Public sector salaries: Province's gender balance doesn't extend to paycheques
Credit to Author: Lori Culbert| Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2020 15:25:09 +0000
Premier John Horgan may have gender balance in both his cabinet and the civil service that runs his government, but things become more lopsided when it comes to who makes the most money within the provincial government.
Only six of the top 25 earners in the civil service were women in 2018, according to The Vancouver Sun’s newest version of its popular public sector salaries database.
Since its election in 2017, the NDP government has pledged to expand child care, has increased the minimum wage, and has launched a recruitment plan to improve diversity within its ranks — all of which could help working women.
But any recruitment drive needs to come with checks and balances to ensure people with different perspectives are being hired, said Jennifer Charlesworth, B.C.’s representative for children and youth. It should also offer mentorship and encouragement to future female employees.
“If we are serious about creating more equity, then we need to do some front-end work,” she said.
“What are the messages that (society is) giving to our young people about the kinds of choices that are available to them, and what we believe they can do? I think that we continue to give young women messages … that fundamentally are limiting.”
The Sun collected salary data on nearly 90,000 workers who make at least $75,000 annually from approximately 100 public sector employers, including the provincial government, municipalities and universities. With this data, we produced a searchable database containing the names, titles, workplaces and remuneration of these public employees.
For this story, we analyzed the 8,700 people who work directly for the provincial government and make at least $75,000 annually, which includes social workers, forestry workers, administrators and managers, among others.
Note to users:The search function in this Caspio database is not supported in Safari browsers —including the Sun and Province apps, which are built on Safari — on mobile phones. Please try your Chrome or Firefox browser if you’re unable to search.
The six women on the top-25 salary list include three deputy ministers, two lawyers and Catherine Romanko, the public guardian and trustee.
One of those female deputy ministers, Sheila Taylor, who made the highest provincial government salary in 2018 at $319,000, has since retired. However, the number of women on the list remains six because Charlesworth recently took over her well-paid position from a male predecessor.
Children’s representative Jennifer Charlesworth.
But her rise to this top government post was not seamless. Many years ago, Charlesworth left a job in biology after receiving the “very clear message that women don’t do science” and then throughout her decades-long career in social services she recalled the front-line workers were typically women while the decision makers were often men.
“When you think about my career over 40 years, yes, there have been some changes. But I’ll bet if you did an analysis of the gender distribution in the positions of director level and above, you would still see a preponderance of men,” she said.
“I think it’s much, much better (today), so I’m really encouraged by that, but there’s still implicit bias around, can you be fully competent — and have future opportunities and therefore have higher income — if you have a young family or if you are a single parent?”
The list of the 25 highest-paid provincial employees is dominated by 11 Crown counsel and nine deputy ministers, who bring expertise to various ministries and typically make far more money than their higher-profile cabinet ministers.
For example, Attorney General David Eby had remuneration of $150,000 in 2018, while his most senior deputy minister made $270,000. In fact, there are 670 people in the civil service who make more than Eby.
Attorney General David Eby (from left), Premier John Horgan and Finance Minister Carole James
To look at the gender breakdown of all 8,700 civil servants, we submitted their first names to Gender-API.com. Results with less than a 95 per cent confidence score from the API were excluded from the analysis, providing us with reliable gender results for about 84 per cent — or more than 7,400 workers.
We found the civil service is made up of roughly 55 per cent men and 45 per cent women. We then divided these workers into pay-scale buckets, and found a larger share of women, 75 per cent, were in the lowest pay range we analyzed ($75,000 to $100,000), compared to 70 per cent of men. This meant men were dominant in the higher salary buckets.
In response to questions from The Sun, the provincial government said it was trying to improve diversity by recruiting under-represented groups, training hiring managers, and providing inclusion training for all employees.
The government provided statistics that said 48 per cent of ministers, deputy ministers and executive leaders were women, and that their average salary of $177,000 was just three per cent lower than what their male peers made.
B.C. is one of only four provinces without provincial pay equity legislation, which requires employers to give equal pay to women and men for equal work. B.C. and two of the other provinces without this law (Alberta and Saskatchewan) have the three largest gaps in gender pay, according to Statistics Canada.
Organizations such as the West Coast Legal Education and Action Fund have called on the B.C. government to adopt similar legislation “to address the gendered and racialized wage gap.”
The government said legislation is just one way to help women, and argued it was pursuing other options, such as expanding child care, to improve equity.
Last March, Liberal MLA Stephanie Cadieux tabled a private member’s bill that would require all employers with more than 50 staff to publicly disclose the median salaries for male and female employees, in an effort to address the gender pay gap.
“Let’s just admit it exists. Let’s go find out where it exists. And let’s do something about it,” said Cadieux, whose bill is unlikely to pass because she is a member of the Opposition.
The government maintained Cadieux’s bill would not help “the vast majority of women” because it only applies to big companies, and not the sizable number of small businesses in B.C.
Stephanie Cadieux, Liberal MLA for Surrey South, tabled the Equal Pay Reporting Act legislation in 2019.
But Cadieux argued her bill would apply to both private companies and governments, and added the public sector could do better when it comes to gender equity.
“In the bureaucracy, there are some very, very talented women in some of the top jobs. And we look to those and say, ‘Oh, we are doing pretty well,’” said Cadieux, MLA for Surrey South and a former minister of children and family development.
“I think the public sector does have an obligation to lead in these ways, but I don’t think from what I’ve seen and what you’re telling me, we are there yet.”
The database includes pay for more than 88,800 public servants working at over 100 public sector agencies, including the provincial government, Crown corporations, health authorities, municipalities, universities and colleges, school districts and municipal police departments. The figures were gathered from publicly available compensation disclosure reports and freedom of information requests.
Remuneration information includes base salary, overtime, vacation payouts and severance.
Depending on how an agency reports financial data, information is from either the 2017-18 fiscal year or the 2018 calendar year.
You can search the database at: vancouversun.com/salaries
Series Box
Saturday — Part 1: The gender wage gap
Monday — Part 2: The provincial government
Tuesday — Part 3: Municipal governments
Wednesday — Part 4: Universities and colleges
Thursday — Part 5: School boards
Friday — Part 6: Crown corporations
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