The persistent gender bias

Posted Jan 26, 2012 By Brynna Leslie

Throughout the year, magazines and newspapers dedicate entire issues to the career achievements of women: the most influential women, the most powerful women, top women entrepreneurs. While it's great to celebrate the achievements of our sisters and look to these individuals as role models, it is also misleading.

Looking at the faces of female success, we may think that woman have actually achieved equality in Canada. "It's OK feminists, you've done your job, put the placards down."

The reality is quite the opposite. It's 2012 and women still make less money than men, hold less than a quarter of all senior management positions, and less than 25 per cent of seats in the House of Commons.

Perhaps more disturbingly, current numbers suggest women's representation in leadership positions has stagnated or declined. On average, women currently represent less than 40 per cent of managers, six per cent of corporate heads in the Financial Post 500, and proportionally make up around 15 per cent of board directors. One analysis by Statistics Canada pointed out that there were more women managers in 2006 than in 1996.

And the weird thing is nobody seems to be angry about this.

Following some progressive policies in the 1970s, women began to make huge gains in education, politics and business. Women now receive 60 per cent of all university degrees and college diplomas awarded in Canada each year.

Yet by most possible measures of career success, women lag men. For one thing, the wage gap between men and women persists. On average, women make about 85 cents for every dollar a man earns, a number that hasn't changed in more than a decade. The wage gap, of course, is always a controversial measure. Those who support the status quo point out that women work fewer hours, take longer periods of extended leave to look after children and families, and tend to work in lower-paying jobs.

This is all true. But a two-year-old report from the Canadian Labour Congress shows that even when controls are done to account for these various discrepancies, a wage gap still persists, one which researchers attribute to a gender bias. A more sophisticated analysis done by Statistics Canada examined how the gender gap in wages has contributed to the current lag in women's labour force participation. They concluded that when families have children and are faced with the decision of whose career to invest in, they are most likely to select the highest income-earner. As long as men continue to make more money, women's participation in the labour force will continue to slide.

You may be skeptical about all this. Perhaps we shouldn't care about equality. Perhaps even women don't care. And yet there are a number of economic measures pointing to the danger of allowing women to retreat from the workforce. A 2010 report from TD Financial Group called "The Motherhood Gap," made the case that highly skilled women of working age are integral to offsetting a labour force that is set to shrink by seven per cent in the near future. The report encouraged employers to find ways to leave the door open to women who take extended leave, and not only retain women employees, but to develop their careers, and find ways to promote them.

The report warns that if the status quo is maintained, women's participation in the labour force could drop from its current rate of 63 per cent to 53 per cent by 2050, causing a devastating blow to the Canadian economy.

If none of this convinces you that it's time for men and women to work harder toward workplace equality, maybe the following will: Gender diversity is good for the fiscal bottom line. A multitude of research shows that companies with women leaders are more innovative, make better decisions, more socially responsible, and have better return on capital, sales, and equity. And hey, money talks.

So let's go feminists - male and female - the time has come to dust off those placards and get serious about the fight for equality.