Where does Gender Equality stand today?
The Unfinished Business report released Oct. 28, 2019 by a Network of NGO’s, Trade Unions and Independent experts, notes Canada has a persistent gender gap when it comes to economic security, even though women now outnumber men when it comes to post-secondary education.
The report says the proportion of women in Canada who have completed some form of education after high school has increased by 60 percent since 1995, now accounting for about 64 percent of women 25 and older, compared to about 49 percent of men the same age.
"Progress in education, however, has not produced an equally steady level of progress in women's economic security," says the report.
The global gender gap index maintained by the World Economic Forum, which ranks 149 countries according to disparities between men and women in several key areas, scores Canada much lower on economic participation than in health and education.
The report notes that between 2006 and 2018, Canada reduced economic disparity, which includes participation in the workforce, income levels and pay equity, by just 0.2 percent per year.
"At this rate, it will take 164 years to close the economic gender gap in Canada," says the report.
That gap is wider for women with disabilities, First Nations, Metis, Inuit, and immigrant communities, who the report also noted face higher levels of gender-based violence and poverty.
The overall Canadian gender pay gap is among the highest in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development), ranking 31st place out of 36 countries.
The gap is even larger for racialized women and Indigenous women, who make 60% and 57%, respectively, of what non-racialized men earn.
Men outnumber women in public and private sector management positions by two to one. In the political arena, only 29% of all members of the federal Parliament are women.
In 2017, over 75,000 women reported incidents of intimate partner violence to the police; tens of thousands more incidents go unreported. Estimates of unreported sexual assault and criminal harassment are even higher, especially so for Indigenous women, women with disabilities, and LGBTQI2S people.