Same degree, not the same pay

Every October 11, the UN marks the International Day of the Girl, and girls are told again that school opens every door. Statistics Canada looked at what happens afterwards. In a study published on January 18, 2023, the agency followed the roughly 395,000 people who earned a bachelor's degree in Canada from 2014 to 2017, 30% of whom were racialized, and measured their employment income two years after graduation.

The raw gap between women seems modest: $45,700 a year on average for racialized women graduates, compared with $47,800 for non-racialized, non-Indigenous women. But even after accounting for the graduates' characteristics, gaps persisted for several groups: West Asian women graduates earned 16% less, Arab women graduates 15% less, and Black, Korean, South Asian and Latin American women graduates 8% to 9% less.

These data concern young women with bachelor's degrees, not all women. Yet they show that with the same degree, the door does not open as wide for everyone. Measuring is already refusing to let the gap go unnoticed. What remains is for employers to examine their hiring and pay practices, and for each of us, colleagues, mentors, neighbours, to open our networks to those who were not invited in. A graduate never succeeds alone: she also succeeds because a community recognizes her.