Gender pay gap

In July of last year, I talked about the gender pay gap and the impact it has on retirement. In the United States  in 2014, women working full time in the United States typically were paid just 79 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 21 percent? The gap has narrowed since the 1970s due largely to women’s progress in education and workforce participation and to men’s wages rising at a slower rate. But progress has stalled in recent years, and the pay gap does not appear likely to go away on its own. I gathered the facts for this post from here. I also think we should support The Canadian Women’s Foundation for the work they do to help women in Canada.

The problem is not going away and the problem can be typically measured in three different ways  and in Canada it is so those who want to paint a bleak picture use method one, while those who want to paint a progressive picture use method three. No matter which calculation is used, the wage gap clearly exists.

Method One: Compare the annual earnings, by gender, for both full-time and part-time workers. On this basis, women workers in Canada earn an average of 66.7 cents for every dollar earned by men.This measurement results in the largest wage gap because more women work part-time—and part-time workers earn less than full-time workers.

Method Two: Compare the annual earnings of full-time workers. On this basis, women workers in Canada earn an average of 72 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Method Three: Compare the hourly wages by gender, including those for part-time workers. On this basis, women earn an average of 87 cents for every dollar earned by men.    

Depending on how you calculate the gender wage gap, you can calculate women’s lifetime earnings compared to men’s. Based on a gender wage gap of 31.5% in Ontario, a woman would have to work 14 additional years to earn the same pay a man earns by age 65. 

Another method of calculating the gap is used in the European Union. In the EU, the gender pay gap is the difference in average gross hourly wage between men and women across the economy. The average gender pay gap in the EU is 16.3%, so Canada is ahead using this method.

The percentage of working women in Canada has increased from about 42% to almost 60% over the last 30 years. This increase has not been handled well by employers or by government policy leaving women at an incredible disadvantage. 

The gap exists and there are many reasons why it exists, some are:

Women’s skills and competences are often undervalued, especially in occupations where they are in the majority. This results in lower rates of pay for women. For example, physical tasks, which tend to be carried out by men, are often valued more favourably than those carried out by women. For instance, a female cashier in a supermarket earns less

than a man working in the stockroom. 

When women are the majority in a small number of occupations, they receive lower wages. The opposite is true for men, as the more they dominate an occupation the higher

their pay. For example, where women are clustered into female dominated occupations, such as cleaning, they tend to earn less than men who have comparable skills in male

dominated occupations, such as refuse collection. 

Women’s skills are often undervalued because they are seen to reflect ‘female’ characteristics, rather than acquired skills and competences. For example, a female nurse earns less than a male medical technician, even though they have comparable levels of qualifications. This can result in a gender bias in the setting of wages and in assessing the

value of the work that women do.

Many Canadians believe the myth that traditional “women’s work” should and does pays less than traditional “men’s work.” As one researcher notes: “Female-dominated job classes are often seen as not being skilled because the tasks are related to domestic jobs that women were expected to carry out for free in the home."  So because women did this   work employers have been given the freedom to  pay lower wages to women in these positions and governments have not felt any political pressure to make sure equal pay for equal work is the norm in the workplace.

Second, most women workers are employed in lower-wage occupations and lower-paid industries. Women work in a narrower range of occupations than men and have high representation in the 20 lowest-paid occupations. About two-thirds of the female work force are concentrated in teaching, nursing, and health care, office and administrative work, and sales and service industries.Women aged 25 to 54 accounted for 22% of the Canada’s minimum-wage workers in 2009, more than double the proportion of men in the same age group.

Another reason for the wage gap is that more women than men work part-time. About 70% of part-time workers in 2013 were women, a proportion that has remained steady for three decades.Women working part-time or temporary jobs are much less likely to receive promotions and training than those in full-time jobs.

Women work part-time for several reasons, including lack of affordable child care and family leave policies, along with social pressure to carry the bulk of domestic responsibilities. These factors make it more likely for women to have interruptions in employment, which has a negative effect on income.

A large portion of the wage gap remains unexplained and is partly due to discrimination. An estimated 10-15% of the wage gap is attributed to gender-based wage discrimination. Wage discrimination and employment discrimination refer to different things. The Pay Equity Act  of Canada requires employers to ensure men and women receive “equal pay for work of equal value.” The Employment Equity Act requires that employers remove barriers to the workplace for women, aboriginal people, members of visible minorities, and people with disabilities.

The wage gap matters because women’s lower earning power means they are at a high risk of falling into poverty if they have children and then become separated, divorced, or widowed. They are less able to save for their retirement and more likely to be poor in their senior years; in fact, women 65 or over are more likely than their male counterparts to live on a low income.  The risk of falling into poverty means that some women are sometimes forced to stay in abusive relationships, despite the danger.

When women work outside the home and also do most of the domestic work, their long-term health suffers. According to Statistics Canada, women at every age are more likely than men to describe their days as “quite a bit” or “extremely” stressful.

Greater equality between men and women would bring benefits to the economy and to society in general. Closing the gender pay gap can help to reduce levels of poverty and

increase women’s earnings during their lifetimes. This not only avoids the risk of women falling into poverty during their working lives, but also reduces the danger of poverty in

retirement.

Women have rising expectations for their working lives and, if companies want to attract the best talent, equality at work is a must. It is essential to creating quality jobs and a highly-motivated workforce. Quality jobs, in turn, are crucial to building a positive working environment where all workers are valued for their work.

Employers can benefit from using women’s talents and skills more effectively, for example by valuing women’s skills and through introducing policies on work-life balance, training

and career development. Women have skills and talents that are often under-utilised in the workplace and unlocking

these can help companies tackle skills shortages. Valuing women for the work that they do and rewarding their skills and potential fairly can improve a business’ performance

and effectiveness, for example, by attracting and retaining the best and most talented staff and creating a positive image with customers.

Companies that build equality plans and strategies into their workplaces create the best workplaces for everyone, male or female, to work in. Having a positive working environment

helps a business to attract customers, improve performance and boost competitiveness. 

Dreams are important

Dreamers, dream big, and those who dream and follow through on their dreams are rewarded. The dancer who created the music she moves to; the painter who manifested the mountains he captures; the tycoon who built the empire before there's a dime. They realized that the dream comes first, followed by hard work and holding on to the vision.

Whatever you want, let it exist first in your mind, imagine every nuance and consideration, let the walls have substance, the halls have depth, and the money have weight in the palm of your hand, and then all that's necessary to bring it to pass will be drawn unto you. 

Seashells: Artifacts of the Ocean

I recently took a vacation to the beach on the Australian Gold Coast. I love the smell of the ocean breeze and the way the sun beats down on me as the motion of the waves calms my every worry in the world. I could literally spend years on the beach and never regret a moment of it.

One of my favourite beach activities is searching for seashells. There are millions of seashells in the ocean that come from a wide variety of creatures. They all look different and each has their own personalities that come across in the divots and impressions in the shells.

As I was looking for my seashells, I had a thought. The ocean is a vast body of secrets that has a story underneath that no one really knows about. So, in essence, each sea shell tells a different, but small, portion of the ocean’s story. They are true artifacts of the ocean that show what the ocean has been, is now and will be in the future.

Pretty deep if you think about it. Just like each person has a different story and a different set of artifacts that they take with them from day to day, so do the seashells at the beach. Each has experienced its own part of the story of the vast ocean and has lived to tell about it. Making it on to the beach is its way of trying to get the story out to the world.

I kept thinking about this as I made my way down the beach with my collection of beautiful shells. Each had a different shape, colour and texture and each was beautiful in its own way.

We have our own stories so in essence, we are like the seashells in the ocean of life. We each carry our own personal artifacts with us that are a representation of what we have experienced in our lives and we really cannot share our true experiences with anyone other than ourselves. Other people will see the artifacts on our skin and the laugh lines on our face, but they will never truly know our story, just like we will never know the story of the ocean or the seashells.

The point was not to be too philosophical, but to realise that people are all unique and we are special in all of our own ways. People do not take the time to realise that anymore and when they don’t realise it, they lose a bit of their identity each time they forget about it.

So, remember you are an artifact of the world and you tell your own unique story in the world, just like seashells tell the story of the ocean, piece by piece. People don’t feel like they are important enough and thinking about this idealistic notion will make you feel better about your place in the world and realise that we are all important in our own way.

Pictures Can Be Artifacts to the Past

Do you enjoy taking pictures and collecting the photographs in scrapbooks, photo albums or online on their own special place? Of course, you do! Most people do and they love to take picture after picture of everything from a random night out with friends, to pictures of their family and children to photos of their vacations to every corner of the globe.

Why do people love taking pictures so much? Well, look at the reasons why you like taking photos. You like to take photos because it is a reminder of the good times and of the bad times. In essence, photos serve as your very own historical artifact to the past and allow you to remember events that have memories that fade with the passing years.

Pictures are personal artifacts that tell the story of you. You can look at other people’s photos and never really truly understand what they were feeling when the picture was taken. But you can easily take a picture of something and remember your exact feelings years later.

So, do not miss an opportunity to take photos at every instance you can. You never know when that moment will be snapped away from you, never to be seen again. Remember the faces of your children and relatives as they grow older and remember what your parents looked like while they were young. Photographs allow you to do all of that.

Also, pass on the importance of photos to your family and friends. They will most likely already be aware of the importance of creating photo artifacts, but you will want to make sure that they agree that taking as many photos as possible in life is a good idea. That way, they will possibly get a picture that you were not able to get and you can share that memory with them.

Photo artifacts do not have to be overly mushy either. They can show the raunchy and crazy experiences you have had in your life and serve as a reminder of a good time along with the happy and sad times.

You can tell your family story through pictures as well. Photos of births, weddings, funerals and other family events will show a lot about the way you feel about your family members and how they felt about you at a certain point in time. That way you can remember your crazy Aunt Ruth after she passes away.

Taking pictures is probably one of the rewarding and fun things you can do in your life. Now with different photo editing software, you can do things to your photos that you never even thought was possible. Take your photo artifacts to the next level and create a history of your family that can be viewed for years to come by you, your family, your children and anyone else who would care to see the history of you and your life. Let the photos tell the whole story.