This paper provides an analysis of the gender wage gap in Canada. Gender wage gap is also addressed as an issue nowadays which is experienced by females. Canadian society is not equal as long as women are the primary victims of violence, poverty and continue to face obstacles in the kind of work open to them, the positions they can hold, and the wages they make. This issue is also one of the many parts of gender inequality in Canada. The author studies that Does Gender Wage gap still exists in Canada?
As it was asked that, does a GENDER WAGE GAP currently exist in Canada between the earnings of men and women? Yes, it currently exists as there are many strong evidences which show that this issue still exists in Canada. Some of the reasons that why this issue exists is such as when women are less likely to work in unionized environments, or when they encounter discrimination in the hiring, promotion or other practices of their workplace. Also, women are represented under the level in their leadership positions, which also reflects the systematic undervaluation of women’s work relative to that of men, when women are paid less. Another most suitable reason for this problem is that women’s segregated work is paid less than men’s work. The higher the population of women, the lower is the pay which also results in the undervaluation of women’s skills in particular fields such as health care and services in which women predominate. As more women than men go to university or colleges for their studies, still they don’t get paid better whereas the work is same, which becomes really embarrassing that the pay gap is much more for younger generations. Almost 60% of the women that account for minimum wage employees and the women at low wages present all age groups which also leads to a reason that why poverty follows women after their retirement.
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From a recent examined report of Gender Wage Gap among the recently graduated students in Canada between 1988 – 2007 which tells that female graduates earn 6% to 14% less than male graduates after the freshly graduated period. Over the past few years, the conditions of the women have been improved in Canada, as there has been more employment for the women in the labor sector. A data report from the Census of 2006 show that 54% of women of age 25 years and above had completed their post-secondary graduations when compared with 58% of the men, and over the time now more women than men have completed their higher education while looking at the age group of 25 to 34, the analysis gives the result that women are 71% compared to 62% for the men. Those improvements followed that the general consensus seem that gender wage gap has been reduced over the time but we cannot see that it completely disappeared because women on average still earn only 83 cents while men earn $1. As mentioned above, the post-secondary graduates had a gender wage gap which was studied using the nine most recent waves of Statistics Canada- National Graduates Survey for the time period of 1988 to 2007. Focusing on Graduates, the NGS data contains many variables on the education attainment, field of studies and the job market information which consists of wages, number of hours worked, occupation and the sector of job, type of job (permanent or temporary). The information on the field of study is also more interesting as it allows us to get an additional area of control because we know that men earn more than women in every field of study and so is the reason that women are less influenced compared to men by the future wages when choosing a college for majors. As we see that wage gaps are 6% for two years after graduation and 8% for 5 years between the 10th and 90th percentiles, though when giving attention to the whole distribution of wage gives different patterns. The tails of wage distribution reveals that the wage gap has narrowed and has also almost disappeared in the bottom half of the distribution, but this story of distribution is opposite at the top because at the 90th percentile, the wage gap five years after graduation went up from 8.7% in 1991 to 15.2% in 2005. Though we see a decline of women’s population in a particular unit of three-year time span, the gaps of the wages have widened between 2002 and 2005. We find that gaps are more or less constant for the distribution of college and CEGEP graduates resulting around 10%. For the university graduates, we observe small gaps at the bottom and rather large ones at the top.2
The education from university has played a vital role in the attenuation of the gender wage gap (Baker & Drolet, 2010; Fortin & Huberman, 2002). By looking on early labor market entry people, these studies are only able to report to the gender wage gap at a period in the life cycle when women are the least disadvantaged relative to their male counterparts. Thus, gender inequality in field of study has been identified as an important source of the gender wage gap for university graduates; however, it is unclear how vast a role field of study plays related to occupational and industrial sorting. Women have made progress in the gender desegregation of some traditionally male fields (McMullen, Gilmore, & Le Petit, 2010). Using the data from 2011 National Household Survey, we get the answers for some of the reasons for gender wage gap when related to studies.3 The NHS has many advantageous variables over other surveys, such as high-quality education, employment, socio-demographic and many more. As, NHS is the most recent population-based survey that has more than enough examples of individuals with master’s and doctoral degrees to meaningfully explore differences by age, sex, and field of study. Other surveys, such as the NGS and SED, only include information on recent graduates, and have small sample sizes and/or poor-quality employment and earnings variables.4
Many of the professional graduations also had a change in the enrolment such as ‘the Female Doctoral Graduates increased from 32% to 44% within time period of 1992 to 2008 (Turcotte, 2011)’. Government funding contribution plays a vital role to minimize the gap between the men and women when it comes to higher studies. By being equally educated in comparison to men, women are giving tough competition in every industry and sector of employment, which leads the cascading effect on the Wage gap. Thus, many young adults at the end of last century faced the declining real wages, which also had an effect on the delaying of labor market entry for secondary education. The recent economic downturn may have had the same effect for graduates in the later 2000s (Ci, Frenette, ; Morrissette, 2016; Ferguson ; Wang, 2014). 5
‘As the growth in postgraduate education does not appear to be an exceptional case in Canada, there have been concerns regarding overproduction and the employment outcomes for those who complete postgraduate degrees (Cyrano ski et.al., 2011; Economist, 2010; Edge & Munroe, 2015; Fullick, 2015).’ Using the data from SEG and NGS for the employment outcomes of doctoral graduates from the 2005, it was found that two years after the graduation, 80% of them had found paid work, another 5% were self-employed, and only 6% were unemployed. Of the 8% who were not in the labor market, the majority were still in school (Desjardins ; King, 2011, p. 27). There were, however, important differences by fields of study. For example, graduates from the humanities had a much higher unemployment rate of 16%. 6
Another interesting thing is that whenever the new and more skilled positions are opened in any of the industry, we see that males will move into them and the female are supposed to occupy the spaces that male have made vacated. For example, when men were the bank tellers, this position had a fair amount of status and while the moment women moved into this position, the wage for women was decreased as well as the status. Same story also took place for many other administration jobs too. At present, it is not unusual to see the kind of work done segmented according to how power is configured such as women be prone to work in light industry or in clerical areas. They are less likely to be supervisors or managers in heavy industry or in areas outside of Human Resources or Benefits/Pay Roll. When women do hold positions of authority they often manage very few people and have little decision-making scope. ‘The glass ceiling is that phenomenon of women being passed over for promotion while their male colleagues continue to advance. The image of the glass ceiling is a poignant one in that it imagines women looking up and seeing men in positions above them but are blocked from getting there themselves. The lack of advancement is not due to weakness in skills or qualifications, but the result of gender biases.’7
As we focused on general trends for the distribution of wages, Also, we discussed the contribution of each level of education, field of study, occupational, and industry categories. ‘We believe that it is important to pay attention to where Canada stands in terms of wage equality, especially given the laws to that effect that are in force at the various provincial and the federal levels.’ 8Some of the solutions to this issue can be such as the minimum wages should be increased, Government should make policies in which it could help and support the working families.
To sum up, we analyzed the decompositions of the gender wage gap for the recently graduated people in Canada. Collecting the data for the different parts of post-secondary graduates, two and five years after the graduation, the average wage gaps were 6% (after 2 years) and 8% and more (after 5 years). Though the gap remained even after doing many tasks to control it for the group of rich covariates, but the situate of women was improved in the lower half of the distribution between 1986 and 2007. Still this issue can be seen in the high pay rate jobs while looking over the upper half of the distribution. “The unexplained part of the wage gap remained high at the top of the distribution, and the adjusted gap increased across successive cohorts past the 90th percentile.” The gap we see is widening in the top half of the distribution when analyzing the 2000 cohort in 2002 with the same cohort in 2005. As the wage gaps are stable over the time for the college and CEGEP graduates, it reflects that the university graduates are suffering from increased wage gaps at the top of the wage distribution. Only a limitation I think in this paper is that the data is just only for the graduates. Thus, it is not a major limitation because, “the growing educational attainment of the Canadian population, the limited time horizon does not allow the full potential of the studies to materialize, nor does it allow us to shed light on the ‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon that would usually arise later in a woman’s career as she climbs the corporate ladder.”9
