Neither governments nor private sector employers have provided women with equal access to recruitment and advancement or equality in compensation.

Employment equity which would improve the employment status of all women (as it has improved the status of American visible minority men) is still not being given adequate attention. Although the failure of voluntary Affirmative Action Programs has been amply documented over the past ten years, governments remain reluctant to initiate legislation:

• In the absence of systematic and large-scale implementation of corporate employment equity programs, as Judge Abella* has noted and Boulet and Lavalee** have documented, few women are being promoted to highly paid senior management positions.

* Abella, Hon. R. Commission on Equality, Supply and Services Canada, 1985.

** Boulet. J. A., Lavallee. L. The Changing Economic Status of Women. Economic Council of Canada, Ministry of Supply and Services, Ottawa, 1984.

• Few public or private sector employers have responded to employed women's needs for such accommodations as affordable, on-site child-care or paid parental leave.

Moreover, the wage gap between women and men has narrowed only slightly, from 64% to 68%. over the Decade timeframe. This disparity continues for a number of reasons:

• Many of the jobs traditionally performed by women are underpaid relative to comparable jobs performed by men.
  
  
• Although pay equity legislation is closer to being realized in some Canadian jurisdictions than it was in 1976, progress is extremely slow. Even when all Canadian jurisdictions implement pay equity, it is estimated that wages will improve for only 5% to 10% of working women.
  
  
• Growing numbers of women are forced to work part-time because full-time employment is becoming less available. These part-time workers not only receive a lower rate of pay, but are further disadvantaged by a virtual absence of benefits: "The fact that fringe benefits have grown at a much faster rate than direct pay means that the total wage position of women in relation to that of men has not remained more or less stable as is widely assumed, but has instead been deteriorating from year to year over the last few decades."*

Until both employment equity and pay equity laws are implemented and monitored for compliance in all Canadian jurisdictions, it is difficult to see how further improvements in women's employment status will occur.

* Dulude. L. Towards Equality. Proceedings of a Colloquium on the Economic Status of Women in the Labor Market. November, 1984.

The most striking example. of inadequate Federal Government response to the special needs of women has been the lack of improvement in the employment status of two particular groups of women: women with low educational attainment and women who solely support their children.

• The majority of women who are educationally disadvantaged also have little or no access to financial resources. The Decade has seen virtually no change in the level of employment of this group. Although more women with low education are seeking work, more are finding themselves unemployed or employed in part-time work in the poorly paid Service sector.

The fact that their lack of education leaves them unqualified for jobs that pay an adequate wage means that they often raise their children in poverty. In this way, an interacting cycle of educational and economic disadvantage is both maintained and perpetuated. This cycle is illustrated in the following diagram:*