Pay equity is the legal right to equal pay for work of equal value. It’s about ensuring that jobs traditionally done by women, such as child care, are valued and compensated fairly, just like male-dominated jobs requiring similar skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
In Ontario, this right has been protected under the Pay Equity Act since 1988. The Act was created to address a long history of systemic gender-based wage discrimination. It recognizes that work traditionally done by women has been undervalued, not because of its skill or importance, but because it is seen as “women’s work.”
For child care workers, who make up one of the most female-dominated professions in the province, pay equity remains an unfulfilled promise. Approximately 95% of Ontario’s child care workforce are women. Despite being essential to children’s development, family well-being, and the economy, child care workers are still drastically underpaid compared to other professions with similar education and responsibility levels. Ontario’s current funding model under the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system has not fully addressed this issue. The province’s approach continues to ignore its own pay equity and human rights obligations, leaving many early childhood educators without fair, equitable wages.
The Pay Equity Act requires that compensation in female-dominated workplaces, like child care centres, be compared to male-dominated jobs of equal value. In Ontario, this comparison is meant to use municipal child care wage rates as the benchmark. However, the provincial funding model under CWELCC does not provide the resources needed to meet this legal standard. As a result, Ontario’s child care system is being built on a foundation of low wages and systemic inequality.
Decent pay for child care workers is not a luxury. It is the foundation of a high-quality, stable, and equitable child care system.Stay tuned for an upcoming paper by the Child Care Pay Equity Project (a collaboration between Building Blocks for Child Care (B2C2), the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC), the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario (AECEO), and the Ontario Pay Equity Coalition (EPC)). The paper examines what must be done to ensure that Ontario’s child care workforce finally receives pay equity compliant, human rights based wages.
In the meantime, you can learn more about pay equity by exploring these key resources: