What’s the issue?
The gender pay gap is the difference in average earnings of people based on gender. It is a widely recognized indicator of gender inequities, and it exists across industries and professional levels.
Equal Pay Day is symbolic of how far into the next year a woman works to have earned what a man earned the previous year. But there’s more than one gender pay gap, it widens for those who face multiple barriers, including racialized women, Indigenous women, and women with disabilities. We would be wise to think of it as gender pay gaps, plural.
In 2025, Equal Pay Day in Ontario is April 10. That is the average EPD- for example: for racialized women, it is May 19, Black and Indigenous women it is June 1, and women with disabilities, it is June 5.
The gender pay gap is sometimes blamed on “women’s choices”. But women often have to make certain job choices, and those jobs tend to be devalued and underpaid. Other factors include systemic discrimination, and the fact that women lose paid hours due to their unpaid caregiving responsibilities.
The gender pay gap is sometimes spoken about as “equal pay for equal work,” but that’s only one factor to consider. There are different ways of measuring the gap. No matter how you measure it, it still exists.
Canada has had pay equity laws since the 1970s. But pay gaps and unfairness in pay persist. Girls face a summer job gender pay gap of almost $3.00 per hour. Women post-secondary students leave school with lesser means to pay off student loans. And the gendered pension gap means that women retire with about 80% of the pension men retire with.
