Gender earnings gap remains in Canada: study

OTTAWA, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) — The average annual earnings of women were lower than those of men in all Canadian population groups, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday.
The national statistical agency said women earned 70 cents for every dollar that men earned in 2016, revealing the result of the study “Gender earnings ratio differences among population groups in Canada.”
According to the study, Black women had the highest earnings ratio in 2016, at 83.9 cents for every dollar Black men earned, and Japanese women had the lowest earnings ratio, at 59 cents for every dollar Japanese men earned.
For all population groups, the main reasons for differences in earnings were that women worked fewer hours than men and in different sectors than men, the agency said.
From 1996 to 2016, overall, women’s average inflation-adjusted earnings increased relative to men’s. However, these gains were not distributed evenly across groups, the agency said.
The largest relative gains were observed among Southeast Asian and white women. In contrast, there was essentially no change among Black and South Asian women, while small relative declines were observed in the earnings of Japanese, Latin American, Arab and West Asian women, said Statistics Canada. ■