TORONTO, March 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada’s women’s national soccer team players have a fundamental human right to discrimination-free pay and equal opportunities.
On March 9, 2023, the Women’s National Team players appear before the Federal Parliamentary Heritage Committee to seek pay transparency, equal pay and equal program funding. In solidarity, the Equal Pay Coalition calls on the Heritage Committee to take action to ensure Soccer Canada meets its legal and basic human rights obligations for Canada’s highly celebrated women soccer players.
In 2021, the Federal Government brought a new pay transparency regulation into effect for federally regulated public and private sector employers after lobbying by groups such as the Equal Pay Coalition. The Heritage Committee can recommend that the same pay transparency law apply to Soccer Canada as a federally-funded entity.
The new federal pay transparency law requires employers to report wage gaps, pay gaps in bonuses, and gaps in hours worked between women and men. For the Women’s National Team players, pay transparency requires a full report on the number of games and camps for both the women’s and men’s national teams, now and planned for the next quadrennial. Transparency includes a detailed report on all sponsorship monies collected.
Equal Pay Day is fast approaching on April 4, 2023. The Heritage Committee can make a difference to ensure human rights are respected in sports and steps are taken to close the gender pay gap.
“Women are done waiting,” says Jan Borowy, co-chair of the Ontario Equal Pay Coalition. “It’s time to show us the money. Employers, such as Soccer Canada, must be held to account and the Heritage Committee must make it a real priority to eradicate the barriers to women’s economic equality.”
“The gender pay gap is pervasive and includes women in sport,” says Fay Faraday, co-chair of the Equal Pay Coalition. “Repeated Statistics Canada reports on Canada’s labour market show that women are paid less than men in almost every occupational category, at every age group in the workforce and at every level of educational attainment. To close the gender pay gap we need active intervention to destroy these systemic patterns of discrimination. The Heritage Committee can make a difference for all women athletes now and in the future.”
“We join Canada’s women’s national soccer team to say: enough is enough,” says Patty Coates, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour and member of the Coalition. “The women players have a right to be treated with equality, dignity, and respect by Soccer Canada.”
Equal Pay Day: Equal Pay Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the gender pay gap. It symbolizes how far into the next year the average woman must work in order to have earned what the average man had earned in the previous year. In Ontario, Equal Pay Day is April 4, 2023. The gender pay gap is a human rights and economic crisis. The Census data shows that Indigenous women in Ontario face a 43% gender pay gap; racialized women: 38%; immigrant women: 34%. On average, Ontario women face a 29.3% pay gap. (Census Canada data, Cat #98-400-X2016277)
About the Equal Pay Coalition: Since 1976, the non-partisan Equal Pay Coalition has been the main advocate for women’s pay equity in Ontario. The Coalition unites more than 40 women’s groups, trade unions, community groups, and business organizations representing hundreds of thousands of women in Ontario.
For more information, please contact: Jan Borowy, 416-985-2069 or Fay Faraday, 416-389-4399 or communications@equalpaycoalition.org.
