Last year, the Ontario Equal Pay Coalition, in partnership with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives' Ontario office, began tracking two key trends in its 2013 report, 10 Ways to Close Ontario's Gender Pay Gap:
(1) the pay gap between men and women in Ontario and,
(2) the date in the calendar year that demarcates how much longer women have to work to earn the amount that men earn in a year. This year's report examines whether there has been any change in the pay gap and denotes a troubling development.
A year later, we find the gap has grown to 31.5% — on average, women made 68.5 cents for every man's dollar in 2011. This is the price of inaction. In dollar terms: men's average annual earnings increased by $200 — from $48,800 in 2010 to $49,000 in 2011 — but women's average earnings decreased by $1,400 — from $35,000 in 2010 to $33,600 in 2011.
This report not only documents the worsening gender pay gap in Ontario, it scouts a range of municipal, provincial, national and international best practises to guide policy makers intent on narrowing the gap. There are plenty of options at hand. This report offers a 10-point plan to get us there.