Women in the Workplace

With recent cuts to the funding of some women's groups, critics say the federal government is turning back on the progress made for women's rights over the last several decades.

Women have faced many inequalities—mainly lower wages—since they entered the workforce. Over the years, Canada took a lead role in implementing legislation and in several important cases the courts ruled in favour of pay equity. Great strides were made, most of it thanks to women's groups and strong unions.

And yet equal pay for work of equal value—a mantra of the '60s and '70s—hasn't been achieved across the board, despite formal guarantees of equality in Canada's laws and constitution.

"Women working full time still earn only 71 cents for every dollar that men make," states a federally commissioned report released in July, entitled Equality for Women: Beyond the Illusion .

'Time for Action'

Still, women's participation in the labour force has continued to climb, despite cuts by the previous Liberal government to women's programs three times over the last 10 years. In 2003, 57.2 percent of women were employed full time, up from 51.6 in 1993.

Now it's the Conservatives' turn to wield the axe. Bev Oda, Minister of Heritage and Status of Women, cut $5 million from Status of Women Canada's (SWC) budget, saying the government will no longer fund women's groups that do lobbying, advocacy, or general research. The government also removed the word 'equality' from SWC's mandate.

"The whole purpose for establishing SWC was to follow up on the Royal Commission Report on the status of women, which was aimed at achieving equality for women. So to remove equality from the mandate is a very significant reorientation," says Fay Faraday, a lawyer with the Toronto-based Pay Equity Coalition.

The Court Challenges Program, which Faraday says was an "enormously valuable part to ensure that people could actually enforce charter rights," also came under the Tories' axe.

A federal government agency, SWC was created in 1973 to address issues such as promoting gender equality. Oda said numerous reports and research projects have identified the problems women face, and now it's "time for action." She said 31 cents was spent delivering a dollar's worth of services in SWC.

"We believe that public funds used to directly fund women in their daily lives and in their communities is value for taxpayers' dollars," says Oda.

"Study after study, report after report, had all come to the conclusion that not enough was being done. We will be acting directly to affect the lives of Canadian women in every community."

The minister says changes made to the Canadian Pension Plan will help seniors living in poverty. As well, matrimonial property rights for Aboriginal women will be addressed, and $370 million will go toward immigrant settlement centres to assist immigrant women.

Oda has said that the "narrative of victimhood" among women's groups has to stop, and that the Conservative Party does not see women as victims. "We know they are leaders. We know they have aspirations. We want to give them the opportunities they deserve."

Diane Watts, whose group REAL Women of Canada has lobbied to have SWC abolished altogether, says "SWC will fund hundreds of groups, but you have to have a feminist orientation," says Watts. "… We've been turned down because they claim we're not in favour of equality. But we are in favour of equality; we just have a different understanding of it."

Watts says that while she's sure there were cases where taxpayers' money was spent properly, there's been "a lot of unfairness" with SWC. And while plenty of funding has been made available for groups that lobby the government for universal daycare, there's nothing for anyone who may oppose that view—yet universal daycare is unpopular, Watts says.

"According to polls, Canadians want to take care of their own children; that's their first choice. Their last choice is government-funded daycare."

Legislation Not a Cure-all

Statscan says that in 2002, Canadian women in primary industry jobs earned an hourly wage on average 63 percent of that of men, and across all occupations, 82 percent of that of men.

While REAL Women is lobbying the government to reduce taxes for single-income families, NDP spokesperson for Women's Issues Irene Mathyssen is calling on the government to reverse its recent decision to reject the recommendations of the Pay Equity Task Force.

An exhaustive three-year federal review of pay equity in Canada, the Task Force held roundtables with employer organizations, women, and unions across the country, and received all-party support in 2005. It recommended legislating pay equity in every province and territory, a move that would mandate equal pay for equal work. Currently only Ontario and Quebec have pay equity legislation that covers both the public and private sectors.

"They're just going to maintain the status quo, there's nothing new, there's nothing changed," says Mathyssen "And despite the fact that it's been made very clear that we need proactive pay legislation, we're not going to get it from this government."

Mathyssen, who says Oda has asserted on more than one occasion that Canadian women have already attained equality, says Conservative MPs don't understand the importance of SWC. This concern is echoed by Andree Cote, Director of Law Reform with the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), a group that is likely to lose its funding next year as a result of the cuts.

"A lot of women's organizations rely on our work to have an analysis of legal issues," says Cote, "so it will have a big consequence on the capacity of several women's groups to actually speak and participate in a democratic debate."

Instead of implementing pay equity legislation, the government is proposing increased education and mediation assistance, and training labour department inspectors to monitor the pay practices of employers. Cote says this approach is a "far cry" from proactive legislation and is reverting to methods that were tried in the past and proven unsuccessful.

"So the basic model on which they're relying is a complaints-based model by which people who are victims of systemic discrimination are expected to go before the courts, and these battles often take many years."

In May in New Brunswick, which has piecemeal pay equity regulations in parts of the public sector and none at all in the private sector, workers lost a bid for pay equity when an all-male committee ruled against it. Private-sector employers argue that pay equity would ruin their businesses. In New Brunswick fish plants, women make $1.50 less per hour than men.

Another factor going against female workers is that unions have lost much of the clout they once had, in part because governments have become "more hostile" toward unions, according to Andrew Jackson, Director of Social and Economic Policy with the Canadian Labour Congress.

Jackson says union representation in Canada, which is still a lot stronger than in many countries, has dropped from the high 20 percent range down to about 20 percent in the last two decades.

NAWL's Cote says the government's rejection of pay equity along with its decision last spring to back down on the national child care program—for which women have been fighting for about three decades—is a clear sign that women's interests in the labour market are not being taken into account. She says if the Conservatives think that giving $1,200 (taxable) a year to women with children under six will provide adequately for childcare expenses, "they're out of touch with reality."

"We have a long way to go, and we're certainly very frustrated to see that instead of moving forward we're having retrogressive measures from this government. We're fighting hard right now not to go backward 30 years.