Today, we honour the hard-fought progress women in Canada have made toward achieving gender equality. September 18 is International Equal Pay Day—a powerful reminder that while women have made significant progress throughout Canada’s history, the fight for equal pay is far from over.
PSAC is committed to ensuring that Prime Minister Carney’s government makes achieving gender equality a priority, because it is long overdue for Canada.
Women’s participation in the workforce accounts for a third of Canada’s economic growth over the past 40 years. Despite this, women in Canada still earn 89 cents for every dollar earned by men for equal work. For Indigenous women, racialized women, women with disabilities and other equity-deserving groups, this gap is even wider.
PSAC has always been unrelenting in the fight for gender equality and for securing equal pay for women. In 1980, 10,000 PSAC members in clerical and regulatory jobs – largely held by women – fought for and won wage increases. We know that groundbreaking victories like this are only made possible through the power of collective action.
Now, we must fight harder than ever. The Carney government confirmed that their upcoming budget will be one of austerity. Canada is at risk of losing years of critical progress made in pay equity and gender equality.
The budget could include damaging cuts that will leave women worse off across Canada. Implementation of the Pay Equity Act could stall altogether, negatively impacting nearly 1.3 million working women in Canada. Also, with an estimated 80 per cent cut to Women and Gender Equality Canada, millions of additional women will be worse off from no longer being able to access critical services and funding dedicated to improving gender equality.
The projected cuts could surpass those of the Harper era and rival the cuts of the Chrétien government. We cannot risk going back to the austerity of 1995. This goes beyond Canada’s commitment to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
This is about building a better, more inclusive Canada for decades to come. Investing in women means investing in a stronger Canada. We can’t wait five generations to achieve gender parity. We need action now.
This article was first published on the PSAC website.
