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While a handful of Canadian provinces have managed to bring women’s salaries equal to men’s, Alberta remains one of the country’s poorest performers when it comes to wage parity.
At the same time, more women are ascending into positions of power in Alberta, according to a new study by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday.
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“We’ve made some progress, but it is slow and certainly not enough,” said Nuvyn Peters, CEO of Axis Connects, a Calgary non-profit dedicated to advancing women in the business community.
Women in management positions make just 81 cents for every dollar a man earns in Alberta, the Chamber’s report said.
Calgary and Alberta’s dominant sectors, which Peters said have long been male-dominated, have largely been slow to bring women into positions of power.
“We haven’t invested enough time or talent or resources in building that pipeline … of diverse professionals so that as a positions in the C-suite and on the board become available, we have a pipeline of talented and professional women with incredible experience to be able to assume those roles.”
Alberta’s gender differences are a contrast to Prince Edward Island, where women on average make one cent more than their male counterparts, or Quebec, where women make 95 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Similar data showed up for women in middle management positions. For those roles in retail, wholesale trade and customer service, women make 65 per cent of what their male peers take home. In the trades, transportation, production and utilities, they make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes.
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But it’s not all bad news for Alberta: Among all provinces, Alberta has the second-highest number of women in senior management positions, both by total head count (2,088) and proportion (34.7 per cent), despite making up about 12 per cent of Canada’s population.
Only Ontario, with 40 per cent of Canada’s population, had more women in senior management roles (2,122), which is less than a quarter of all people in those positions.
Meanwhile, women’s wages have grown faster than men’s in recent decades, the report notes — though that gap since 1997 has only shrunk eight cents for those in management jobs.
The data contribute to Canada’s overall failure “to bridge persistent representation and compensation gaps for women in management and leadership positions in corporate Canada,” the Canadian Chamber of Commerce wrote.
If current trends continue, the Chamber wrote, Canada won’t reach national wage parity within the century.
For International Women’s Day, Calgary Economic Development is hosting an event promoting inclusion in aerospace at Calgary Central Library from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The event will feature a speech from Kendra Kincade, president and CEO of Elevate Aviation, a non-profit that promotes women and underrepresented groups’ participation in the aviation sector.
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