It is a recurring theme from one end of the year to the next. The month of December brings with it all kinds of reports, a review of events and statistics. Curiously, data on social inequalities and poverty are therefore carving out a prominent place in the concerns of the moment. As if the arrival of the holiday season, the time of plenty, prompts us to take a closer look at how the prosperity cake has been divided over the past twelve months.
Thus, this week, the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS) drew attention to the wage inequalities that persist in Quebec by publishing a post recalling that from the 1is December, Quebec women “work for free” until the end of the year. This is of course one way of illustrating the income inequality between men and women in Quebec – that is, an 8.1% gap in average hourly compensation. With the same skills and experience, women still earn less money than their male colleagues.
This is nothing new. On the other hand, it is interesting to note, still according to IRIS, that the difference is much greater when one considers the average annual income: 23.8%, in 2019. This is explained by the fact that women are more likely to hold part-time jobs or to interrupt their career when they have children or to take care of a loved one who is losing their autonomy.
This data precedes the pandemic. Now, it is now undeniable: the last two years have been particularly trying for the jobs and the incomes of women. In April 2021, Oxfam pointed out that COVID-19 had cost women around the world at least $ 800 billion in lost income, the equivalent of the combined GDP of 98 countries. And this is a conservative assessment.
Among our neighbors to the South – who are never exemplary on these questions, we agree – at the end of 2020, women had been four times more likely than men to leave the labor market because of pandemic, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. To the point where we now speak of the phenomenon of ” stuck-at-home moms “, A variation of the expression” stay-at-home mom Expressing the fact that for many women free full-time domestic work is now more constrained than chosen.
In Quebec, it is true that we were better equipped than elsewhere to protect women’s jobs. But even at home, we saw at the end of 2020 that 68% of the jobs lost during the pandemic were occupied by women.
Quebec’s family policy scores well around the world for its ability to promote access to employment for women workers, in particular thanks to the QPIP and childcare centers. That said, the crisis currently facing the network of childcare centers shows us the fragility of the tools acquired over time to support the employment of women.
I’m rambling, you might say. Well be warned, I do not intend to let go of this bone until the message courageously carried by the childcare workers is heard. This conflict illustrates with exceptional clarity the political obstacles that prevent the achievement of income equality between men and women.
Educators from 400 CPEs across the province launched an indefinite general strike this week. The negotiations are at an impasse, the government is showing itself intractable: there is no question of faltering on salary increases for daycare support staff. The educators have already had what they asked for, so what do they still have to complain about?
In an interview on QUB radio on Thursday, Minister Sonia LeBel admitted that we were standing up to the unions for an amount of about six million dollars per year. The President of the Conseil du trésor explained, however, that it was not so much a question of numbers, but a question of “fairness”: we cannot agree to these salary increases, at the risk to give ammunition to all state employees in subsequent negotiations. We must avoid a domino effect, repeats these days the Minister on the sidelines of the negotiations.
However, the whole question is precisely there: a salary catch-up is necessary for several traditionally female employment groups, and therefore underpaid, in the public sector. The pandemic has shown that we can no longer despise invisible work, the work that holds society together and allows the economy to function. Because all workers depend on it. Because the financial autonomy and professional development of women depend on it.
Never mind, we seem to want to make daycare support staff a political example, to show that it is still possible to put women who do “women’s work” in their place. Except that, dramatically, the educators refuse to give in to this blackmail. The strike is certainly uncomfortable for parents. But by standing up, the staff of the CPEs show us the way towards a more just and egalitarian society.