]

It was 92¢.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It was 92¢, okay. I just wanted to clarify that.

When we're looking at situations and comparing full time to full time jobs, I come at this from a mother's point of view, recognizing that I was in and out of the workforce. Do we have any data that clarifies that? If we're trying to compare apples with apples, taking somebody who's been out of the workforce—let's say a person who is aged 35 may have had two children and, therefore, may have been off for two years—is that taken into consideration when you're trying to compare men to women with the same education, at the same age, and those things, or is that not part of the data or study?

[Andrew Heisz]

In the adjusted number that I referred you to, the 92¢, work experience is included and it's an aggregated work experience. So it compares women and men with similar ages, similar levels of work experience, working in similar occupations and similar industries.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's awesome, thank you very much.

Going on to the trades—I liked where Ms. Ludwig was going with this—we talked about the STEM fields. Let's get a little bit more specific. Do we have data showing the increase of enrolment of women in the trades fields, comparing it over the decades?

[Andrew Heisz]

I believe we do. I didn't bring anything specific to trades and enrolment.

Do you mind if look back in my deck for a second?

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's not a problem.

[Andrew Heisz]

If you have another question at the same time, go ahead. I don't want to use up your seven minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I appreciate that. I was just going back to my other questions so I could get that going. When we're talking about the trades, I really like to look at those sorts of things and what's going with them.

Also, I know that we were looking at graduation rates, but do we have any comparative data showing the enrolment in universities in these STEM fields over the decades as well, showing that in 2015 or 2014, x number of women or x percentage of women were in this field and that it's an increase of 5%, 10%, 15%, compared with the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, or 2010? Do we have any of that data to show the increase?

[Andrew Heisz]

Yes, we do. In the appendix slides to the deck, on slide 13, for example, there's a picture that shows completion rates of apprenticeship trades for women and men. This is using data from the labour force survey. Again, this shows that apprenticeship trades, at least in the recent decades, have declined for women in terms of completion. It's still much higher for men there. That's where you also see this trend towards more completion of post-secondary for women.

Regarding the second question that you had about women enrolling in STEM, slide 17 doesn't show the enrolment, but it shows the flip side of it, which is the percentage of university graduates across three decades. It shows an increase of women in virtually all STEM-related fields, with the exception of computer science.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I was at the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario. It was incredible the number of women, compared to men at the time, who were part of the STEM fields and part of the research hospital. Marilyn would have absolutely loved that, if she went there to see it.

I'm going back to some of the different questions that I had. I know we've talked about single mothers. Comparing single women and single men, there seems to only be a difference of about 1% when it comes to poverty. In that calculation of single women, is there any data on whether it is with or without children? Is there any data on that, or does “single woman” mean a single woman with no children whatsoever, with no extra responsibilities?

[Andrew Heisz]

We do differentiate what we would call an “unattached woman” from a lone parent. Some of those statistics are available on slide 21, which shows men and women of different family types and ages. It's a select view of the different statistics that we have. For example, about five lines from the bottom, there's a statistic for the unattached non-elderly. This would be single women who are not lone mothers. The difference there is 27.6% for women versus 26.4% for men—or about a percentage point. Then we have a number there just slightly above that of 42.2% for people in a female-headed lone-parent family.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Excellent, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Now we go over to Ms. Vandenbeld for five minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'd also like to thank you, Ms. Gladu, for the work you did on the pay equity committee. I recommend that everybody look at that, because there was a substantial amount of work done in this area.

Specifically, I'm looking at slide 5 from Statistics Canada, where you're saying that the hourly wage gap of 88% is narrowing for full-time workers.

With regard to precarious workers, the part-time workers, one of the things we looked at was that women are taking more time out of the workforce. Sometimes it's a self-perpetuating cycle, because women are making less, and therefore they're the ones who take leave for caregiving, and therefore they make even less over the course of their lifetime.

We were looking at statistics showing much lower earnings, in one case 73%. We heard testimony that the wage gap was actually not narrowing; in fact, it had gone up slightly.

If you were to add all women—not just comparing full-time to full-time, but adding the fact that women are working in precarious work and part time—is the wage gap narrowing, or is it stagnant? Do you have statistics on that?

[Andrew Heisz]

On slide 5, there are two time series shown. I'd like to underscore that these are just two of the different ones that could be prepared. The top one was the one I referred to, which was the 88¢ on the dollar. That compares hourly wages for full-time workers.

The lower one is maybe more reflective of the one you described, wherein more factors are associated related to the intensity of work, as well as the pay. The level is much lower and perhaps doesn't show the same amount of increase since the mid-1990s.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

If I could go to Statistics Canada on.... We heard a lot about the difference between pay equity and the wage gap, pay equity being specifically about people who are working in something with the same level of effort, skills, and qualifications. There was a significant gap there. Then, when we talk about the wage gap, we're talking about the kinds of things you mentioned, such as the caregiving responsibilities and other factors that are leading women to have even more of a wage gap.

Could you explain a bit the difference between the wage gap and pay equity?

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Do you mean Status of Women?

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Sorry, Status of Women....

[Justine Akman]

I think you've just articulated it very well. Pay equity is a technical calculation. It's supposed to be comparing exact jobs with exact jobs. There are different ways of doing that, which I believe have been discussed with this committee before. The wage gap is more a social phenomenon that's made up of a whole bunch of different factors that lead women, generally, to earn less than men—when you're comparing full-time work, in different ways, of course. We've discussed it, and I think you described it very well.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Okay. Thank you. Then, when we talk about intersectionality, we talk about women....

Statistics Canada, I notice you have a slide in which you talk about different low-income groups. One of them is women with disabilities. I wonder if you have specific statistics on the wage gap between women with disabilities and men.

[Andrew Heisz]

I'm not sure that we have that prepared. We do have surveys that would contain all of the information you would need to do that.

We have recently looked at, for example, employment rates of persons with disabilities. We've been doing some other work, from my own division's perspective, to improve our statistics on persons with disabilities, but I don't think we've looked at that particular aspect of it.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Does Status of Women have any specific information about that?