Employment Equity in Canada and the United State: Gender Analysis - Essay Example

Women and their male allies around the world have been fighting for equality in many arenas for a long time. Today, the vision for equality in the workforce is getting closer to becoming a reality. In order evaluate the success and failure of the women’s movement, it is necessary to look at the various climates, the economic and social variables that contribute to the outcome of women’s struggle for employment equity. To this end, an evaluation of the movement for gender equality in terms of employment in Canada and the United States serves to remove as many of the cultural variables as possible so it is clearer precisely what role social and economic factors play when determining the relative success of the women’s movement. This paper will argue that women in Canada have been more successful than their counterparts in the United States at achieving employment equity because Canadians have a more socialist attitude towards both government and fellow citizens. It will prove this by arguing that because Canadian labour unions are more powerful compared to those in the United States, women in Canada have more opportunity for both advancement and education in the workplace which results in greater employment equity. On paper, the United States and Canada are very similar. We share a history; two former colonies of the British empire, settled primarily by Europeans unsatisfied by life in Europe. The general cultures of the two countries are similar, as are the demographics (primarily European descent with strong minority populations). Through free trade agreements, our economies are tied together. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the average GNI per capita in Canada in 2004 was about $35,000 (CAN) per year, while in the United States; it was nearly $47,000 (CAN)1. Living standards are similar; both countries enjoy high literacy rates as well as high high-school graduation rates. Both countries have the benefits of modern medicine, similar birth rates and low infant mortality rates.2 Canada and the United States, along with most of Europe, Australia and Japan enjoy the many accoutrements of life in a developed country; bigger houses, plentiful food 3and lots of leisure time right into the lower part of the middle class, as evidenced by the popularity of activities like professional sports. 4 Once this cultural veneer is pulled back, the differences between Canada and the United States are far more striking. Canada is more like Europe in that it has a more socialist bent; taxes are high, but there are many more social welfare programs and reduced-price public services, like universal health-care, child-care and public college/trade schools. According to the Canadian Revenue Agency, a person in Canada who does not qualify for any exemptions or credits and makes the GNI ($35,000) pays $7,800 in federal and provincial taxes. In the United States a person making $35,000 pays about $4,700 in state and federal income tax.56 This tax differential is a reflection of the personal values of American and Canadian citizens. According to a study performed by the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans believe that it is more important to be able to pursue their own goals than to guarantee that no one is in need. Only 43% of Canadians agreed with that statement.7 Indeed, for most of the 20th century, socialism, and it’s more extreme cousin, communism, has been demonized in the United States, associated with left-wing extremists and held in contempt by that country’s small but politically powerful fundamentalist Christian population.8 The United States, on the other hand, purports to be committed to free-market capitalism. As a result, there are far fewer social welfare programs in the United States and talk of universal health care or increased spending on social welfare programs has derailed the career of more than one politician. Unlike the United States, Canada adopted socialist policies and practices that more closely mirror attitudes toward government that are found in Europe. As a result, labour unions have become quite powerful in Canada. According to Seymour Lipset, from the beginning the two countries have demonstrated much different attitudes about the way their respective countries should be run and what place workers would have in the power structure. Lipset writes, If we turn to the Canadian-American differences...Canada, the Tory outgrowth of the American Revolution, transformed itself in the twentieth century into a social democratic society, with a heavy emphasis on communitarian, statist, redistributionist welfare institutions and policies, reflecting Tory/social democratic values. With these it developed a much stronger labour movement than did its Whig and classically liberal neighbor, which disdained statism and class organization. Union density has been greater in Canada than in the United States from 1900 to the mid 1930s and again from the 1960s to the present.9 Indeed, according to Lipset, the increase in American union rolls between the 30s and 60s is a direct result of the New Deal10, an attempt by the United States to create some social assistance/welfare during the Great Depression.11 In any discussion about labour unions, it is important to note their multiple roles; in creating public policy, putting pressure on employers, and influencing the personal opinions and voting patterns of their members. Labour unions in Canada have cultivated their political strength in all these areas over the years while union strength in the United States has eroded. Elaine Bernard, the executive director of the Harvard Trade Union Program at Harvard Law School writes, The Canadian labour movement…has developed a different approach to labour political action, rejecting the two major parties and founding its own political party. Because a majority of Canadian workers are covered by provincial labour law, unions are able to win ground-breaking legislation in one jurisdiction through labour political action at the provincial level, and then generalize the success to other provinces. 12 Bernard goes on to point out that labour unions in Canada have developed relationships and create alliances with a number of social movements, and they have formed coalitions not just with women’s groups, but also with environmental organizations, those who advocate on behalf of the poor and many others. She maintains that in the United States, unions have been hurt by not forming these same types of alliances, choosing instead to align themselves with corporate interests. 13 Many progressive socio-political groups have found a strong political ally in Canadian unions. Even if union membership in the United States did rise to levels found in Canada, it is not clear how much effect it would have. Labour unions in the United States are weak right now and have very little political or social clout left. Bernard writes, U.S. labour has seen a significant rolling back of it’s rights-including in recent years of a fundamental union right, the right to strike, through the use of “permanent replacement” workers—but labour in many Canadian jurisdictions has continued to win important innovative labour law reforms and rights for it’s members and for all workers in Canada. Though far from ideal, unionists in the U.S. have begun to use Canadian labour laws as examples of modest reforms that would bring a semblance of fairness to U.S. industrial relations. 14 Indeed, labour unions in Canada have gone out of their way to help bring about employment equity both for their workers and on their own boards. Linda Briskin writes that, “In an attempt to address the under representation of women in top elected positions, many key Canadian unions and centrals have adopted affirmative action policies which allocate seats (either designated or added) on leadership bodies to women.”15 She goes on to point out that in 1983, the Ontario Federation of Labour amended it’s constitution to have five ‘affirmative-action’ seats on its board. The Canadian Labour Congress adopted similar policies in 1984. Many unions across the country soon followed. This served to increase the number of women on labour boards to 28% by the mid 90’s.16Furthermore, in the 1980’s, the Canadian Labour Congress expanded the list of ‘tools’ courses it offers for it’s members to include women’s rights and sociology, among other topics. Before that time, the courses were generally limited to techniques in collective bargaining.17 If a labour union is to remain a powerful force in politics and continue to advocate successfully for substantive equality, the unions must exercise their power from time to time. A labour union, if it goes on strike, can cause major disruptions in the economic and social life of a country. They can bring air-traffic to a standstill or halt road construction. They can even prevent a person from buying food. In The Feminization of Poverty: Not Only in America, Gertrude Schaffner-Goldberg and Eleanor Kremen write that, In the United States, as elsewhere, long-term trends in the labor market are creating more contingent work, less steady and secure employment, and fewer jobs with full fringe benefits for women (for most men as well). Affirmative action and anti-discrimination policies have lost the support of the federal government, and some recent Supreme Court decisions have reversed rulings that furthered desegregation, both gender and racial. Pay equity strategies have had some success at the state level among public and unionized employees, although the lower courts have tended to regard comparable worth settlements as counter to free-market principles. Minimum wage policies benefit the lowest paid workers and have been used to reduce the wage gap in other countries. Yet, during the 1980’s, the federal government did not increase the statutory minimum wage for 9 years.18 As labour unions in the United States have lost influence over public opinion, employers, and government, maintaining growth in gender equity in the workplace has become more daunting. As the labour unions lose political clout, lower-class Americans are losing their most vocal supporters. For the lower class, social welfare is a vital component of remedying the inequalities in the workplace. On the other hand, labour unions in Canada have created an environment in which women have come very close to achieving what Jill Vickers calls substantive equality, that is the state, "in which women are treated as equal citizens but also as different when appropriate so that men and women enjoy equal results from their citizenship. Theories of substantive equality mandate the use of devices such as affirmative action, pay equity, and party quotas for women candidates." 19 This state of substantive equality is practically non-existent in the United States. For example, affirmative action, which was marginally popular in the United States for a brief time in the 1960s and 1970s, has been all but dismantled in the United States in a series of high-profile court cases.20 As the labour unions become less politically powerful in the United States, politicians and society as a whole have chipped away at the few social welfare programs available to the common person. The United States is historically adverse to social welfare, be it for women, minorities or the economically disadvantaged. Schaffner-Goldberg and Kremen write that the social welfare in the United States is, “Inadequate, inequitable, and punitive, American welfare programs are unlikely to inspire support, even among prospective beneficiaries. Further, the United States still lacks programs for people of working age that could aid and draw the allegiance of the non-poor programs such as paid maternity leave, children’s allowances, and national health insurance.”21 The few welfare programs that are in place in the United States are hostile to working women. Diane Sainsbury writes, In the United States, the breadwinner ideology is manifested in rewarding the wife who stays at home. The spouse benefit in absolute terms is quite generous, and the survivor’s benefit is even more generous, totaling 100% of the husband’s benefit. Over half of all women’s claims to social security benefits are either wholly or partially in the form of dependent’s benefits. The tax system provides a housewife bonus.22 In other words, women who work in the United States are penalized for doing so. The U.S government creates and maintains policies that favor those people whose households look like the Cleavers. Mom stays at home and vacuums while dad is off at work making money. At the same time, the cost of living in the United States is such that it is very difficult for a family to get by without the benefit of two incomes.23 The lack of adequate assistance makes it more difficult for mothers to work or obtain more education so they can find better jobs or advance their position at their current place of work. If women cannot advance or they get locked into a particular type of job, they can not hope to achieve employment equity. Canadian workers, on the other hand, have the benefits of extensive and widely successful social welfare programs, which are supported from a political stand-point by labour unions. These social welfare programs assist Canadian women in achieving employment equity by creating a social environment that provides plenty of support, a society that is clearly working towards substantive equality. An unemployed or under-employed person in Canada never has to worry about hospital bill or a vaccination. The federal government in Canada also provides money for maternity leaves as well as subsidies for child care to both single mothers and working families.24 One major step in measuring employment equity is determining whether or not similar types of work are comparably compensated. Professors Michael Baker and Nicole Fortin found that women in the United States, when corrected for variables such as time spent on the job, the type of work being performed and demographics, women in Canada generally fair much better than their American counterparts with regards to achieving equal pay for similar work performed. According to their research, jobs that are by tradition or convention deemed to be ‘women’s work,’ does not pay less or have fewer benefits than men’s work in Canada. In other words, Canadian women don’t earn less simply by virtue of being a teacher or a secretary.25 This is partly due to the fact that jobs in teaching and nursing, in other words, jobs that attract females much more so than males, are more highly regarded and better compensated for in Canada than in the United States.26 For women in the United States, the traditional gender composition of a job does have a significant negative effect on the pay and prestige of certain occupations.27 On a meta-scale, this is devastating for employment equity because it clearly demonstrates that society at large in the United States places a greater value on a man’s education and time than a woman’s and therefore better compensates jobs traditionally held by men. Baker and Fortin attribute much of the difference observed to the cumulative effects of strong labour unions. In particular, the under-representation of women in labour unions and the low number of labour unions that represent unskilled on low paid employees. They write, “…a low female unionization rate in the United States and low occupation-industry wage effects for certain ‘public goods’ sector jobs, such as educational services, work to the detriment of American women.” 28 They also point out that the labour unions may be a “proxy” merely acting as a show case for more deeply entrenched ideas about what type of work is valuable and what type of work is not considered a given society. 29 Baker and Fortin point out that according to their surveys, only 16% of women in the United States are covered by collective bargaining agreements compared to 37% of Canadian women. Compare this to the relatively low numbers of women who participate in labour unions at any level in the United States. Furthermore, of the women in the United States who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, just 15% of those are in traditionally female jobs whereas 43% of Canadian women in the same situation are employed in fields traditionally reserved for females. 30 The high numbers of union affiliated workers in Canada may give them more even more strength then one might guess given the proportions. They write, “…the role of this institution may be understated in our comparisons if its effect varies with its level. The higher rates of unionization in certain Canadian occupations, in tandem with threat effects, may amount to de facto complete unionization of certain jobs.”31 The effect of collective bargaining and alliances with labour unions on employment equity in jobs traditionally held by women is clear; it may not have been solely the clout of unions that created parity, but it was certainly a very large piece of the puzzle. In both countries the role of women at the workplace changed drastically in the last century. In 1976 42% of all women in Canada were employed. They made up 37.1% of the total workforce. By 2003, 57.2% of women were employed, making up 46.6% of the workforce.32 Similarly, in 1970, 43.3% of women over the age of 16 in the United States worked. By 1998 that number had climbed to 59.8%.33 In 1980, women in Canada overall earned just 52 cents for every dollar a man earned. By 2000, women had made up 12 cents of that, up to 64 cents for every dollar earned.34Similarly, in 1980 women in the United States made about 60 cents for every dollar a man earned. In 2003, that number had improved to 75.5 cents.35 In a study performed by Ronald Bodkin and Majed El-Helou, women made up 39.9% of the labour force in Canada between 1975 and 1984. This number increased to 45.4% by the end of 1999. A similar rise was seen among American women. Between 1977 and 1986, women made of 43% of the United States work force. By 1996, that number had risen to 45%.36 In creating parity between the amount of money men and women make and increasing the number of women in the workforce, women are encouraged to enter the workforce. Indeed, many women in the United States, married or not, believe that it is more advantageous to them, from an economic stand-point, to stay home with their children rather than work. This is due primarily to the low-wages women make coupled with the high cost of childcare in the United States. 37 Given that most women in the United States and Canada will have at least one child in their lives, whether adopted or biological, this presents a huge problem; a woman cannot become CEO if she does not work. The influence of labour unions have made this discrepancy less of an issue in Canada by supporting policies that create parity between mens and womens pay and by advocating for generous child-care subsidies and paid maternity leave. 38 The idea that women who have good social welfare programs are better off in the workforce is born out by the statistics. According to Bodkin and El Helou, A single, married women in Canada with no children under the age of 6 had a 69.5% participation rate in the workforce in 1999. In 1995, American women of the same demographic had just 63.5% participation rate.39 Although the participation rates were better for Canadian women, both had gone up significantly over the years. The more women that participate in the workforce, the more likely it will be that women will start seeing significant progress in employment equality. Employment equity is more than pay and percentages, however, it is about the opportunity to work and succeed in a career path. In 1984 Canadian women held 28.9% of all managerial positions and 22.8% of all professional positions. In all, 29% of women held a position in one of these categories.40 In 2003, those numbers had risen to 35.4% and 53.4% respectively and 35.2% of women were employed in managerial or professional positions.41 By contrast in 1991 in the United States just 18.6% of working women made more than $40,000, which is the typical starting point of the pay scale for managerial and professional jobs. As of 2003, that number was 27.6%.42 In both countries, the gains came primarily as a result of the reduction in women working in clerical positions and the service industry. 43 One of the primary reasons for this discrepancy could be due to education. If one is to advance in a career path, a person generally needs an education, and in that respect, Canada has achieved better numbers again. In 2001, 47.1% of Canadian women had some sort of formal education after high school, be it trade school, community college or university.44 In 2002, only 38.3% of women in the United States graduated from a trade school, community college or university. This difference could be due to a number of factors, including the higher cost of post-high school training in the United States. Indeed, higher education is so much cheaper in Canada that universities in Canada attract a relatively large number of American applicants, and it is even cheaper for Canadians.45 The relative number of women in politics is also an interesting barometer of advancing employment equity. According to the Population Reference Bureau, women made up 21% of the Canadian Parliament in 2004. The corresponding number in the United States was just 14%. 46 Canadian labour unions again have been instrumental in creating equal education opportunities for both men and women on both a union-level and a country-wide level, as one of the social benefits that Canadian labour unions support. Canadian women seem to have managed to succeed where American women have not done so well. Carol McClurg-Mueller wrote that, “Ultimately, we appear to evaluate any social movement success in terms how much it contributes to further mobilization, further successes.”47 Canadian women continue to form coalitions with other groups to achieve even more workplace equity. Canadians have achieved greater employment equity because the socialist attitude of the citizens of Canada has led to greater unionization of the workers which in turn has created more opportunity for women to enter the workforce and advance in a career path by providing better pay, social welfare programs that assist women and better access to higher education. In Canada, women have persuaded their unions, still primarily filled with and controlled by men to help them in a mutually beneficial relationship. They enlisted allies and are getting much of what they want. Briskin writes, Canadian women unionists have organized from a gender-conscious perspective. They have successfully persuaded the unions to take up child-care, abortion, sexual harassment, pay equity, affirmative action, and employment equity as both women’s and union issues. Around each of these issues, union men and union hierarchies questioned the legitimacy of unions addressing such questions. 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