On December 16, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Gender Index for 2020 based on 2019 country performance. Canada has dropped 3 places in the ranking since the last report a year ago.
Since 2006 the WEF has produced annual reports on the progress made toward gender equality using benchmarks based on four thematic dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. In the latest edition of Women, Politics and Public Policy: The political struggles of Canadian women, (Newman, White and Findlay, 2020, p. 389) we had this to say of the 2017 report:
According to the 2017 report, no country has fully
closed its gender gap; four of the five Nordic countries, Rwanda (4th), and
Nicaragua (6th) have closed more than 80 per cent of their gaps. And Canada?
Canada does not crack the top ten; it ranks 16th out of 144 countries, which is
2 points lower than its first ranking in 2006. This drop is attributed to a
decline in economic participation and opportunity (specifically on measures of
wage equality for similar work and earned income) and the number of women,
legislators, senior officials, and senior managers. It is also attributed to
being overtaken by countries that have made more efforts in the last 11 years
to target women’s economic and political equality, such as Rwanda and
Nicaragua. Canada is the highest ranked in North America; the United States is
49th and Mexico 81th out of 144 countries. Worldwide “since the Report’s first
edition in 2006, all things being equal, with current trends, the overall
global gender gap can be closed in exactly 100 years across the 106 countries
[originally] covered.” This is up from the first 2006 report, which predicted
83 years; however, since then a further 38 countries have been added to the
index (WEF, 2017). In 2017, the most challenging theme was economic, the
economic gender gap having reverted back to where it stood in 2008 after
peaking in 2013. Progress in education was making headway, as was the political
dimension, although progress has slowed since 2016. Thus, we should not be complacent regarding
the status of women either nationally or globally.
In this year’s report, Canada barely makes the top 20, coming in at 19th,
a drop of three places since the last report and five places since the first
report in 2007. In fact, today the index’s estimate of how long it will take to
close the gender gap for the North American region is a whopping 151 years, “reflecting
lack of progress in the region this year” (WEF, 2019, p. 6). In 2006, both
Europe and North America had closed 71% of their gender gaps. Today, Europe has
closed 77% of the gap and North America 73%. As a result of this positive but
much slower progression it is expected that it will take almost three time
longer to close the gap in North America (151 years) than in Europe (54 years)
(WEF, 2019, p. 24). This year, while Canada ranks 19th, the U.S. is
ranked at 53rd which is a drop of two places since 2018. It should be
noted that in a footnote the report does acknowledge that, “in computation of
the population weighted regional average, the weight of the U.S. is approximately
that of Canada. [Thus] the regional performance reflects to a very large extent
the performance of the United State.”
Although it is not considered part of North America in the index (it is in
the Latin America region), Mexico is only six places below Canada at 25th.
This can be attributed to the 2014 Mexican Constitutional amendment to establish
gender parity in civic life and the use of party list quotas requiring a 60/40
ratio of male to female candidates in elections.
In comparison, Iceland ranks 1st in the index with a 0.877/1
rating which indicates it is 87% of the way to closing its gender gap, Finland
at number 3 achieved 83.2% including having elected a female Prime Minister and
women heading all five of its mainstream political parties. Not surprising the
Scandinavian countries dominate the top ten.
The global top ten features four Nordic countries
(Iceland, 1st, Norway 2nd, Finland 3rd and Sweden 4th), one Latin American
country (Nicaragua, 5th), one country from the East Asia and the Pacific region
(New Zealand, 6th), three other countries from Western Europe (Ireland, 7th,
Spain, 8th and Germany, 10th) and one country from Sub-Saharan Africa (Rwanda,
9th) (WEP, 2019, 8).
Canada does well on two of the thematic benchmarks, it has completely
closed the gap in educational attainment, and is very close .97/1 or 97% in health
and survival, however, it does not do as well in terms of economic
participation and opportunity and political empowerment, 0.75/1 (75%) and
0.365/1 (36.5%) respectively.
While globally female economic participation and opportunity has been
highest in North America with 76% of the gap closed, this figure has not
changed since 2006 (WEF, 2019, 26), indicating a lack of progress over the past
14 years. For Canada the difference between the 2007 report and this year’s is 2%
from 73% to 75%. While parity between men and women in the workforce comes
closest in Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and France where women make up about 48%
of the labour force full parity is still a slow struggle. In Canada in 2015,
82% of Canadian women were in the labour force and “the gender gap … decreased
from 75.5 percentage points in 1950 to 28.3 percentage points in 1983 and 8.9
percentage points in 2015: (Moyser, 2017, p. 4, cited in Newman, White and Findlay,
2020, p. 263). The WEF puts the gender gap for participation rate as 91.7%
closed with 75.1% of women in the labour force compared to 81.9% of men (WEF,
2019, p. 117). However, participation
does shift depending on the type of job.
(Source: WEF, 2019, p.
40)
When it comes to top positions, i.e., legislators, senior officials and managers, the gap widens significantly. The gender gap in this particular area has only been closed to 55%, with 35.5% of women in such positions compared to 64.5% of men. Wage equality for similar work stands at 69.5 out of 7(as a best rating) and parity for professional and technical workers has been achieved. Thus, as the WEF reports, “it is in the area of political empowerment that offers most room for improvement in North America, where only 18% of the political gender gap has been closed. This is less than half that of Europe (41%) and also worse than in Latin America (27%), South Asia (39%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (21%) (p. 26).”
It is the political empowerment benchmark where Canada performs the most badly. Overall, the report finds that the progress to political parity is only 36.5%. The election in October 2019 was considered a banner year for women in Canadian politics as 98 women were elected and reelected, adding 10 more women in the House of Commons for a grand total of 98 out of 338. By percentage points this was a 3-point climb to 29% from 26% in 2015. The number of women running in the election also rose by 9% among the four major parties in 2019. The NDP candidate pool was 49% female, the Greens 47% and the Liberal 39%. The Conservative Party of Canada fielded 12% more women candidates than they did in 2015 (32% in 2019 and 20% in 2015) (Boesveld, 2019). However, the 98 elected were mainly incumbents and the 3% increase in House representatives does not reflect the 9% increase in candidates. This indicates that women continue to not be chosen by their parties to run in ‘safe’ ridings unless they already hold the riding. The small steps in national legislative representation are illustrated in the rankings of the Interparliamentary Union (IPU). In 2017 Canada ranked 64th out of 193 countries in terms of percentage of women in national legislatures and ranked just above the world-wide average of 23.5%. This was a drop of 14 from Canada’s 2010 ranking of 50th and 43 from the 21st place it held in 1997. In October 2019, the world average stood at 26.3% and Canada has risen to 52nd position. Thus, progress to representational parity is slow and Canada is being pushed down the rankings by countries that are taking much more proactive efforts to ensure women’s representation in national legislatures.
While Trudeau’s commitment to gender parity in cabinet resulted in 50/50 cabinets in 2015 and 2019, has put the rate of ministerial positions at 100%, the report does not account for the nuances in power arising from the cabinet positions women are given. As we argue in Women and Politics and Public Policy (2020), “there is a great difference in influence between the Minister of Finance and Minister for Sport…. Even in 2015, men were appointed to three of the pivotal positions: Finance, Defence, and Foreign Affairs. …One woman to crack the top tier of portfolios was Jody Wilson-Raybould in Justice.” Later, Chrystia Freeland would join her as Minister of Foreign Affairs replacing the retiring Stephan Dion. “Second-tier appointments went to Carolyn Bennett in Indigenous and Northern Affairs and Catherine McKenna in Environment and Climate Change. However, a third of the appointments were to junior positions as ministers of state” (Kingston, 2015b, cited in Newman, White, Findlay 2020, p.148). A later reshuffle which divided Indigenous and Norther Affairs had Bennett and Jane Philpott serving as Ministers of Indigenous Relations and Indigenous Services respectively. Jane Philpott was switched to Treasury Board and Jody Wilson-Raybould to Veteran’s Affairs before their eventual resignations from caucus.
After the 2019 election, Trudeau continued with the 50/50 cabinet but again the distribution of women in serious portfolios is a disappointment and the PM’s inner cabinet is very male. While Chrystia Freeland was put in change of one of the most sensitive and influential portfolios, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs with a mandate to help solve the acute alienation on the Canadian Prairies expressed during the election, women were relegated to second and third tier ministries. In fact, Catherine McKenna head of the Environment and Climate Change Ministry which emerged as an important and pressing issue for Canadians (outside of Alberta) during the election was moved to infrastructure and communities after the election. She was replaced by a man. Similarly, Bardish Chagger, the Leader of Government in the House before the election, was replaced by a man. With the election of a minority Liberal government the role of House Leader has become much more important. Chagger is now Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth. Beyond Chrystia Freeland it appears that as cabinet positions become more important and significant to the government, even the Trudeau government, women will be shuffled out and replaced by men. So, parity in ministerial position should be taken with a big grain of salt. It also should be noted, which the WEF does, Canada has never had a woman elected PM, only a four-month place-saver (Kim Campbell) who was not enough of a “hail Mary pass” to save the Progressive Conservative from electoral decimation in 1993. Neither has Canada had a federal Minister of Finance!
Provincially, things have gone backwards. In 2013 to 2014, half of Canada’s provinces were headed by women, however, by the end of 2018 there were none. No female provincial premier has won a second term. As Kate Graham in her podcast, interviewing female former premiers, put it, “there are no second chances” (http://nosecondchances.ca/thepodcast).
In 2007 when the WEF initiated the Global Gender Gap Index Canada was 14th and 71.6% of the way to parity. Fourteen years later in its 2020 report, Canada has only done 6% better at 77.2% of the gap closed. This year’s 19th place position can be attributed to the larger strides taken by and the increased backsliding experienced by other countries around the world. But it is also testimony to how slow change can be. Parity is not going to happen in my lifetime and likely not in my son’s or my students’ lifetimes. The only positive take on this year’s report is that it gives us a partial guideline for what we need to work on in the next decade.
The Report can be accessed at: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf
Chart below: From Rupert Neate, ‘UK falls six places in gender equality rankings, The Guardian, 16 December 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/16/uk-falls-six-places-in-gender-equality-rankings
Sources:
Sarah Boesveld. ‘There’s A Record Number of Women Running in Election 2019. Here’s Why.’ Chatelaine, 21 October 2019. www.chatelaine.com/living/politics/women-candidates-canada-election-2019/
Kate Graham. No Second Chances Podcast. http://nosecondchances.ca/the-podcast.
Anne Kingston. ‘Women in the House: the decline of the female power player.’ Maclean’s. 15 September 2015. https://www.macleans.ca/politics/women-in-the-house-the-decline-of-the-femal-power-player
Anne Kingston. ‘Because it’s 2015: A recalibration of power for women in cabinet.’ Macleans. 4 November 2015. http://ww.macleans.ca/news/because-its-2015
Melissa Moyser. Women and paid work. Women in Canada: A gender-based statistical report. March 2017. 89-503-X201500114694.
Rupert Neate. ‘UK falls six places in gender equality rankings.’ The Guardian. 16 December 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/16/uk-falls-six-places-in-gender-equality-rankings.
Jacquetta Newman, Linda A. White & Tammy Findlay. Women, Politics, & Public Policy: The Political Struggles of Canadian Women 3rd edition. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2020.
World Economic Forum. Insight Report: Global Gender Gap Report 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf
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