instance, many conservative politicians in the US Congress who have voted down pay equity legislation — speak only to these factors as the reason for the pay gap. Removal of these influences, in the naysay- ers’ view, would narrow the disparity to almost nil. But statistical analyses run counter to
Mary Cornish, cofounder and chair of Ontario’s
Equal Pay Coalition
such a claim. And they definitely do not explain the wide differential in wages revealed in OECD data from 35 coun- tries, which shows New Zealand has the narrowest gap at 5.62% while Canada stands seventh at 18.97%. And, at least in the major professions — accounting, engineering, law, medicine or MBAs in finance — studies on compensa- tion undergirded by data controls that account for salaries based on age, experi- ence, title and type of industry or practice, consistently reveal that women earn signifi- cantly less than men. If one were to control for a male and female professional, both equally committed and high achieving, of the same age and in the same industry and position, the woman oſten earns less, says Clare Beckton, executive director of Carleton University’s Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership. “Why? Well, because they are women. We’re com- batting centuries [and more] of tradition and ingrained societal norms that make determinations on the value of what
cantly narrowed by this point in the millennium. “[People claim that] the reason women make less is because
of their choices or actions,” says Mary Cornish, cofounder and chair of Ontario’s Equal Pay Coalition. “[But] that’s a very small part of what happens. The problem with unequal salaries is because the employer doesn’t have a professional, responsible and consistent salary system. We’re actually finding that people in the same jobs aren’t making the same kind of money simply because the employer is paying men and women doing the same job differently.” Some statistics show that women in the general population of
workers oſten choose lesser-paying fields of employment and part-time work, and that having children can affect career pro- gression. Those who believe the gender pay gap is a myth — for
48 | CPA MAGAZINE | MAY 2015
women bring to the workplace.” The former assistant deputy attorney general for aboriginal affairs with the Justice Department and deputy head of the Status of Women Canada is less than confident that this long history of an unequal playing field will be very easily set right. “We have pay equity laws, the charter and human rights acts and international conventions that enshrine equitable pay and prohibit gender discrimina- tion,” she says. “But this is a male-dominated world and there should be no surprise that an unconscious bias over gender equality in all areas will persist.” A 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek study of MBA salaries con-
trolled for some of the above factors found that, aſter graduat- ing, women from 112 US MBA schools earn a mean average of US$14,548 less than graduating men. Women landing jobs
Ruth Kaplan/ Opposite page top Perry Zavitz/ bottom/Jennifer Callahan/KlixPix
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