The principle of equality of opportunity is one of the basic tenets of human development. Gender equality is assessed by comparing the ratio of male and female income per capita. The Conference Board research shows that, despite decades of anti-discrimination legislation and equal rights provisions in most peer countries, there is still a significant income gap between men and women in all of the countries ranked here.
Many Canadians believe that the gender gap has been dealt with. Yet the gap in income between men and women in Canada is 21 per cent. Canada ties with Finland and the U.K. for 12th spot and earns a “C” grade. The gender income gap ranges from a low of 9 per cent in Denmark to a high of 32 per cent in Japan.
For most peer countries, the gender income gap has narrowed in recent decades. This is likely a reflection of increased educational attainment and training, as well as increased work participation and labour-force attachment.
Between 1980 and 2007, the largest decline in income differences occurred in the U.S., followed by Canada, the U.K., and Austria. Because these countries had the largest gender income gaps from the outset, they remain in the bottom half of the rankings, despite their improvements. Sweden, on the other hand, increased its gender income gap slightly, but because its gap was already 20 percentage points lower than that of Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., it retained its "A" grade.
The Australian gender income gap narrowed from 21 per cent in 1982 to 13 per cent by 1993. It fluctuated around the 15 per cent mark until recently. Between 2003 and 2007, however, Australia’s gender gap increased by 2 percentage points.
Despite its “A” performance for the past three decades, France has also experienced a growing gender income gap since the late 1990s.
Use the pull-down menu to compare the change in Canada’s gender income gap with that of its peers.
All of these factors affect the gender income gap.2 Recent census data released by Statistics Canada, for example, show that gender pay differences are wider among older workers in Canada. Women aged 25 to 29 employed on a full-time, full-year basis earned 85 cents for each dollar received by their male counterparts in 2005. Among women aged 50 to 54, the ratio amounted to just 72 cents.
But younger women seemed to have stopped gaining ground in closing the income gap with men. The ratio in earnings between men and women aged 25 to 29 remained unchanged between 2000 and 2005, after seeing steady improvements in the preceding decades.
Increased educational attainment among women has traditionally helped to narrow the gender income gap, but it had little impact in the most recent decade for younger women. In 1980, 17.8 per cent of Canadian women aged 25 to 29 employed on a full-time, full-year basis held a university degree. Although this proportion almost doubled to 34 per cent in 2000, there has been little change in the earnings ratios for this cohort. Statistics Canada points to rising earnings among young men with no university degree in recent years—due to jobs in the booming oil and constructions industries—as one possible reason for the stagnation in the gender income gap.
Education has been a factor, however, among new entrants into the labour market. In 2005, the gender income gap was narrower for those new entrants that had achieved higher levels of education than for their less-educated counterparts:
- Women aged 25 to 29 holding a graduate or professional diploma and working on a full-time, full-year basis earned 96 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2005.
- Women with a bachelor’s degree earned 89 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.
- Women with a registered apprenticeship or trades certificate earned only 65 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.
- Young women with no high school diploma earned 67 cents for every dollar earned by young men with the same level of education.
For the most highly educated Canadian women, gender differences in earnings within identical occupations are generally very small among new entrants to the labour force. Young women holding a bachelor’s degree and employed in art, culture, recreation, and sport occupations earned the same as their male counterparts in 2005. Young women employed in social sciences, education, government services, and religion occupations earned 99 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Two exceptions are management occupations and sales and service occupations, where Canadian women consistently earn far less than their male counterparts. Young women employed in management occupations earned 86 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2005. In sales and service occupations, the gap was even larger, at 72 cents for every dollar. Canadian women continue to be overrepresented in low-paying occupations in Canada.
1 Data from the 1980s are not available for Belgium and Denmark.
2 The data and analysis from this section is taken from: Statistics Canada, Earnings and Incomes of Canadians Over the Past Quarter Century, 2006 Census: Earnings, [online, cited August 31, 2009].