When the Regina YWCA held its Women of Distinction awards dinner in Regina recently, it was a telling comment on life in rural Saskatchewan that all of the nominees in the category of rural community contribution were businesswomen.
Before the 1980s, women were often the invisible pitchfork on the farm.
Since that time, many women haven’t had time to be a pitchfork, invisible or otherwise. They’ve been too busy at their off-farm jobs.
In 1991, 60 percent of rural women worked full or part time. This 60-percent figure signals a major change which took place during the farm income crisis of the ’80s when many farmers and their wives were forced to take off-farm jobs to keep their farms going.
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Today, it’s not unusual for a wife to work off the farm, generally in a nearby town, and almost always earning a fraction of what she would make if she worked in a larger urban area.
This is borne out by figures in a Saskatchewan Women’s Secretariat study.
According to the study, 20 percent of Saskatchewan women in 1991 lived in a small urban area with a population of 1,000 to 29,999.
The women living in rural Saskatchewan earned “significantly less” than women in large urban centres.
In 1991, 88 percent of rural women had incomes under $20,000 compared to 75 percent of women in large urban centres over 30,000 population.
Both rural and urban men earned more than women.
While rural women tend to be more highly educated than rural men, they earn considerably less. Women living in centres of less than 1,000 population earned on average $17,180 while men living there earned $23,530.
Women living in communities of 1,000 to 29,999 population earned on average $21,631 compared to $32,623 for men.
Women living in small urban centres are less likely to be in the paid labor force than rural women or women in cities.
This too makes sense as many women in smaller towns tend to be in their retirement years, a good number having moved to town from the farm.
The figures used in the publication are from 1991, obviously the latest available when it was published. The 1997 figures, when they become available, will no doubt tell the same story, although I suspect the wage gap will be even wider.
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