Pay inequities pushed women out of the workforce during pandemic

June 28, 2021

Nearly 350,000 Canadian women who lost their jobs during the pandemic hadn’t returned to work as of February 2021, highlighting existing gender inequalities and pushing women’s employment to a two decade low.

They found that women lost a disproportionate number of jobs during the pandemic, partly as a result of being overrepresented in hardest hit sectors, such as retail and restaurants and also because of significant gaps in pay between men and women.

According to the report’s authors, women made up 48 per cent of Canada’s workforce in March 2020, but sustained 58 per cent of pandemic job losses.

“If you look at the employment numbers,” said Lokpriy Shrma, post-doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan and one of the study authors, “there were more job losses in the sectors where more women are working.”

Source: Vancouver Sun