Women in Canada are often considered to be treated unfairly compared to their male counterparts. Women have many disadvantages in Canada, specifically in the workforce. Though there are more than these three economic difficulties for women in Canada, the following reasons contribute, the most, to economic hardship for Canadian women. Canada has a large gender based wage gap, women working in Canada have trouble obtaining CEO positions and other leadership roles in major companies, and finally women working in Canada have a general disadvantage in employment and gaining jobs. Women working in Canada are at a noticeable disadvantage to the men in the country.
The gender based wage gap in Canada is still an issue and still has a noticeable effect
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According to Crawford (2013) “Despite widespread support for more female representation on Canadian boards, the number of women serving in these roles is not growing significantly.” Only 14.6% of board seats in Canada’s top 500 companies were obtained by women in 2012 and that number increased by only 1.2% to 15.2 in 2013 (Crawford, 2013). At the current rate of growth equality on board seats, between men and women, will not be reached until 2092 (Crawford, 2013). Women make up about half of the Canadian workforce but only 5% of CEO positions of major companies were held by females (Globe and Mail, 2015). According to a Globe and Mail editorial (2015)“[There is] a certain narrow definition of what a leader looks like, physically, and characteristically.” This means that in the eyes of society women are not physically perceived as leaders, which contributes to why there is a lack of women in these leadership roles. Though majority of directors, 93%, believe that having women on the board is important only 61% of those companies have a board diversity policy (Crawford, 2013). Similar to the wage gap, the number of women on board seats varies based on profession (Crawford, 2013). For example, the profession where women are closest to par with men is the entertainment sector where women hold over 25% of the seats and the sectors with lowest female representation on the board are, the oil,