New Brunswick Women Face 14% Gender Wage Gap, Finds Report

A new study highlights persistent gender wage gaps across Atlantic Canada and calls for stronger measures to address pay inequality. The report recommends stronger pay equity laws, higher minimum wages, improved labor standards, and greater support for unions.

The study, based on Statistics Canada data from the Labor Force Survey, Canadian Income Survey, and Canadian Census, found that New Brunswick has a 14 per cent weekly wage gap between men and women. On average, women in the province earn $181 less per week than men.

Christine Saulnier, director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Nova Scotia and co-author of the report, discussed the findings with the NB Media Co-op. To put that into perspective, March 28 is Equal Pay Day for New Brunswick, a symbolic date showing how many weekdays into the New Year women would have to keep working to earn as much as men during the previous year.

In Atlantic Canada, the gendered wage gap represents two extremes: in Newfoundland and Labrador women earn $355 per week less than men, a 24 per cent wage gap,  the second-biggest gap in all of Canada.

Key Highlights:

• New Brunswick has a 14% gender wage gap, with women earning $181 less per week than men
• Unionized women face smaller wage gaps than non-unionized women
• The report urges stronger pay equity laws, higher wages and better labor standards

The law, which received royal assent in June, bars employers from asking about your pay at previous jobs, while also requiring them to post the expected salary or wage range when hiring and protecting employees from reprisals for discussing pay. The report notes that women face smaller pay gaps in unionized positions, but public sector jobs are more likely to be unionized in all four Atlantic Provinces.

In New Brunswick, only 6.5 per cent of women in the private sector are unionized, in contrast to 78.8 per cent of women in public sector jobs. Women in non-union jobs in New Brunswick face a weekly wage gap of $246 (21 per cent) compared to $124 per week (nine per cent) for women in unionized jobs.

Education is also an important factor. Women with less than a high school diploma face a 47 per cent wage gap in New Brunswick.  If they graduate high school, that goes down to a 20 per cent gap, and if they obtain a bachelor’s degree or higher they face a nine per cent gap. The wage gap is 22 per cent for women with post-secondary less than a bachelor’s.

Women also disproportionately shoulder the burden of unpaid child and elder care, and they often adjust paid work around these responsibilities, the report notes. This results in higher representation of women in part-time work.

This, in turn, also affects full-time hourly wages with lasting consequences, as fewer hours can cascade into not just lower weekly pay, but also lower pension contributions and reduced financial security.

The report includes a number of recommendations aimed at combating the wage gap.  For example, enforcement of pay equity laws may require penalties or fines, which is the case in Quebec, it states.

The report also calls for governments to use public money to support public and non-profit care services “through funding, land use, public buildings and local partnerships, instead of relying mainly on market solutions.   

Under pay equity legislation, “measurable goals must also tackle intersectional gender discrimination that includes non-binary and transgender understandings, and data for workers who are radicalized, with a disability and/or Indigenous,” it states. 

The report also calls for changes that include raising minimum wages towards living wages, with stronger labor standards to require fair scheduling, guarantee paid sick days, improve access to benefits for part-time and temporary workers and enforce employment standards more seriously.

Other recommendations include treating child care, elder care, health care and disability support as essential infrastructure — and all stakeholders to listen to those most affected and ensure their representation in policy design, workplace committees, bargaining priorities, and union leadership.