Equal Pay Days show disparity of salaries for women

Monday is Equal Pay Day in the United Kingdom, meaning British women have by now earned everything they’re going to earn this year — but they’re still doing better than Canadian women.

Data from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, cited by Yahoo Finance, show that the average salary for a full-time female employee is 14.5 per cent less than the average for a male employee. Women have effectively made their salaries for the year as of today, whereas men will continue to get paid.

In Canada, women still earn, on average, about a third less than men, according to the most recent Statistics Canada figures available, which include full- and part-time workers.

Equal Pay Day here came in April. That’s how long into 2015 a Canadian woman had to work to earn what a man made in 2014, the Equal Pay Coalition says.

The disparity has been explained in many ways: that women choose lower-paying jobs or careers, don’t negotiate raises as well as men and leave the workforce to have children.

But a federal panel, convened to study the issue, found that simply isn’t the case.

“In Canada, the gender wage gap appears to be deeply rooted in the economy,” the Pay Equity Task Force said in its 2004 report. “Women continue to earn less than their male counterparts, regardless of age, education, experience, labour market attachment or occupation.”

It also recognized that other groups are affected by “wage discrimination” — notably, visible minorities, Aboriginal people and people with disabilities — and that it had wide-reaching implications.

“Clearly, pay inequity has long-term consequences for many families, children and society as a whole,” the task force said. “Pay inequity and poverty can have significant social and economic costs related to, for example, health care, community services, shelter and housing.”

And pay inequity is not just a social ill — it’s a violation of section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

But as it stands, the responsibility lies with the worker rather than the employer, and that system doesn’t work.

“The current complaint-based model is ineffective and inaccessible for the majority of women in Canada,” says the National Association of Women and the Law. “Its ambiguous terminology, unspecified methodology and lack of enforcement mechanisms have resulted in extensive delays, unacceptably long waits for wage adjustments and, in many cases, a complete lack of alternatives for women with pay equity complaints.”

The federal task force agreed the onus for pay equity should be on the employer. Among other recommendations, it called for stand-alone, comprehensive legislation to end wage disparities and establish agencies to oversee it.

To date, no federal pay equity legislation has been enacted, and the newly elected Liberal government doesn’t have pay equity on its agenda.

Four provinces have pay equity laws covering public-sector workers: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Only Ontario and Quebec have pay equity legislation in place to cover all workers, and earlier this year Ontario established a gender wage gap steering committee that is to report back in early 2016.

“They will examine how women are affected by the gender wage gap, at work, in their family and in their community,” a Ministry of Labour news release said in October. “They will assess how government, business, labour, other organizations and individual leaders can work together to resolve issues that may cause the wage gap.”