By the Numbers: Women in Canada

 

Population

  • In 2009: Women represented 50.4% of total population
  • In 2006:
    • Women represented 51%  of visible minority population
    • Women represented 52% of visible minority labour force
    • Life expectancy for women was 82.5 years; compared to 77.7 years for men
  • In 2007: 80% of lone-parent families were headed by women; lone-parent families headed by women represented 13% of total families in Canada
  • In 2004: Women made up 69% of all persons aged 85 and older
  • In 2010: there were 3,482,869,000 women in the world. (U.N. – World population statistics)

Labour Force

  • In 2010:
    • Women aged 15 and older represented 62.4% of labour force, up from 37.1% in 1976
    • Women made up 67% of the part-time work force and 38% of full-time
    • Women represented 34.6% of all self-employed workers
  • In 2006: women represented 37% of people aged 60 to 64 participating in the labour force.

Women and poverty

  • In 2007:
    • 1.22 million adult women (aged 18 and older) in Canada lived in poverty
    • Single mothers: 23.6% of women heading lone-parent families lived in poverty
    • 14.3% of older women living on their own lived in poverty (low incomes), a higher rate than the child poverty
    • 82% of women in the age group of 25 to 44 – main child-bearing years – were in the paid work force; they earned only 65.7% of the average earnings of men
    • 27% of women in the main child-bearing years (aged 25 to 44), are working part-time because they can’t find full time jobs
    • Pay inequity: Full-time employed women earned just 71.4% of the average earnings of men
    • 20% of women compared with only 10% of men in full-time jobs, were employed in low wage occupations (living in poverty)
    • 40% of women compared with 30% of men in paid employment, are working in precarious jobs (poorly paid, no benefits, little or no job security)
    • 39% of unemployed women received EI benefits
  • In 2004:
    • 45.6% of single, divorced, widowed (“unattached”) women over 65 were poor
    • When mothers are poor, so are their children: more than one million children live in poverty in Canada and poverty is strongly linked to poor school performance
    • Women living in poverty are more likely to experience violence and abuse

      In 2002: Over 2 million Canadians provided personal care for seniors. Three-quarters of the care givers were women

Women and Unions

  • As of 2010 the unionization rate for women 30.9%, which represents the first time it was higher than the unionization rate for men (28.2%)
  • The number of working women with pension plans tripled from 1974 to 2004. During this period, almost all the increase in workplace pension plan membership came from women joining unions and gaining decent pensions

Leadership

  • In 2009:
    • Women in management occupations: 37%
    • Women held 4.2% of CEO positions on the Financial Post 500

(Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census; 2010 Labour Force Survey; others)