4.4 - Earnings And Income

While women and men have various personal reasons for seeking employment, the one common motivator is to earn an income.

In Canada's workforce. the "value" of work is measured by the size of income. By this standard, men's work has been valued more highly than women's work; full-time work valued more highly than part-time work; and work performed by highly educated people valued more highly than work done by less well-educated people.

Thus, the final, and perhaps the most basic measure of women's gains in education, training and employment is whether they receive equal payment for their labor.

The undervaluing of women's work has been manifest in a number of ways:

• In the past, women did not have equal access to the paid workforce.
  
  
• Until recently, it was legal to pay women less than men for doing the same or substantially similar work.
  
  
• Women continue to be paid less for work that is dissimilar to men's in kind. but similar in terms of the skill, experience, responsibility and working conditions involved.
  
  
• Since part-time workers usually receive less hourly pay and fewer or no benefits than full-time workers and since more women than men work part-time, the continuing increase in women's part-time employment further disadvantages them in the workforce.

In this section of the study, the changes in women's income over the Decade time period is examined from a number of perspectives:

• Changes in the earnings of full-time, full-year women and men workers.
  
  
• Changes in the earnings of all employed women and men.
  
  
• Changes in the value of women's work (i.e., changes in the payment of work mainly done by women as compared to that of work mainly done by men).
  
  
• Incidence of "low income" among women and men.