The Vancouver’s Sun public sector database highlights British Columbia the latent gender issues.
Yasmine Modaresi (she/her) // Crew Writer
Pheobe Verdon (she/her) // Illustrator
The Vancouver Sun’s updated public sector database contains information regarding salaries for different positions within public sector employment, and makes them available to the general public. It’s a goldmine—especially in the context of the upcoming BC election in October. It highlights many interesting intersections between socioeconomic status, gender, employment trends, and legislation pertaining to equity. The database includes information on approximately 125,000 public sector workers across 100 public sector agencies, all of which earn a minimum annual salary of $75,000 to be included, and conveniently allows database users to search for salary trends in various public sectors, such as education, health, and government.
The most recent update to the database exposed the magnitude of current gender wage disparities in BC, as well as the concentration of highest wages within certain sectors and under specific institutions. When asked by the Vancouver Sun to comment specifically on the issue of BC’s gender wage gap in the public sector, BC Human Rights Commissioner, Kasari Govender, stated that BC’s progress in mitigating the gender wage gap is “surprisingly slow” compared to other Canadian provinces. According to the trends in the database, BC has among the highest gender wage gaps in all of Canada, tied only with Alberta.
Wage gap deniers have proposed that women simply earn less than men because of their educational and career choices. The salaries listed in the database from 2020–2021 contradict them: nation-wide economic hardship, like the Covid-19 pandemic, contribute to reinforcement of the gender wage gap. For example, during the pandemic, women altered their employment more frequently than men to care for children, elderly parents, and compensate for the closure of after school services like daycares. The adherence to gender roles has a profound effect on child rearing within two parent households. The result was that hundreds of thousands of Canadian women were either unable to work or lost their jobs entirely. Govender commented on these figures, stating that the fragility of progress for women in the workforce was surprisingly fragile, and that this fragility was showcased during and after the pandemic, which set women’s equality in the workforce “back by decades.”
The majority (over 60 percent) of public sector employees are women within BC, but gender is not the only factor that needs to be considered when analyzing wage inequality: geographic location, ethnicity and race, and disability are all factors that contribute to heightened salary disparities. For example, a quick look at the visualization of the highest public sector earners in BC shows that an overwhelming number of these earners are employed at UBC—an academic institution in a densely populated metropolitan city.
The information in the database is significant in its connection to the BC elections occurring this October. In highlighting cubic sector disparates in income distribution as it relates to gender, British Columbians must ask themselves why such disparates exist, and if there are any tangible steps that government officials can take to begin decreasing the provincial wage gap. It was mentioned earlier that BC and Alberta are tied for having the highest gender wage gaps in Canada. What do these two provinces have in common? Well, they (along with Saskatchewan) are the only provinces lacking pay equity legislation, which would implement specific laws for equal pay, regardless of gender, for equal positions within a sector. The public sector is one of the largest employers in BC, and mitigating the increasing gender wage gap should be an important concern for the new government.
The major parties running are British Columbia New Democratic Party (NDP), and the British Columbia Conservatives. All Canadian citizens that will have turned 18 before October 19, 2024 and have been residents of British Columbia since April 18, 2024, are eligible to vote. That represents a considerable part of Capilano University’s student population, and Capilano Courier will follow the election closely. Campaign news will be reported daily on our website, and we’re moderating the all-candidates forum for the North Vancouver–Seymour provincial election candidates hosted by the CSU. The event will be on October 9th from 5:30-7:30pm. The Capilano Students Union has also organized to provide students a convenient place to cast their ballot. The election booth will be in the Birch Building Upper Food Court #2, on October 15th between 10:30 am and 3:30 pm.