Is There Wages And Salaries Discrimination Toward Females In Canada - Research Paper Example

Contents Contents Introduction 2 The History of Female Waged Labour in Canada 2 Factors Leading to Wage Discrimination towards Woman 4 Analysis of the Question of Wage Discrimination towards Women 6 Table 1 7 Table 2 8 Measures That Have Been Taken In the Attempts to Reduce Discrimination 10 Recommendations 11 Conclusion 12 References 13 Is There Wages And Salaries Discrimination Toward Females In Canada? Introduction Women been in the work force for years and have played a great role in the growth of Canada’s economy. However, a great gap exists in the wage and salaries earning between men and women. A lot of research has been done in the attempt to explain the actual cause of wage difference. The wage difference between men and women has been attributed to factors such as work experience, education, career choice and partly due to gender discrimination. Wage discrimination is discrimination in the payment toward a specific group. Discrimination means that there is biasness or prejudice in treatment of the different groups. By wages discrimination I mean two groups with the same skills, responsibilities, and efforts. However, one group is getting lower wages than the other group. Wages difference is the variance in wages between two groups because of the different skills, efforts, or responsibilities. It is in some way hard to deal with the issue of wage discrimination without touching on wage difference since the two are intertwined. In addition there has been an inclination to attribute wage discrimination to factors such as education level and career choice, which are the same factors resulting in wage difference. However, my term paper addresses the question, is there gender based wages and salaries discrimination in Canada? The History of Female Waged Labour in Canada Wages discrimination in Canada has been an issue for a long time. To explain the question of wage discrimination, a brief history of development of waged labour in Canada is necessary. Before 1850, waged labour was a rare phenomenon since most families depended on activities such as farming, craftwork, and trade for income. With industrialization, factories and industries started coming up. Regions such as Toronto, Ontario and Montreal became industrial centres and the urban population started growing rapidly (Freeman, 2001). Waged labour was also established with women concentrating in industries such as cotton industry and clothing industry. Most of such women were young girls and there was a divergence in the wages. The difference at this period was mainly due to the difference in jobs since most men worked in industries such as in the railway construction where they received better wages (Beaujot, 2000). Other difference was that women were temporary employees and mainly worked only during peak times. It was in this period that domestic waged employment became a common phenomenon. Difference in wages was also attributed to the high number of children and women paid to do a specific job, which resulted in cheap payments (Freeman, 2001). In 1910, professionalism became prominent and the few women professionals worked as teachers and shop clerks. In these periods, Trades and Labour Congress (TLC) supported exclusion of women from waged labour especially in the factories arguing that such jobs degraded the health and morality of women (Freeman, 2001; Galabuzi, 2006). During the First World War, there was an increase in the number of women employed in waged labour since most men had joined the army. About 35 percent of the 1500 employed people comprised of women. However, the women wages were inequitably low as compared to those of men. The women were also exposed to sexual abuse especially those seeking white-collar jobs. The end of the First World War resulted marked gradual replacement of women especially the married ones by men in the waged employments (Beaujot, 2000; Philips & Philips, 2000; Freeman, 2001) In the 1950’s, the number of working women was small and there was a clear-cut difference in the types of works done by men and women. Women mainly worked as teachers, nurses or clerks, jobs that had menial payment as compared to the much paying jobs done by men such as engineering, doctors, just to mention but a few. Women sought waged employment for a number of reasons, which include increased cost of living and individual outlooks. The choice of career was mainly attributed to moral foundations, which perceived the role of women as that of homemaker (Galabuzi, 2006). The women who chose to work faced discrimination since they were viewed as inferior to men. They also had to work extremely hard since they still had to carry out their family responsibilities in addition to the workplace duties. There has been a steady change in the perception on the jobs that women can do but the feeling that some jobs such as engineering are masculine is still evident even in today’s society. The last few decades have been marked by increase in number of women in waged labour with most of them being the unmarried ones (Philips & Philips, 2000; Gairdner, 2011). In 1977, the Canadian parliament enacted Canadian Human Rights Act that prohibited any form of discrimination on whatever basis. The main reason has been due to increased cost of living that requires participation of women in family providence. This results in decreased hours that women do waged labour as compared to women who are rarely involved in house duties. The change in the women wages has increased but a great difference from the men earnings is still evident. In the 1910’s, the women’s annual wages were about 53 percent that of men. The percentage increases gradually to 60 percent in 1930’s. By 1990, women wages were about 67 percent those of men and rose to about 72 percent in 1997. Currently, the average wage for women is about 60 percent that of men, which is indicative of inequality (Beaujot, 2000; Philips & Philips, 2000). Factors Leading to Wage Discrimination towards Woman From the trend above, it is evident that women wages have always lagged behind which poses the question of why the women wages have not equaled those of their male counterparts. Women are considered one of the victims of wages discrimination in Canada. There has been a great propensity to attribute the wage difference to discrimination. This means that women and men with similar skills, work experience, and similar working schedule but receiving different wages. However, some economists argue that wages discrimination is not the only cause of wages gap between men and women. They argue that women tend to choose part time jobs more than men, which cause wages gap (Galabuzi, 2006). They argue that there could be some bit of wage discrimination but it is only minimal since men and women rarely engage in similar works, which makes it hard to measure the proportion of difference attributable to discrimination. They also claim that the difference in wage resulting from discrimination is in significant since it account for about four to five percent (Philips & Philips, 2000). However, activists argue that the difference in education, work experience, and career choice are all consequences of discrimination (Galabuzi, 2006). This implies that activist feel that the discrimination is not just in wage but also in other issues determining ones wage. They thus feel that it is hard to deal with wage discrimination without dealing with prejudice leading to women’s lack of experience, proper education or work experience. Current explanation explanations given for the discrimination in wages between men and women is that there is a lot of job discrimination, which pushes women to do less paying jobs. Another reason is that women are not actively involved in labour unions that cold fight for equality in wages. Research done in Canada has shown that there is some accuracy in these claims since the career choices preferred by men is different from those favored by women. Women thus end up getting into few job categories with lower wages as compared to the job occupations taken up by men (Economic Research Institute, 2012; Canadian Human Right Commision, 2010). Women tend to choose careers such as teachers, nurses, or public communication. However, these careers have lower paying wages or salaries comparing to men choose. Men choose careers such as engineering, lawyers, or pilots. Therefore, men tend to choose more stressful and demanding jobs and thus they are paid higher salaries. However, women tend to choose jobs with flexible schedule and less stressful jobs so they could spend time taking care of kids (Economic Reseach Institute, 2012). The discrimination in salaries has led to increased poverty level amongst women such that most women are willing to do all sorts of jobs to earn a living. Human right activists argue that women do not have easy accesses to education as men do. However, I believe this is changing right now. For example, my mother did not have lots of chooses in choosing a career path. Her chooses was ether to become a teacher or to become a nurse. However, my sister now studying engineering, we can see that females now can choose any career path she wants. There has been a change in trend in career choice amongst women as indicated in the table below (Jain, Sloane, & Horwitz, 2003). Analysis of the Question of Wage Discrimination towards Women Gender discrimination is a common phenomenon in Canada and it requires to be addressed with more gravity. The tables below show the differences in wages between men and women in Canada. Table 1 (Statistics Canada, 2012). In the table above, we could see that there are more men in managerial occupations and other occupations such as trades, transport and construction, where women tend to go to professional such as social sciences, teaching or nursing. So this could give us a since of other reasons of wages gap between males and females. One of the reasons I may consider is that man are choosing careers with high pay where women tend to choose careers that are more sociable witch don’t always pay as much as other careers do such as engineering (Philips & Philips, 2000) According to the Canadian human rights commission they said, about 30 percent of wage difference is due to discrimination against women. However, it is not clear how they estimated that and some women who believe that she is receiving less salary because of discrimination it maybe just wages different. It is difficult to know if there is wages discrimination (Canadian Human Right Commision, 2010). Another factor that has previously led to inability to detect wage discrimination is some employer’s tendency to prohibit discussions on wages and salaries amongst employees. Table 2 (Statistics Canada, 2012). As the table above it shows us a clear gap between men and women wages. Men average hourly wage is $24.83 where women is $21.30 this is back in 2011. However, in 2012 men wages increased to $25.40 where women it only increased to $21.77. Men wages increased by $0.57, where women wages increased by $0.47 cent. Therefore, there is a different in 0.10 cent. However, looking at the table we cannot assume that all wages different is related to wages discrimination. There are many reasons that cause salaries gap between males and females such as different education or experience. However, there are some cases where wages discrimination occurs. For example, the Canada post case where the supreme court of Canada found that Canada post is guilty of gender-based wage discrimination (Statistics Canada, 2012) Wages discrimination is hard to measured, because we have to measure productivity. Moreover, there are jobs such as accountant that are difficult to measure productivity and it cost lots of money so employers are not likely to do it (Canadian Human Right Commission, 2010). Attainment of equity in wages between men and women is quite a hand phenomenon due to the different value accorded to different jobs and the fact that the choice of careers in men remains different from that of women. Modern factors attributed to inequality in wages between men and women include involvement rate, Job segregation, Education, work experience, unionization, labour market, and legal outlook. The number of women involved in waged employment has increased over time. Increase in supply of any product or service of any type eventually results in decrease in demand. The increase in number of women in waged labour has thus led to inclination by employees to depress wages for women. On the other hand, the number of men in waged labour has not transformed greatly thus, the trend of wage increase remains favourable (Statistics Canada, 2012; Alliance, 2008). The other factor is job segregation. Increased involvement of women in waged labour cannot individually result in discriminative wages. Occupations are categorized in terms of skill required with occupations requiring high level of skill being better paying. It is apparent that women end up dominating occupations requiring lees skills hence lesser wages. However, it has also been observed that women working in male dominated fields end up being segregated in lower ranks hence reduced wages. The tendency to segregate women into low paying jobs is mainly attributed to sociological factors such as the common view that women are inferior to men (Philips & Philips, 2000). Education is the next factor attributed to wage difference, which greatly contributes to wage discrimination. However, even men and women with similar academic qualifications receive different payments with men being paid better wages as compared to women. The gap difference in wages enlarges with time. In some instances, men in less demanding occupations such as humanities may earn more that women in demanding occupations such as engineering (Jain, Sloane, & Horwitz, 2003). Experience is an additional cause of job discrimination against women. Due to the women’s role of childbearing, most end up spending some time out of their work. This results in failure to participate in organizational training hence lesser experience. Some employees will prefer offering sponsored training to men as opposed to women. Extra training results in increased experience. Since job promotions are based on experience, men thus end up having more chances of promotion hence better wages than women (Philips & Philips, 2000). Unionization is another factor that determines the wage gap. In the past, women were rarely involved in unions thus they rarely aired their grievances. Involvement of women in labour unions in the recent past has greatly contributed to some raise in women wages such that the wage gap between men and women is now slighter (Galabuzi, 2006; Economic Research Institute, 2012). In the near past enactment of some acts have made it hard for employees facing discrimination to sue their employers. However, there are still other acts such as Paycheck Fairness Act that help fight against discrimination in work places (Economic Reseach Institute, 2012). From the findings in this paper, it is clear that Canada lacks a system of monitor the fulfillment of human right laws. The employees are thus reluctant in following the laws when designing the wage structures (Economic Research Institute, 2012) Measures That Have Been Taken In the Attempts to Reduce Discrimination Some steps have been taken in the effort to reduce wage discrimination. Some of the measures include enactment of acts by the parliament. The Canadian Human Right Commission (CHRC), which was formed through endorsement of Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), has facilitated the development of principles to enhance and promote rights of all persons without discrimination (Alliance, 2008; Economic Research Institute, 2012) Recommendations There are several changes required to bring about equity in wages between men and women especially those with similar experience and academic qualifications. There is need for Canadian federal government to make changes in laws concerning human rights to enhance realization of pay equity such that men and women doing alike work receive the same pay. There is also need for the federal government to enact laws that will offer equal payment to men and women without considering factors such as supply (Alliance, 2008; Philips & Philips, 2000) Issues or legal cases dealing with female wages discrimination require to be addressed with more seriousness there is also need for development of a scheme to fuel implementation of a design to aid in facing out the issue of wage discrimination against women. In addition, standards wages for different professions should be established to ensure that men and women in same professions are treated similarly especially on matters pertaining to wages. Women also need to be empowered on their right to justice and equal pay without discrimination. There is need for development of a mechanism of ensuring that employers abide to parliamentary acts as well as federal dealing with Human rights. The Canadian Human Right Commission should be endowed with more powers such that it can prosecute employees who may be reluctant in comply with the laws pertaining to equity in wages (Economic Research Institute, 2012; Canadian Human Right Commision, 2010). The government of Canada requires enacting measures to empower more women to enter into different occupations. The government should also amend certain laws such as Canada Labour Code to provide paid leave to women. The Government should also make sure that women acquire assistance in furthering their education to encourage equal payment opportunities between men and women (Alliance, 2008). Conclusion The role of women has contributed to their career choice since there are societal roles they perform which may affect their choice of jobs. For example, a woman is usually the one who takes care of kids at home, so she will tend to work fewer hours than man does. Most people attribute the mediocre position of women in waged labour to the lack of education qualifications as well as work experience. Another factor is that most occupations taken up by women are inadequately paid. Women earn considerably low wages as compared to men. Ther is still a lot of confusion as to the exact cause of wage differences between men and women and women. It is clear that discrimination is somehow inevitable due to the existing differences between men and women in terms of educating, experience, and sociological perceptions that limit the achievement of complete equality in wages between men and women. The main factor attributed to continued discrimination in wages between men and women include job segregation, level of unionization amongst women, work experience, and an influx of women into waged labour in the recent past resulting in reduced rate of wage increase amongst women. References Alliance, C. F. (2008). Women’s Inequality in Canada. Retrieved June 16, 2012, from http://www.iwraw-ap.org/resources/pdf/42_shadow_reports/Canada_SR_FAFIA.pdf Beaujot, R. (2000). Earning and Caring in Canadian Families. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Canada, S. (2012). Distribution of employment by occupations, 1987, 1999 and 2009. Retrieved June 16, 2012, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11387/tbl/tbl012-eng.htm Canadian Human Right Commision. (2010). Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value: Employers guide. Retrieved June 16, 2012, from http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/publications/employers_responsibility-eng.aspx Economic Research Institute. (2012). Discrimination in Pay. Retrieved June 16, 2012, from http://www.eridlc.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=textbook.chpt26 Freeman, B. (2001). The Satellite Sex: The Media and Womens Issues in English Canada, 1966-1971. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. Gairdner, W. (2011). The Trouble with Canada-- Still!: A Citizen Speaks Out. Toronto: BPS Books. Galabuzi, G.-E. (2006). Canadas Economic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Jain, H., Sloane, P., & Horwitz, F. (2003). Employment Equity and Affirmative Action: An International Comparison. New York: M.E. Sharpe,. Philips, P., & Philips, E. (2000). Women and Work: Inequality in the Canadian Labour Market. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company. Statistics Canada. (2012). Average hourly wages of employees by selected characteristics and profession, unadjusted data, by province (monthly) . Retrieved June 16, 2012, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labr69a-eng.htm Read More