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THE GAP? Men earn more money than women do. Why is this still an issue? BY LESLIE VERMEER
IN MARCH 2017, Iceland made head-
lines as the first country in the world to require businesses to demonstrate they a re paying men a nd women equally. Then in July 2017, the BBC made headlines when published data revealed a large gap between male presenters’ salaries and female presenters’ salaries—and then again when the presenters demanded that the BBC address the disparity. In fact, the issue of the gender wage gap makes headlines regularly, yet most of us don’t really understand what it is or what it represents. One of the most frustrating aspects to the gender wage gap is that, on paper, it shouldn’t exist. In Canada, it is illegal to discriminate in hiring on the basis of gender, marital status, age or other aspects of human difference; in law, women and men are equals in the workplace. Yet a demonstrable gap between men’s earnings and women’s persists.
What Is the Gender Wage Gap? At its most basic, the gender wage gap refers to the difference between what women are paid and what men are paid, based on average wages over time. That seems straightforward, right? But one reason the gender wage gap is so contested has to do with the way it is calculated. If we compare the average hourly wage of women working full time to that of men working full time, in 2014 women made 8 T8Nmagazine.com 8 T8Nmagazine.com
$0.88 for every dollar men made. That figure, however, doesn’t reflect the complexity of women’s working lives. For instance, if we compare men’s full-time, full-year income to women’s full-time, full-year income, in 2014 women earned $0.74 for every dollar men earned. The larger gap reflects a specific factor about women’s participation in the workplace: that the average woman works fewer paid hours annually than the average man does. That’s because working women’s available time is limited by unpaid family responsibilities. Full-time wage figures may be misleading, however, because a significant number of women work part time even though many of them would prefer to work full time (women are the majority of part-time employees as well as the majority of minimum-wage workers). The Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF), a charitable organization dedicated to women’s social equality and participation, calculated that when part-time earnings are added to the mix, women fall back sharply: to $0.67 for every dollar men earned in 2011. And even this figure may leave our understanding incomplete because it doesn’t reflect when those hours are being worked—what time of day or day of the week—and whether the employer offers workers an incentive to work long or unusual hours. And since we’re talking in averages, it’s important to remember that every woman experiences the pay gap differently. The CWF notes that “Women who are racialized, Indigenous, living with a disability or newcomers to Canada earn even less.” By comparison, current U.S. statistics show that the average American woman
makes $0.80 for every dollar a man makes, but this figure changes from state to state and drops noticeably for women of colour. Pay disparity between men and women is so commonplace in our social world that it can feel natural. Male actors earn more on television and in movies than their female co-stars do. Male athletes earn much bigger salaries—and sign more valuable endorsement deals— than female athletes do. Even the average male writer earns 45 percent more than the average female writer does. No matter how we compare men’s and women’s wages, a gap exists, but its existence is not natural or accidental. The CWF estimates that, despite legislation, “10–15% of the wage gap is attributed to gender-based wage discrimination.” The root of this discrimination rests in social attitudes and beliefs.
An Attitude Problem If you have a conversation with friends about why women make less than men do, you may hear comments like “Women choose poorer-paying jobs” and “Women aren’t good at bargaining for the best salary.” Such comments underscore a larger social conversation about the roles and rewards that are appropriate for women and men. Because this discourse is so common and is reinforced so consistently and subtly in our conversations, our media and even our personal relationships, it can lead us to take for granted illogical ideas that don’t stand up to scrutiny. We might call these ideas myths.
