Women's issues seek attention during election; Pay gaps, maternity benefits for self-employed are being ignored in campaign, advocate says
Vancouver Sun
October 4, 2008
By: Donna Nebenzahl

In all the noise of electioneering, the needs of working women are barely registering in the hubbub of the campaign.

While several platforms list a national daycare program, and the need for maternity-leave benefits for the self-employed is on at least one agenda, these and other issues that matter to women are hardly noticed in the scramble to outdo the other candidate.

What about the obvious discrimination of Canada's pay gap?

Yes, it's still around: according to a Statistics Canada report based on 2006 census data, women earned 85 cents for every dollar paid to men in a comparison of full-time, full-year workers ages 25 to 29 where there's little difference between the sexes in labour market experience and tenure.

What turns out to be closer to a 20-per-cent gap overall is not something to be ignored. What man would work for $85,000 a year, while his female colleague, doing the same work, collects $100,000? We can't even imagine it, because it never happens.

It helps to be educated, and women are doing a lot about that. Those with graduate or professional diplomas, for example, earned 96 cents for every dollar earned by men. The ratio drops at the undergraduate degree level to 89 cents for every dollar, and at the apprenticeship and trades certificate level are down to 65 cents for every dollar.

Even white-collar women feel the sting: women in management earned 86 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues and in sales and service jobs that was down to 72 cents for every dollar. Plus, the older the worker, the bigger the gap.

"We want someone to pay attention to the pay gap which still runs at 20 per cent overall and has been stalled at that for a number of years," said Sue Calhoun, president of the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs.

… "One of our issues for the past few years has been access to Employment Insurance, maternity and parental benefits for self-employed people. If you own your own business, you don't have the right to pay into the EI fund. So if you want to stay home when you have a baby, you can't get it," she said, except in this province where the provincial government changed the process.

Keeping in mind that women have been starting businesses twice as fast as men, Calhoun believes the EI formula is simply not working for women and the organization is asking the government to review it.

"Since they reformed the legislation a decade ago, less than one-third of women are able to access EI, for reasons such as women tend to do more part-time work and contract work and it's hard to get in the number of hours that are required."

…. "It's being done in Quebec, and with self-employed fishers on both coasts," Calhoun said….