The Focal Initiative paper entitled Women’s Participation in Canada’s Automotive Industry goes straight to the point: “The fact that women are under-represented in the automotive labour force has been observed and written about extensively.”

Specifically, the report observes: “The data suggests that there are opportunities to hire qualified women of diverse backgrounds into more high-skilled areas, including managerial jobs.” The observation comes with a caveat:

“Hiring women with skilled trades qualifications will require recruiting new apprentices and training, given the small number of women with skilled trades qualifications.” This post is a summary of the report’s objectives and principal findings. 

Understanding the representation and recruitment of women in the automotive sector

Women’s Participation in Canada’s Automotive Industry is a comprehensive report supported by extensive analysis, several statistical charts and carefully compiled commentary about the relationship between women and the automotive manufacturing sector – a leading area of employment in Canada. The stated aims of the report are to:

1. Understand labour market participation by women to help employers understand new sources of labour and inform recruitment strategies in the automotive sector.
2. Inform government policy and programming.
3. Support corporate goals that will improve access to jobs, gender diversity, and equity in employment for women.

Among the many subject areas probed by this detailed document, the following are the most notable:

• The nature (including gaps) of the current participation of women in the automotive sector including demographic factors.
• Regional distribution of women in the labour force.
• Analysis of labour market outcomes for women.
• Analysis of participation of women in the sector by occupation.
• Implications of the findings to improve gender diversity and equity in the sector.

This chart helps tell the story:

Women Employed by Industrial Sector, 2018

Intense competitive pressures

One important interpretative point made in the text supporting the above chart is that while the automotive manufacturing industry is among Canada’s most important employers – especially in southern Ontario – the category is subject to intense competitive pressures.

Automotive manufacturing employers face tight regional labour markets and shortages of skilled workers. Specifically, women have slightly lower representation in assembly (23%) than in parts production (25%). This stands in contrast to the proportion of women in Canada’s broader labour force (48%) but is comparable to the general manufacturing labour force (28%). 

Appealing to women in the labour force

One key finding in the report – which highlights a competitive advantage automotive manufacturing has over other industrial sectors – is that the category offers permanent jobs to the majority of the workforce. It’s an important factor in attracting women workers, “many of whom occupy precarious employment in other industrial sectors.”

The report provides a detailed analysis of labour market data and delivers a working profile of those segments of women in the automotive workforce.

• Female youth: The proportion of young women (aged 15-24) employed in the automotive sector is very low, 6% in assembly and 7% in parts production. An aging workforce opens the door to young recruits.
• Immigrant women: In parts production, 10% of the employed are immigrant women and 8% in assembly. There’s room for growth here.
• Visible minority, non-visible minority and Indigenous women are all under-represented in the category.

Positives and negatives

If the prevalence of permanent employment for women in the automotive sector is a positive, there remains a pay gap between the genders, a distinct though diminishing negative. 

Average hourly and median hourly wages $ (employees only), 2019

The findings embedded in the chart above require qualification and need to be seen within the context of total human resources management in Canada. The gender pay gap – which is narrowing, though perhaps not rapidly enough – is based on a variety of factors including, as the Women’s Participation in Canada’s Automotive Industry report states, on “education, tenure, job attributes, part-time status, firm size, sector, unionization, occupation, and work experience.”  A complex issue, the gender pay gap has deep and frequently unjustifiable historical roots.

Nationally, the gender pay gap in Canada has been decreasing over the last few years. In 2018, according to Statistics Canada, female employees aged 25 to 54 earned $4.13 less per hour on average than men – $0.87 for every dollar earned by men. 
It was a narrower gender wage gap than in 1998, when – as a report in The Globe and Mail stated “the agency’s data showed female employees earned $22.34 an hour – $5.17, or 18.8 per cent, less an hour than males, or 81.2 cents for every dollar.”

Conclusion

The under-representation of women in the Canadian automotive labour force has been a reality for decades. An aging workforce suggests that opportunities, particularly for young women, are rich in potential.

The gender pay gap is problematic but not insoluble in the medium to long-term, given labour market compensation trends which are narrowing the discrepancies. As the report concludes: “The automotive sector has proven itself innovative and resilient through economic downturns and there will continue to be labour demand as the sector returns to normal operations, post the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Women’s Participation in Canada’s Automotive Industry represents a timely contribution to a general understanding of the category. And it suggests opportunities to improve and refine its recruitment practices. 

Find out more from FOCAL

The Future of Canadian Automotive Labourforce (FOCAL) Initiative is a collaboration of the Canadian Skills Training and Employment Coalition (CSTEC), the Automotive Policy Research Centre and Prism Economics and Analysis. 

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