Gender wage gap: Truth or Myth?

by: Uzma Ahmed

The gender wage gap is the difference in pay between women and men in the workplace, specifically men and women who have the same role in the same company with the same experience/ skills. Of course, this pay gap increases/decreases based on race/ethnicity and based on occupation. Despite the several questions around whether the gender wage gap is real or not, there are some standard observations that seem to be fact, according to Statistics Canada1:

1. Male dominated industries have higher wage gaps than industries that are female dominated
2. On average, full-time working women earn 75 cents for every dollar earned by men. Undeniably, the wage gap increases for women who live with a disability, are racialized or newcomers, and those who are indigenous
3. On average it takes 15.5 months for women to earn what a man earns in 12 months
4. The gender wage gap is a contributing factor to women’s poverty.

Despite the above facts about the gender wage gap, it’s opposition is quite high in numbers. For the opposition, the real question is whether the gender wage gap is caused by discrimination or by market forces. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the difference in wages between Danish men and women were the result of women leaving the workplace and/or working less hours so they could concentrate on family caregiving responsibilities. However, even in this paper we see discrimination in the wages lost between men and women with children: “Both men and women with children see a dip in their earnings compared to childless counterparts. But the decline for mothers is almost 20 percentage points larger than it is for fathers — a gap that increases with the number of children a family chooses to have.”2

Ultimately, even Statistics Canada states that majority of the statistics presented for salaried full-time women and men don’t always take into consideration the number of hours worked. Alas, even when comparing hourly wages for full time working women we see that women earn on average 87 cents for every dollar earned by men.

In the end, the question isn’t whether the gender wage gap is a result of discrimination or market forces, the data already favors the former; the question is, how do guarantee pay equity?

For more information, please see cited sources!

1. https://www.canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-wage-gap/

2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/giving-fathers-time-off-still-isn-t-enough-to-end-the-motherhood-penalty/

Uzma Ahmed:

Uzma Ahmed is a project management assistant with a background in Biology. Uzma really enjoys learning and is passionate about making her own small difference in the world. As a person with many privileges, Uzma feels that it’s her responsibility to work towards a balanced society, which includes fighting for equality for women and men. Uzma firmly believes that the world won’t change until we change, and so she tries to learn as much as she can and question her beliefs so that she can become as informed as possible.

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