Gender Wage Gap in Canada

downloaded from

Scholarfriends

https://scholarfriends.com

Downloaded by: writerforacademic@gmail.com | https://scholarfriends.com/singlePaper/310891/gender-wage-gap-in-canada Distribution of this document is illegal.

1

Gender Wage Gap in Canada

Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Course Name and Number Instructor’s Name Submission Date

2 Gender discrimination has been so rampant in most of the global countries. There is a misconception that women are weak and cannot handle tasks that men are known to handle. In most societies across the world, women are given the lowest rank in the tasks that they can undertake; hence they are mistreated based on that misconception. As a result, there are earning gaps between men and women, where men earn more than women. The women are ranked to handle easy tasks that deserve low payments, unlike men, who handle heavy tasks that deserve high payments. For instance, there is a gender wage gap in Canada, which exists between men and women, where men earn more than women. In this paper, I will discuss with quantitative evidence, the issue of gender wage gap narrowing that took place between the year 1998 and 2018 in the earnings between men and women in Canada.

The Gender Wage Gap Reduction (1998-2018) In Canada, the women between 25 to 54 years of age earned approximately 800 dollars in a month, whereas the men in the same age brackets earned an approximate of 900 dollars per month (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). You notice that there was a substantial difference in the earnings between men and women between 1998 and 2018. These statistics implied that the wage gap between the two genders was significant and that there was a need to solve the difference. At that time, women's oppression was prominent not only in Canada but also in other countries across the world. The facts also indicated that the Canadian women had surpassed men in higher learning attainment, yet they earned less than men for the last decades (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). Even though the women have diversified their profession in different academic fields, their recognition in the job market is still very low (Arcila, Ferrer & Schirle, 2017).

Several factors explain the gender wage gap in the earnings of men and women in Canada.

3 Factors that led to the gender wage gap narrowing in Canada were varied and based on social, economic, and political considerations. The distribution of women and men's occupations was one of the factors that led to the gender wage gap (Arcila, Ferrer & Schirle, 2017). The professional occupations for social and law areas in government and community facility sectors, educational sector, finance, and business had led to women’s earning to be lower than the men’s (Arcila, Ferrer & Schirle, 2017). The statistics show that in 2018 these three occupational sectors employed various core-aged women than men in the efforts of narrowing the gender wage gap.

During this narrowing wage gap, women’s earnings grew faster than in men in various occupational sectors in Canada. However, this increase in the women’s salary did not bring equality between the women’s earnings and the men’s earnings (Arcila, Ferrer & Schirle, 2017).

Again, regardless of the decisive move in some occupational sectors, other sectors proceeded to widen the wage gap. For instance, in applied sciences, natural occupational sectors, financial and administrative occupations considered the men's salaries increment than in women. Some of the women employees in these sectors held the lower positions, which led to their low pay. The coreaged men were employed in the majority than in women, where they also increased the men's salaries than the women's (Arcila, Ferrer & Schirle, 2017).

The distribution of industries in Canada also substantially caused the gender wage gap (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018). For instance, the construction sectors were much dominated by men, who were highly paid. Most Canadian industries assumed that men had potentialities of undertaking hard tasks that were available in factories, unlike women in the sector (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018). Even if some female employees existed in the Canadian sector of the construction and applied sciences, they were granted easy tasks like accounting, among other tasks, which made them be paid low salaries, hence increasing the wage gap (Beaudoin &

4 Demeyere, 2018). The Canadian also factored in the fact that women spend a lot of time outside their occupations for various reasons. For instance, other than usual holidays, women were given extended maternity leave, which implied that during this time, they were not serving in the occupations, thereby do not deserve to be paid like men in those sectors (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018).

Lady's efforts to increase their educational attainment also significantly impacted positively in narrowing the existing gender wage gap in Canada (Lu, 2019). Over the last decades, women's efforts in advancing their academic achievements relative to the men's served a significant step in reducing the wage gap in the job market (Lu, 2019). During the past 20 years, universities in Canada recorded a more significant increase in women who owned a bachelor's degree than men. As employees with higher academic achievements increased their earnings in various sectors, the gender wage gap reduced by 12.7 percent (Lu, 2019). Job tenure as an essential human capital accounted for 5.5 percent in the gender wage gap reduction (Lu, 2019). During the 20 years, the women’s job tenure surpassed the men’s. According to these statistics, the men's job tenure was approximately 86.8 months, while that of women was approximately 89.4 months (Lu, 2019).

Besides, men reduced union coverage over the period (Lu, 2019). Job attributes changes between 1998 and 2018 also played a significant role in narrowing the wage gap. The number of women covered by a union increased than the number of men included. For instance, the number of women that an association covered during the last 20 years increased by 21 percent (Waite, 2017). These trends indicated that women covered by unions concentrated in educational services, social assistance, and healthcare facilities.

5 In contrast, men under the unions concentrated in the manufacturing sector, which started to decline. The other variables of job tenure only accounted less in reducing the gender wage gap over the 20 years. For instance, the public jobs and part-time employments accounted for 3.1 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, of the reduction in the wage gap (Waite, 2017). The number of women working part-time decreased from 21 percent to 16 percent over the 20 years (Waite, 2017). Most of the women were employed in the public sector, where the returns for the employees under the sector were increased tremendously. Many women gained access to working in large firms that had over 500 employees, and they were able to gain high premiums of the wages, hence narrowing the gender wage difference between the earnings of men and women (Waite, 2017).

Even though the effort was done by the Canadian economic sectors to eliminate the gender wage gap, women still face oppression and mistreatment in terms of inadequate payments (Lu, 2019). Currently, the Canadian government has put measures to regulate the positions that women can have in the labor market (Lu, 2019). There has always been the misconception that women are a delicate and weak gender, and they continue to face oppression. The 21 century has seen women struggle to fix their position from oppression, especially in the economic field, where they are campaigning equal occupational rights with men in the country (Lu, 2019).

Social Developments in Women Gender equalization started early during the colonial era, where women backed men in the struggle for independence in Canada and abroad (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018). Through global development, security, and peace initiatives, efforts to advance girls and women in various socio-economic and political aspects are being done. Several movements in Canada are making efforts to empower girls and women in various ways. For instance, they advocate for the wage

6 gap between women and men to be reduced, women mistreatments, and the rights of women and girls (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018). Canada is one of the countries that signed and ratified the 'Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women' Convention, which has global measures of eliminating discrimination of girls and women across the world (Beaudoin & Demeyere, 2018). The Canadian regime supports fights for any sort of girl and women discrimination. Several factors were involved in the social developments for women and girls.

Fight for the rights of women and women is one of the factors involved in women's social developments in Canada (Lu, 2019). In the last decades, women's rights and freedoms have been violated by men in various areas. Women's rights were violated in families, workplaces, among other areas (Lu, 2019). In this case, women were refused to hold high positions in jobs due to the misconception that they were weak and deserved the lower positions. Some women have higher potentials to handle hard tasks than some men and that they are weak was an attempt to deny them their right to work and earn a living (Lu, 2019).

The gender wage difference is another factor involved in developing girls and women.

Statistics have shown that many women have been undergoing mistreatment in the occupational sector in terms of wages and salaries (Waite, 2017). For instance, in the gender wage gap narrowing of 1998 and 2018, there existed a big difference in the earnings between men and women, with women receiving better and higher wages than women in different sectors (Waite, 2017). This gender wage difference is still existing in Canada, regardless of the efforts to eliminate it. Therefore, the gender wage gap is an underlying factor involved by the Canadian regime in developing women and girls socially (Waite, 2017).

Another factor involved in social development in women is the elimination of women's discrimination based on customary lanes (Waite, 2017). Women have been mistreated over the

7 last decades based on cultural practices in Canada. For instance, women were mistreated through Female Genital Mutilation (Waite, 2017). They were beaten by their husbands, among other mistreatments. Nowadays, social developments for women have involved this factor in helping women enjoy their space in society. Female Genital Mutilation was a dangerous practice in women since some of them lost a lot of blood, with some of them dying of lack of blood in the body (Waite, 2017).

Moreover, age is another factor that was considered in advancing the social status of women in Canada. Age is a full factor that is considered in the economic and political aspects (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). For instance, social efforts are being made to advance women in their political careers and ensuring them enough security in the field. In the economic sector, some employers are increasing the retirement years for the women to ensure that they deliver their proficiency to their capacity (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). In recent years, some employees had reduced their time for retirement based on the misconception that they were weak and could not deliver well during their aging times (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016).

The other underlying social factor in women's social development events is education (Waite, 2017). The Canadian education system has taken safety measures to ensure every girl child has access to primary education. In the recent past, women were mistreated because they cannot excel in academics and served only in cultural aspects like marriage and serving societies (Waite, 2017).

In the past decades, women have undergone a wide range of suppressive practices. For instance, women have been underpaid relative to men's earnings over the last two decades (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). However, regardless of the Canadian regime to make strategic efforts to narrow the wage gap between the men's earnings and women's and efforts to eliminate

8 other measures of suppression, there have been some fundamental privileges and oppressions (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016).

Women's rights and freedoms are one of the aspects that have been factored in by several Canadian movements that fight women's oppression practices (Lu, 2019). Some of these rights that have been upheld are rights to own properties. Now the women in Canada have enjoyed owning their properties, which is a result of the government's struggle to narrow the gender wage gap. Again, the misconception that women are weak and cannot handle men's tasks has reduced significantly (Lu, 2019). Women in Canada are working in the same sectors, with some of them holding high positions in the jobs.

The women's salaries have increased tremendously after the governments struggle to reduce the gender wage gap in Canada (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). However, the increment in women's earnings has not been proportional enough to rank the men's earnings. There still exists a wage difference between the earnings of men and women. However, through salary increments, women have enjoyed the privileged to advance their education to secure high-paid positions in the occupational sectors.

Women have been given positions in the Canadian government, which has served as a great privilege (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016). The women in government positions are now able to air their grievances. The elected or appointed women act representatives to other women and girls, and their needs are addressed at the national level (Antonie, Plesca & Teng, 2016).

However, there still exist some elements of political oppression for women. This is because the number of women representatives in the government has not been of the just number. The efforts to increase women's representation in the government should be hastened.

9 Discrimination of women has taken its pace during the last recent years. The gender wage gap has been one of the oppressive factors that have made women lag in social and economic development. I think women should be free from any kind of discrimination and be given a conducive opportunity to advance their goals. The issue of the gender wage gap in men and women should be attended, and women should earn the same amount as men since they are not handicapped and deliver wonderfully in some economic fields than men.

10 References Antonie, L., Plesca, M., & Teng, J. (2016). Heterogeneity in the gender wage gap in Canada (No. 1603).

Arcila, A., Ferrer, A., & Schirle, T. (2017). Occupational segregation, skills, and the gender wage gap. Mimeo.

Beaudoin, J. D., & Demeyere, G. P. (2018). Minding the Gap: Pay Equity and the Role of Law in Narrowing Canada's Gender Wage Gap (Doctoral dissertation, Masters Thesis, University of Western Ontario, Canada).

Lu, H. (2019). Gender Wage Gap in Canada: An Analysis using Counterfactual Distributions Regression.

Waite, S. (2017). Postgraduate Wage Premiums and the Gender Wage Gap in Canada. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 47(2), 156-187.