by Patrick Marchildon

Created on: June 03, 2009

Canada takes great pride in boasting a multicultural environment that promotes equality. The fact of the matter is that appearances are sometimes deceiving. A particular social issue of concern is that women are not paid the same wage as their male counterparts. As of 2003, women who are employed full-time and university educated make on average, only 69% of comparable male salaries. CITATION Ste071 \l 1033 (Hick, 2007) This is an obvious problem that needs attention. Why are women making less money than men (even to do the same job) and why is this allowed? Furthermore, what are we doing as a Country to close the gap in pay equity?

The woman's rights movement has progressed from a point where women were not even considered to be human. The reality is that women were not allowed to vote less than a decade ago. Agnes Campbell MacPhail made history by being the first woman elected to the House of Commons in 1921. CITATION And \l 1033 (Heard) World War I and World War II aided in furthering the movement as women were forced to break from their traditional gender classifying role of caring for the children and work in fields that were previously occupied by men. However, women had both the task of child bearing while adapting to the traditional paternal role of provider. Canadian soldiers that returned caused for an uproar as now the jobs occupied by women were sought after by the returning male war veterans. This truly was the beginning of women in the workplace in Canada. As it turns out, women have the capability to function in a work environment to the same capacity as men. One would think that they deserve to be paid the same wage. Women have fought for the right to belong in the workplace and have been victims to sexually harassing gestures for years. Discrimination takes many forms, but hurts most when inequality in pay affects a woman's ability to provide for her family.

You can make the argument that the majority of manual labor jobs pay more than a lot of the other jobs available for people with less than a ninth grade education. However, this argument does not apply to any other available jobs and really only goes so far. When you consider that a woman with a university degree has an average annual income of $53, 400 while a man with a university degree has an annual salary of $77,500, it is easy to understand there is a disparity. CITATION Ste071 \l 1033 (Hick, 2007) This directly impacts a woman's pension plan as it makes for a significantly

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