Average Manitoba woman earns 71 cents per male dollar, report finds

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This article was published 27/04/2023 (911 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Seventy-one cents.

Or, in Oyindamola Alaka’s case, perhaps 59 cents. That’s how much racialized women in Manitoba earn per white male’s dollar, according to a report the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released Thursday.

The average Manitoba woman earns 71 cents per male dollar, the report found. Indigenous women in the province earn 58 cents compared to a white male’s loonie.

The report’s authors are calling for legislation changes, including updating Manitoba’s Pay Equity Act and mandating pay transparency.

“I’m hoping in two years, you never have to see a job posting that doesn’t post wages or the salary that people are offered,” said Alaka, one of the report’s authors. “There has never been a way for me to know if I’ve been underpaid in comparison to my male (counterparts).”

Alaka immigrated from Nigeria and has worked with newcomers and African communities.

She’s looking for accountability on pay equity — from government, from businesses.

“A lot of times, marginalized folks just accept what is offered to them and don’t speak up, or don’t even know their rights to speak up,” Alaka said. “Some of them don’t even know their rights.”

Manitoba women earn less than men across all occupations, industries, levels of education, age and racialized status, the report found.

It used Statistics Canada data from 2019. Since then, the pay gap may have narrowed slightly, but it could be because women in lower paying jobs left the workforce during the pandemic, said Jesse Hajer, co-author of the report and a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Manitoba chapter.

Manitoba was the first province to enact pay equity law, back in 1986. However, its pay equity legislation hasn’t been updated in more than 35 years and now lags behind other provinces, according to the report.

Female-dominated sectors, like social services, have historically offered lower wages than male-dominated industries, the report’s authors noted.

“It takes a government who’s going to prioritize the issue… before I think we’ll see some serious changes,” said Hajer, who’s also a University of Manitoba labour studies professor.

Businesses who buck the norm — highlighting salaries in job postings, offering transparency in employees’ wages — could be at a disadvantage if competitors aren’t matching actions, Hajer noted.

“Suddenly their costs are way lower than yours,” he said.

It’s why government legislation requiring employers to commit to pay equity — equal pay for equal work — is necessary, Hajer added.

The report proposes several changes.

One recommendation includes creating a provincial pay equity commissioner and bureau to ensure pay equity is happening in organizations across Manitoba. Another is extending the scope of Bill 228, a pay transparency bill introduced by NDP MLA Malaya Marcelino that hasn’t passed.

The bill calls for employers to include information about pay in job postings and for private businesses with 100 or more employees to conduct a gender and diversity pay audit annually. The employer would then share the report with a pay equity commissioner.

The bill would be best if it included businesses with less than 100 employees, noted Anna Evans-Boudreau, a co-author of the report and University of Manitoba law student.

Marcelino brought up her bill in the government’s question period Thursday.

Later, in an interview with the Free Press, Families Minister Rochelle Squires said she’d look at the report’s recommendations.

“We need to ensure women are receiving equal pay for equal work,” Squires said, adding “we need to do more to grow the economy and get women in high paying jobs.”

More needs to be done to understand why women trained for high paying careers, like engineering, leave such paths, Squires said.

“I think that there are a lot of complex issues that are at play here,” she said. “We certainly do need to eliminate barriers for women.”

She pointed to the provincial government’s announcement of $56.1 million for childcare staff as an example of raising wages for women, and providing more childcare opportunities. Raising the basic personal amount also helps women, Squires said.

Unionization goes hand in hand with pay equity, said Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, which represents 125,000 union workers.

“In this day and age… for women to still be earning that much less on average… it’s completely unacceptable,” Rebeck said.

The report calls for more gender diversity in The Pay Equity Act, among other things.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com