Inequalities in the Labour Market

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Figure-3: Average earings by gender, 1997-2012[pic 4]

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Source: Statistics Canada, 2009.

Hourly Wage Rates

Another outstanding measure to estimate the gender inequality in workplace is Hourly Wage Rate. The hourly wage rate between men and women allow us to see the gap in the pay between men and women receive from similar job, and enables to look at a comparison of groups’ earnings which is sensitive to differences in hours worked per week and weeks worked per year, including men and women in non-standard work arrangements. People argue that using annual earnings is too general, which doesn’t show us whether women earn less because they got employed in different sectors in the labour market or work fewer hours, or because women get paid less than men for similar job. (Cool, 2010)

Figure-4 demonstrates that “female aged from 25 to 54 earn about 85% as much per hour as their male counterparts.” (Cool, 2010) The wage gap between men and women workers with union is narrower than that of non-union workers, but women with union coverage still have lower hourly wage (about $1 lower), compared with man with union coverage. And women without union courage earn about $5 lower per hour than men without union coverage do.

Figure-4: Average Hourly Wage, Workers Aged 25–54 (Current dollars)

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Source: Statistics Canada, “Labour force survey estimates (LFS), wages of employees by job permanence, union coverage, sex and age group, annual (current dollars),” Table 282 0074, CANSIM (database), Using E-STAT (distributor), 10 September 2010.

Gender-Specific Factors

Given the traditional division of labour by gender in the family, women tend to accumulate less labour market experience than men. Further, many women feel they may have shorter and less consistent work stretches, and as a result have lower incentives to invest in formal education and on-the-job training. (Blau & Kahn, 2000) This means in these cases the women end up with lower wages, in less specialised work fields. Traditionally women would spend more hours working around the house doing tasks as housekeeping, and in some cases decrease the time and effort put into market jobs, although we are seeing a shift in this. Less focus on working careers, and more time on family life may result in lower wages.

We can also expect to see gender differences in occupations that require less on the job training, because women may choose occupations that have less time commitment for specific training. Women may also not choose jobs that need a large time investment in skills training, which may be a narrow skill focus, with higher wage results only when the employee stays with the same company, or specialised field over time. At the same time, managers may not want to employ women for these types of jobs, if the company would pay for some or all of the training costs for job specific training. The reason for this would be the company might not believe it would get the appropriate return on investment, if the company thinks he employee might leave the firm after a short duration.

Discrimination

Wage discrimination occurs when male-female wage differentials exceed productivity differentials in given occupations, while employment discrimination involves denial to females of access to higher paying occupation.

Employers tend to consistently make improper decisions with imperfect information and could use gender as a means to try to predict how long a worker may stay with a company. On average women tend to have more career interruption and absences from work for family reasons when compared to men. Because of this, statistical discrimination may happen and some companies may be more cautious when hiring women. This would be true in companies that have much higher hiring costs, or training costs, but usually higher salaries as well. If however women start to stay in their jobs for longer periods of time, it may start to change employer’s practices, resulting in less statistical discrimination for women overall. We are starting to see a trend towards this.

Discrimination in the labour market might also make an impact on women's wages and occupations. Discrimination can be direct or indirect, and it can come in many different ways in the labour market. We just mentioned statistical discrimination, what differences average groups of females and males can expect in their treatment in the hiring market. Alternatively, discrimination against hiring females for “male” only jobs can mean too much supply of labour in female friendly careers, contributing to lower wages in those types of careers or jobs.

Wage Structure

Although not directly tied to gender, wage structure is a factor that may negatively affect the size of the gender gap in pay. Women have less experience then men on average and generally more work experience, regardless of sex results in higher wages. Also due to discrimination or other factors, women end up working in different jobs or industries than men. In many male dominated sectors, the higher compensation received by both male and female workers will worsen the discrepancy in gender pay gap. (Blau &Kahn, 2000)

Opportunity Inequality

Representation Inequality

According to Heyhinck (2014), in Canada, numbers of employers still make assumptions about the roles of female employee as caregivers, consciously or unconsciously not considering them for more lucrative projects or don’t gave them the same amount training opportunities as male employees have. Even women start to take the initiative by trying to negotiate for a better wages or salaries, many researchers said that managers and co-workers view this action negatively or don’t receive their requirement. So women in workplace are still being undervalued and under-compensated and their works are called “soft skills works”.

Job-related responsibilities

The Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics includes information on Job-related responsibilities like supervisory positions, and tasks related to works, for instance, employees’ impact on planning and budgeting, remuneration and promotion. Drolet (2001) told about Job-related responsibilities in his paper “As long as there exist differences in the opportunities for obtaining supervisory