Women still behind men in workforce, study says
Vancouver Island News Group -- Ladysmith Chronicle
October 17, 2006

Women are getting a raw deal - still.

A recently released study from Statistics Canada shows that in dual- earning households, females are paid significantly less on the work site when performing the same job as their male counterparts.

In 1967, only 11 per cent of women were the primary breadwinners in Canadian households. While that number has increased to 30 per cent in the past three decades, when contrasting remuneration for the same job, the study found that wives earned an average of $41,200 annually compared to their husbands, who made $57,800.

"It happens because we have a system where men are privileged over women and that seems to be somewhat incorrigible because there's no other way to account for it," says Kathryn Barnwell, director of Women's Studies at Malaspina University-College.

"We used to think that education was one of the great levelers, but of course that gap would indicate that it's not, that men still have access to work - even with less education - that pays them better than women have access to."

For equity between genders to become a reality, Barnwell says it will take the federal government to enact upon their own findings that women are not getting equal pay for work of equal value and that they have been grossly underpaid simply on the basis of their gender.

The costs of reaching equity, she notes, are considerable. The issue of daycare and its costs have yet to be sufficiently addressed.

"The workplace has still not really adapted itself to that, so there are very few workplaces that provide on-site childcare and support services that would tend to make male and female workers employed in a more equitable environment, where both men and women could take responsibility for childcare," she said.

Another StatsCan study shows that while 69 per cent of men are performing more housework these days, up from 54 per cent in 1986, the rate for women remains at 90 per cent. Good news, yes, but still not equitable.

When posed with the question of what the biggest obstacle women face in the workforce in comparison to men, Barnwell offers an interesting insight. "Strangely enough, probably the answer is that they are women, and not men. It seems to be a prejudice that they have to work against right from the outset."

Women, she says, tend to be "ghettoized" in service jobs, where they are expected to behave and conduct themselves quite differently from men. "Checkout clerks, if they're women, are expected to smile and ask us how we're doing and how our day was and be sympathetic and so forth. But if you're a man, you're not expected to provide that additional kind of nurturing service."

As for professional women, Barnwell concedes that females have made significant strides in the past 30 years.

But it is definitely not all peaches and cream for the 'gentler sex.'

"We're inclined to focus on the fact that there are more women dentists, doctors, lawyers and judges and so forth, and that is certainly true," she said.

"But the so-called 'working poor' or women who are marginally employed, their situation has actually worsened in the last decade or so."