Today, MLA Ronna-Rae Leonard Spoke about Economic Barriers to Older Women in the Legislature. You can watch the Video here, or read the transcript below.
In support of the member for Vancouver-Kensington’s motion, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to my late mother. I don’t think she saw herself as a feminist. In my youth, I certainly didn’t see her that way, but her story, which I only learned later in life, reminded me that whether big and grandiose or small but meaningful, every victory of a woman standing up for her rightful place in the world has slowly but surely changed that world.
My mother was trained as a psychiatric nurse. On her own, she would have been able to lead a full and independent life, but it turned out that after she married my father, she had to work hard to convince him that it wasn’t a bad reflection on him if she continued in the work that she was trained to do, that she loved and that she got great satisfaction from. In her victory over her right to work, my mother joined the multitudes of heroines over the decades who have pushed past social barriers as they have strived to reach their full potential.
Of course, it is not just about achieving social equality. Economic equality is inextricably interwoven into the challenge. I support the motion of this House to particularly recognize the economic barriers that have prevented many older women from reaching their full potential in society.
Women are more likely to interrupt their careers, work part-time or change jobs more frequently because they continue to bear the primary responsibility for children. When a woman earns less during her most productive earning years, it means a lower pension later. Women, regardless of family obligations or not, have simply been slow to see that wage parity.
Much work has been done over the decades to foster and to advance women’s equality, especially when there was a dedicated provincial ministry to the subject. By 2001, within the public service, the gender wage gap was closing. All that changed as the Ministry of Women’s Equality was ended. This province saw a drastic cut in the women’s workforce and, along with that, a significant loss of economic security that comes with wage parity. Such economic impacts accumulate, and 16 years later many are facing their retirement years, after years of lower wages or intermittent work, with smaller pensions in a province where life has gotten progressively unaffordable.
With grace under fire and on short notice, our legislative librarians have very kindly provided me with some Statistics Canada figures and charts to look at the history of the last 16 years in the workforce when it comes to men and women, particularly older men and women, in the full-time and in the part-time workforce. They were also able to provide some comparatives on wages. What do the simple numbers add up to?
Older women are working more part-time jobs than ever before. In 2016, they made up 8 percent more of the entire part-time workforce than in 2001 and about 8.3 percent more of the part-time workforce than older men. Comparing that to full-time workers, there are more women in full-time jobs. But — and it is a big but — there are proportionately less women than men in the full-time workforce in 2016 than in 2001. The face of 55-and-older women in the full-time workforce represented a smaller piece of the workforce in 2016 — going the wrong way, with a decrease of 1 percent.
Women still have less of a presence in the world of work. When they do work, they represent significantly more of the part-time workforce and significantly less of the full-time workforce, and still they take home consistently lower hourly wages than men. Men in part-time work have maintained the progression of an increasing wage as they age, but women bring home less than women aged 25 to 54 — at least, in the part-time world. The long-time effects are obvious.
All this is just numbers. There are real-life stories behind the numbers. In Courtenay-Comox, I heard the story of a retired woman who can’t afford to live on her meagre pension and is working two part-time jobs to supplement it. Another retired woman has moved to another community to find affordable housing on her tiny pension. Another wife is worried about how she will make ends meet if her husband has to go into care.