Economic Equality for Women is centuries away

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“Because women do over half the unpaid work in Canada and do nearly half of the paid work in Canada, economic parity is a long way away. And the rate of change has been virtually non-existent since 1997,” Lahey said Tuesday.

“It’s not good,” she said, adding that she hopes the calculation in her study proves to be wrong.

Lahey said the recession of the early 1990s and the most recent worldwide recession erased many of the gains women had made from 1977 to 1993, noting that they benefitted little from billions of dollars in federal and provincial infrastructure spending.

“The progress that women had experienced came to an absolute standstill in 1997. It did not even change by even a fraction of a percentage point from 1997 to 2010,” she said.

She said from 2008 to the end of this fiscal year, Ottawa will have spent $168 billion on major changes in tax structure, infrastructure spending programs and employment insurance programs — all of which give the bulk of benefits to men.

Lahey said the 2012 budget changes to Canada’s Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement, health care spending, the national private retirement system, infrastructure spending and public services and employment will impose the heaviest cuts on women and members of other vulnerable groups.