IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wlu/lcerpa/0088.html

The Gender Wage Gap in the Canadian Provinces, 1997-2014

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This study examines the gender gaps in average hourly wages facing private sector full time employees in the Canadian provinces, using data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey. Over the 1997-2014 period, all provinces have made progress toward narrowing the gender wage gap, though notably little progress was made in Newfoundland and Alberta. Much of the variation across provinces in the gender gap is eliminated once we account for gender differences in individual and job characteristics in each province. Decomposition results suggest a large portion of the wage gap in each province is explained by gender differences in industry and occupation. The unexplained portion of the wage gap has been reduced in many provinces as gender differences in industry and occupation play an increasingly important role.

Suggested Citation

  • Tammy Schirle, 2015. "The Gender Wage Gap in the Canadian Provinces, 1997-2014," LCERPA Working Papers 0088, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis, revised 13 Apr 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:wlu:lcerpa:0088
    Note: LCERPA Working Paper No. 2015-6.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lcerpa.org/public/papers/LCERPA_2015_6.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Baker & Nicole M. Fortin, 2004. "Comparable worth in a decentralized labour market: the case of Ontario," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(4), pages 850-878, November.
    2. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicole M. Fortin, 2019. "Increasing earnings inequality and the gender pay gap in Canada: Prospects for convergence," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 407-440, May.
    2. Li, Jiang & Dostie, Benoit & Simard-Duplain, Gaëlle, 2020. "What Is the Role of Firm-Specific Pay Policies on the Gender Earnings Gap in Canada?," IZA Discussion Papers 13907, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Peter Burton & Shelley Phipps, 2017. "Economic Well-Being of Canadian Children," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 43(4), pages 299-330, December.
    4. Ben Sand & Chris Bidner, 2016. "Job Prospects and Pay Gaps: Theory and Evidence on the Gender Gap from U.S. Cities," Discussion Papers dp16-14, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    5. Andlib, Zubaria, 2025. "Breaking Barriers or Reinforcing Gaps? Gender Wage Disparities Across Skill Levels in a Developing Economy," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1555 [rev.], Global Labor Organization (GLO), revised 2025.
    6. Richard E. Mueller, 2022. "Gender pay gap in the public sector: Evidence from the Canadian Labour Force Survey," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 36(1), pages 29-70, March.
    7. Kispál-Vitai, Zsuzsanna & Németh, Julianna, 2021. "Szilánkok az üvegplafonból [Splinters from the glass ceiling]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 308-331.
    8. Andlib, Zubaria, 2025. "Can occupational skills explain the gender wage gap in a developing economy? An unconditional quintile regression approach," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1555, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    9. Kanat Abdulla, 2024. "Language diversity, gender inequality, and aggregate productivity in Canada," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 71(3), pages 323-345, July.
    10. Jennifer Robson & Johanna Peetz, 2020. "Gender differences in financial knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors: Accounting for socioeconomic disparities and psychological traits," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 813-835, September.
    11. Charles M. Beach, 2016. "Changing income inequality: A distributional paradigm for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 1229-1292, November.
    12. Ibrahim Bousmah, 2024. "Firm‐size wage‐gaps and hierarchy: Evidence from Canada," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 38(3), pages 350-364, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fortin, Nicole M. & Bell, Brian & Böhm, Michael, 2017. "Top earnings inequality and the gender pay gap: Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 107-123.
    2. Thomas Y. Mathä & Alessandro Porpiglia & Michael Ziegelmeyer, 2014. "Wealth differences across borders and the effect of real estate price dynamics: Evidence from two household surveys," BCL working papers 90, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    3. Mehtap Akguc & Ana Ferrer, 2015. "Educational Attainment and Labor Market Performance: An Analysis of Immigrants in France," Working Papers 1505, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2015.
    4. Kobus, Martyna & Kapera, Marek & Maasoumi, Esfandiar, 2024. "Gap in many dimensions: Application to gender," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    5. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    6. Chung Choe & SeEun Jung & Ronald L. Oaxaca, 2020. "Identification and decompositions in probit and logit models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 1479-1492, September.
    7. Best, Rohan & Chareunsy, Andrea & Nazifi, Fatemeh, 2025. "Persistent energy poverty for renters motivates policy reform," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    8. Hans-Jürgen Andreß, 2014. "Frieden und Emanzipation?," AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv, Springer;Deutsche Statistische Gesellschaft - German Statistical Society, vol. 8(1), pages 7-31, June.
    9. Valentine Fays & Benoît Mahy & François Rycx, 2023. "Wage differences according to workers' origin: The role of working more upstream in GVCs," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 37(2), pages 319-342, June.
    10. Rebérioux, Antoine & Roudaut, Gwenael, 2016. "Gender Quota inside the Boardroom: Female Directors as New Key Players?," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1603, CEPREMAP.
    11. Martti Kaila & Emily Nix & Krista Riukula, 2021. "Disparate Impacts of Job Loss by Parental Income and Implications for Intergenerational Mobility," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 53, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    12. Leone Leonida & Marianna Marra & Sergio Scicchitano & Antonio Giangreco & Marco Biagetti, 2020. "Estimating the Wage Premium to Supervision for Middle Managers in Different Contexts: Evidence from Germany and the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(6), pages 1004-1026, December.
    13. Nadav Kunievsky & Pedro Pertusi, 2026. "Content vs. Form: What Drives the Writing Score Gap Across Socioeconomic Backgrounds? A Generated Panel Approach," Papers 2601.03469, arXiv.org.
    14. Mathieu Narcy & Joseph Lanfranchi & Chloé Duvivier, 2016. "Les sources de l’écart de rémunération entre femmes et hommes dans la fonction publique," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 488(1), pages 123-150.
    15. Nathan Blascak & Anna Tranfaglia, 2021. "Decomposing Gender Differences in Bankcard Credit Limits: Evidence from Sole Mortgage Applicants," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-072r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 23 Feb 2026.
    16. Duman, Anil & Duman, Alper, 2021. "The More the Gloomier: development of informal employment and its effect on wages in Turkey," GLO Discussion Paper Series 870, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    17. Töpfer, Marina, 2017. "Detailed RIF decomposition with selection: The gender pay gap in Italy," Hohenheim Discussion Papers in Business, Economics and Social Sciences 26-2017, University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences.
    18. Katie Meara & Francesco Pastore & Allan Webster, 2020. "The gender pay gap in the USA: a matching study," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 271-305, January.
    19. Vincent Vandenberghe, 2021. "Work beyond the age of 50. What role for mental versus physical health?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 35(3), pages 311-347, September.
    20. Sergio Longobardi & Margherita Maria Pagliuca & Andrea Regoli, 2018. "Can problem-solving attitudes explain the gender gap in financial literacy? Evidence from Italian students’ data," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1677-1705, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wlu:lcerpa:0088. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Glen Stewart The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Glen Stewart to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sbwluca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.