Ontario’s sunshine list shows men far outnumber women - and women earn less
Star analysis of provincial public workers’ salaries above $100,000 found there were twice as many men making more than $162,000 than women.
Thestar.com
April 6, 2016
By Robin Levinson King
There are far fewer women than men on Ontario’s 2015 “sunshine list,” and the ones who made it were typically paid less than their male counterparts, an analysis by the Star reveals.
There were 62,428 men but only 40,065 women on the annual public disclosure of all provincial employees who earn more than $100,000. The women earned an average of about $124,000, while the average man earned almost $130,000. And there were twice as many men making more than $162,000 than women.
By sector, women were most under-represented at Ontario Power Generation, where they accounted for just 14 per cent of the 7,633 employees who made more than $100,000. Those who did make the list earned, on average, $11,211.15 less than their male colleagues.
Municipalities also ranked poorly. Out of 33,312 municipal employees listed across the province, only 20 per cent were women, and they typically made $1,231.54 less than their male colleagues.
These results are disheartening but not at all surprising, says Miana Plesca, an economist at the University of Guelph who researches the wage gap.
“It’s sad, because it’s a double whammy - not only are they under-represented (on the sunshine list), but once they get there, they don’t do as well as men,” Plesca said.
For her own research, Plesca looked at the sunshine list from its inception in 1997 through 2014. Her findings, which used a similar methodology to the Star’s, present a good-news/bad-news story for women trying to make it to the top of Ontario’s public sector pay pyramid.
Plesca found that the proportion of women on the sunshine list grew over that time, but that the pay gap has remained largely unchanged.
The Star’s analysis of 2015 data found that the wage gap persists even in sectors where women outnumber men on the sunshine list.
Hospitals and boards of public health was the sector with the biggest proportion of women on the sunshine list, but also reported the largest pay gap.
Women made up 65.5 per cent of hospital and public health employees on the sunshine list, but they earned, on average, $26,925.38 less than their male colleagues, or about 82 cents on the dollar.
Colleges were the most equitable employer on the 2015 sunshine list. Women made just $152.64 less than their male colleagues, and were almost as likely to make the list as men. Of the 4,910 employees on the sunshine list from colleges, 44 per cent were women, 50 per cent were men and 6 per cent were undefined (see note on methodology at the end of this article).
At universities, on the other hand, only about 35 per cent of employees on the sunshine list were women, about 53 per cent were men and 12 per cent were undefined.
Women, on average, were paid $12,832.62 less than their male colleagues.
Plesca, who’s on the sunshine list with salary and benefits of $160,100.69, believes that at least part of the pay gap at the university level is caused by women’s responsibilities at home as mothers and caregivers.
Academia is a highly competitive field in which every paper and every presentation can help make or break a career, she said, and motherhood takes its toll on the total number of hours available in the day.
Even when women don’t have caregiving responsibilities, or share them equally with a spouse, Plesca says employers may assume their loyalties will be divided.
“Part of the difference cannot be explained by different choices ... women get painted with the same brush,” she said.
“When society will expect the same career-life balance for men and women, that’s when I think we can have gender equality.”
In Ontario, all public sector and private employers with more than 10 employees are required to comply with the Pay Equity Act. The law was enacted in 1987 to make sure that jobs that are traditionally done by women are not devalued, and people are paid the same if they have the same amount of experience. For instance, communications managers, who are often female, should be paid similarly to finance managers, who are often male, if they have the same level of experience and a similar job title.
But pay equity, which means equal pay for equal work, is only a small part of the gender wage gap equation, says the head of the Pay Equity Commission of Ontario.
“There’s a whole panoply of potentially discriminatory practices,” Emanuela Heyninck said.
Many studies have suggested that men tend to negotiate for higher salaries when hired, she said, which may set them up for higher salaries throughout their career. Women are also under-represented in high-paying science, technology and engineering jobs, she said, which may also contribute to the overall gender pay gap. Access to child care can also impact women’s salaries, as they may have to take more time off work.
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has made closing the gender pay gap a priority for her government, a mission that seems to be reflected in the human resources practices within government ministries.
While men employed in government ministries were almost twice as likely to be on the sunshine list as women, women made an average of $2,722.80 more - the only sector on the list to show a pay gap in women’s favour.
But the pay gap varied significantly by ministry, and some of the sectors with the best female representation on the sunshine list showed the largest gender pay gaps.
Women made up 52 per cent of the employees in the Cabinet Office on the sunshine list, but were paid on average $21,249.55 less than men, the largest pay gap of any government ministry.
In the premier’s office, women made up two-thirds of sunshine-list employees - but were paid on average $9,895.65 less than men. Of the 178 employees from Children and Youth Services who were on the sunshine list, 102 were women. But on average they were paid $10,380.05 less than their male colleagues.
Looking back at the decade she’s served as pay equity commissioner, Heyninck says the Pay Equity Act has helped close the gender pay gap by providing recourse for people who may be undervalued because they work in typically female jobs.
Heyninck says 1,889 employees in fields that tend to be dominated by women received more than $6.8 million in pay equity wage adjustments in 2015-16, which she sees as a sign that the act is working.
But she says employers in both the private and public sectors should conduct a gender analysis and identify ways they fix pay imbalances and encourage women to climb the corporate ladder.
“What are companies doing about keeping women in the pipeline and ensuring that women have access to opportunities?” she asked.
