Abdeali Saherwala | Staff Writer
Featured image: The wage gap is a highly contentious issue around the world, for several geopolitical and socioeconomic issues. | Mohammed Hassan
The wage gap is often seen as a controversial issue in several countries around the world, due to several reasons such as framing the issue incorrectly, ignoring possible sexism or gender discrimination, and not considering larger socio-economic factors or situations women face in their lives.
The Canadian Women’s Foundation defines the gender wage gap as “the difference in earnings between women and men in the workplace.” Present in several countries, it poses major financial hardships on families and societies.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calculated that Canada is seventh in the higher gender wage gap out of 34 OECD countries.
The calculation of the wage gap contains several types of factors, such as part-time or full-time work, the type of occupation, and the level of experience.
“Workers’ rights are becoming an increasingly important issue. With some women holding low-paying, precarious positions, often in the service industry, we need to develop ways to break barriers and offer more opportunities,” says Jessica Habkirk, a Communication & Culture graduate student.
When looking at the annual earnings of men and women working both full-time and part-time, women fall short, bringing in merely 66.7 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2011. The reason for this is because more women work part-time, which means that they make less compared to their full-time counterparts.
There are many reasons that women choose to work part-time—the main one being child rearing—a role which is typically expected of women.
“There no longer exists a ‘typical’ family structure, where the man supports the family. There are many women who are now the main supporter of the family financially.
“Moreover, there are many single mothers who may have responsibilities similar to a single father, thus, many argue for them to have the same wage. Why would a female engineer, for example, with the same skills set and effort in a company receive less than her fellow male colleague?” says Dania, a fourth-year Civil Engineering and International Development student.
According to The Canadian Women’s Foundation, women are employed “in a narrower range of occupations than men, and have high representation in the 20 lowest-paid occupations.”
“The gender wage gap isn’t about men and women getting paid different amounts for the same job. It’s about the average pay for women being less than the average pay for men, because women tend to take on more lower-paying jobs than men.
“This is because society discourages women from becoming ‘dominant’ and from taking on higher paying jobs, so it does reflect a social issue, but it’s subtler and more complicated than blatant, direct sexism,” says Allen Vorobeichik, a third-year Psychology student.
Despite these controversies of the wage gap, we must work together as a society to close the wage gap through government and societal support, uplifting women everywhere in order to create a more equitable world.
