Improved education | Females account for almost half the workforce, but wages still lagging behind men’s
When suffragettes marched the streets demanding equal rights for women, few could have imagined the progress made 100 years later.
Rh’ena Oake, president of a Canadian Union of Public Employees local, said gaps still remain.
“Many of you from a younger generation may feel all the battles have been won for women but many feminists from the Seventies know only too well the longevity that is ingrained in patriarchy,” she said at an international women’s day celebration March 8 in Calgary.
“The unfortunate fact is that women are still not paid equally to that of their male counterparts, women are still not present in equal numbers in politics and women’s education and health and violence against us is worse than that of men.”
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Choices have increased and about 45 percent of the workforce is women but there are significant gaps in income between the sexes.
“These trends are still more pronounced for aboriginal women, women in remote rural areas and northern populations,” she said.
The Canadian Labour Congress reports women working full time earn about 70 percent as much as men. The amount is lower for minorities.
A recent Statistics Canada study found women’s wages increased by nearly 12 percent between 1988 and 2008, with the greatest improvement seen by women aged 45 to 49.
Men’s wages edged up by 1.3 percent for the same period, with men aged 35 and older seeing their wages decline.
Women are also improving their education. By 2008, a quarter of younger men had university degrees while more than a third of young women held degrees. Better education is correlated with improved wages and there is a shift among younger women away from lower paying jobs like clerical and sales positions where salaries tend to be lower.