A social issue is a problem that affects a large number of people living in that society. These issues may be economic in nature, however, most of the times, these issues are people related. Canada being a large country constitutes a big society with a large number of people living in it. The total number of people living in this country exceeds 37.59 million out of which approximately 17.2 million are females. Every society has its own share of social, economic and political issues; Canada is also not barred from these issues. Various segments of society, living in the country, are facing various issues; some have a problem with the health act, some want abortion right, some want strict action against alcohol and while others want the freedom of speech.
Gender issues have been a hot topic of debate since the very beginning of times. Females have been facing different issues since the beginning of times. Issues like rapes, sexual assaults, genital mutilation, acid burning, glass ceiling, gender discrimination and even murder are a common sight in many societies. However, the severity of the nature of issue depends on many factors of the society like the developmental level of the country, the economic condition of the overall society and the economic condition of the country, the literacy rate among the people of the country. The issues, like rapes, sexual assaults, acid burning issues take place in countries that are economically less developed or third world countries.
The developed countries definitely have their share of gender-related issues, but they are different in nature ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ENwV3nTZ","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Best & Best, 2013)","plainCitation":"(Best & Best, 2013)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":357,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/SADC822G"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/SADC822G"],"itemData":{"id":357,"type":"book","ISBN":"0-393-91863-7","publisher":"WW Norton & Company New York","title":"Social problems","author":[{"family":"Best","given":"Joel"},{"family":"Best","given":"Joel"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Best & Best, 2013). These issues constitute a completely different range of problems and questions that need to be catered and answered respectively. Developed countries like Canada have a completely different set of gender-related issues which include gender discrimination, the wage gap, and glass ceiling. The following piece of writing will discuss the gender issues prevailing in our society, the Canadian society. Moreover, they will also highlight some of the major issues faced by the women living and working in the Canadian society and how these issues can be resolved. One of the major issues, the wage gap or gender wage gap will especially be targeted and various reason and aspects of this issue will be discussed.
Discussion
The Canadian nation is currently highlighted with a number of sociological issues, some of the top ones out of them are elaborated in details. The treatment of o First Nations in the past and to this day. In brief, Canada has not lived up to its treaty obligations with the First Nations with which we negotiated in the 19th century. The effort to assimilate and destroy Native culture was ongoing until fairly recently. First Nations people have a very legitimate sense of grievance towards these injustices. On the other hand, the majority population was not aware of most of this until recently and some segments are resistant to accepting responsibility for what was done before their time.
Wealth inequality is also a big issue, prevailing in Canadian society. While not as pronounced as in Canada, the same trends are at work in Canada. Stagnating incomes, loss of low-skill high-pay jobs, the growth of the gig economy, all of these are contributing to a sense of precariousness in the middle class. A large proportion of people are living paycheque to paycheque with no financial cushion.
Another major issue of Canadian society is immigration. While it was nice to see that Canada's immigration system gets kudos from the most unlikely places (talking to you, the Donald), there is a perception in the Canadian public that Canada allows too many immigrants in. The Federal and Provincial governments, as well as the business community and social groups, need to get programmatic about explaining why immigrants are good for Canada. In particular, there is a need to explain how Canada rigorously selects immigrants based on the economic needs of the country, and the skills of applicants ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"hWa79I9c","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Stephens & Joubert, 2001)","plainCitation":"(Stephens & Joubert, 2001)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":358,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/P7D3TRC9"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/P7D3TRC9"],"itemData":{"id":358,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"Chronic Dis Can","issue":"1","page":"18-23","title":"The economic burden of mental health problems in Canada","volume":"22","author":[{"family":"Stephens","given":"Thomas"},{"family":"Joubert","given":"Natacha"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2001"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Stephens & Joubert, 2001). A further false perception exists that we allow hordes of refugees to enter. This is not the case. Unsparingly, the resistance to immigration tends to come from places in Canada that attract very few immigrants. Once again, the fear of the unknown or of the stranger is the driver of the negative views.
One of the biggest mistakes the Canadian government made was allowing illegal immigrants into Canada, while there are tens or hundreds of thousands of Canadians unemployed and/or homeless. It fills homeless shelters with illegal immigrants ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"pmEdGr8N","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Latif, 2015)","plainCitation":"(Latif, 2015)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":361,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/DZKX2RV8"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/DZKX2RV8"],"itemData":{"id":361,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"Economic Modelling","note":"ISBN: 0264-9993\npublisher: Elsevier","page":"162-167","title":"The relationship between immigration and unemployment: Panel data evidence from Canada","volume":"50","author":[{"family":"Latif","given":"Ehsan"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Latif, 2015). Another mistake that is being continuously committed by the government is supplying illegal immigrants and Syrian refugees with hotel rooms, food and healthcare at taxpayer expense. The government Signs away Canadian sovereignty on immigration with the ultra-corrupt, bringing in even more people who will live in Canada at taxpayers’ expense
There is much more to add to the list, but I’ve tried to stay with what is on the radar for most people. The big issues of capital punishment and abortion have largely been settled. There is a developing social issue around elder care and poverty but this one won’t hit full “issue” status until more baby boomers retire and find that they can’t afford to live without working. It shouldn’t take much longer before we’re there.
One of the biggest issues, that has always been under discussion not only in the underdeveloped countries but also in the developed countries of the world is the wage gap. Wage gap refers to a standard, a measure, or a statistical result that that is used as an indicator of the index of the status of the earnings of a female as compared to that of a man’s. This measure is also used to check the difference in the daily wages (or monthly wages) of people belonging to various races and ethnicities ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"CiEpvyQF","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Cool, 2010)","plainCitation":"(Cool, 2010)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":359,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/78GEHFPW"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/78GEHFPW"],"itemData":{"id":359,"type":"book","publisher":"Library of Parliament Ottawa, Canada","title":"Wage gap between women and men","author":[{"family":"Cool","given":"Julie"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Cool, 2010). It can be used to check the discrepancies between the wages of white men and black men or even the difference between the wages of females belonging to different races.
Many people state that this wage gap is a myth or a made-up concept by the feminists but, the fact is, the gender wage gap (also known as the earnings gap) exists in the west. In fact, this gap is larger and more frequent in the west and first world countries. Essentially, any country that allows women to choose their own work and provides economic freedom for her to do so creates a wage gap. Generally, the poorer country the smaller the wage gap. India is a good example of this.
Undoubtedly, there exists a pay gap, but one cannot say it is because of just gender. There is an individual pay gap and experts need to look at it on a case by case basis. A most common reason why people believe there is a gender pay gap is that when a woman is in the workforce, they must leave for a period of time when they have children, hence their career is on hold and they are no longer progressing as such. There are women who choose not to have children and may not be effected. Another reason is the personality trait called 'agreeablenesses. The number of people in society that have agreeableness happens to be more women than men. A person who isn't agreeable is more likely to negotiate a higher wage than just agree with whatever is offered. There are most likely more factors than having babies and being agreeable but they are the main two which likely affect the female gender. In short, there is a pay gap, but it isn't because that person is of a certain gender, it is because the choices that a person makes in career and life. Once a person takes responsibility for their life and stops blaming their misfortunes on things like society, gender or any other generalisation, they can then take charge of their lives and make it better.
There were studies conducted on the gender wage gap. In those studies, two salaries were always put side by side and compared. These revealed that men had a higher income on average. However, this didn't take into account that men also generally worked more, for example, men are more likely to work overtime and they don't take a leave of absence when a baby is born. Since then, a multitude of people has debunked this myth, including a female Harvard professor. They state that if you took two people who worked in the exact same field and have worked the same amount of hours a week, they will have the same salary, no matter what their gender is. Not to mention it has been illegal since 1963 to pay women less.
No one knows the actual facts and cannot say without taking a closer look at the numbers and where they come from. The problem with statistics is that they can oversimplify a topic to the point that it is irrelevant and can be made to lie. For instance, a person's wages are a product of many factors like career choice, years of experience, college degree, hours worked, and job performance. For instance, a successful person in the entertainment business easily get paid millions of dollars per year - the average NFL player makes $2.1 million per year and are exclusively men. That same ecosystem employs just men for most of the coaching staff and all the way up. The only exclusive position held by women are cheerleaders who maybe get paid $50 per game or some relatively low nominal amount. So taking just that ecosystem's wage gap, it's pretty clear the men are paid much higher wages than the women, but at the same time, it's hard to argue that the men do not do more (to attract paying fans) as well as risk serious injury compared to the women ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"Xfmt9v5x","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hegewisch, 2018)","plainCitation":"(Hegewisch, 2018)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":363,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/7Z7H6L4K"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/7Z7H6L4K"],"itemData":{"id":363,"type":"article-journal","title":"The gender wage gap: 2017","author":[{"family":"Hegewisch","given":"Ariane"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Hegewisch, 2018). Now while one may argue a more analogous comparison to male athletes are female athletes and there is a gender pay gap there, the problem exists with the ecosystem itself. Athletes are paid by the team owners, who in a franchising world are based on the number of paying fans and TV contracts to broadcast. Broadcasters pay based on the number of viewers they expect because broadcasters are paid by advertisers who pay based on the number of viewers. So if male sports are viewed more than female sports which they generally are, if you were to attempt to enforce female athletes to be paid the same as their male counterparts, it would be like forcing viewers to watch more female sports which don't just happen. As such, for the ecosystem to keep going, female athletes are being paid less than their male counterparts, so the idea of the gender wage gap still exists, but in this case, it appears to exist for regular economic reasons rather than some kind of agenda or mass gender discrimination by the system., unless one wants to purely argue that female sports lack viewership compared to male sports because of a systemic gender discrimination occurring.
The general assumption is that women and men are being paid differently because of discrimination—but academic studies have (largely) disproven this. While there are always some discriminatory pay decisions (prosecutable by law since the early 1960s), the grand bulk of the disparity comes from three things:
Women are the only sex which can bear children—and the impact of bearing—and caring for—children affects work. Taking time away from work can affect some employment negatively, and that’s probably obvious. Whether men or women should bear a greater burden of child-care might be controversial, but it remains that only women can bear children.
Women are more likely to work part-time, and fewer hours than men. Why that is might be controversial—but being paid less for working less isn’t.
Women and men choose different careers, and different careers pay differently. Why that is might be controversial—but being paid different money for different work isn’t.
The standard numbers like women make 80 cents to the dollar a man makes mostly seem to stem from taking average wages across industries, which is very dangerous to do as discussed above. Statistics are easy to manipulate to draw incorrect conclusions on what is actually happening and it does so by oversimplifying the issue ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"rfzaCqHw","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Nadeau & Seckin, 2010)","plainCitation":"(Nadeau & Seckin, 2010)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":360,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/H2FE8RZ9"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/H2FE8RZ9"],"itemData":{"id":360,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"Canadian Public Policy","issue":"3","note":"ISBN: 0317-0861\npublisher: University of Toronto Press Incorporated","page":"265-285","title":"The immigrant wage gap in Canada: Quebec and the rest of Canada","volume":"36","author":[{"family":"Nadeau","given":"Serge"},{"family":"Seckin","given":"Aylin"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Nadeau & Seckin, 2010). So again, one would have to see concrete raw data that provides the more complete picture before that they can just believe a single number that attempts to depict such a complex thing with many factors like wage gap.
Other factors that may lead to a gender pay difference are willing to ask for a raise and how to go about it and the level of potential discrimination that exists at the supervisor positions since direct supervisors are usually the ones who determine an employees performance and contribute to the raise the employee gets. This last part is where I see the most plausible reason for a gender pay gap as in many industries the majority of middle management are men who may have gender discrimination issues like what has been uncovered at places like Uber and Riot Games.
Though a general perspective is that gender inequality is an outflow consequence, it is a symptom of a much larger problem that includes the world society in its entirety, which is the capitalistic system and how we've found our societies on inequality and competition. Because of this system, specific groups of people are either privileged or penalized in their daily living and in their access to resources. White females are still subject to white male hegemony, but immigrant women are subjugated by white women . Blue-collar men and young men without education are increasingly becoming one of the most exposed socio-economic groups.
In the end, the stress comes from living in a system where we have to fight each other to survive, tacitly or as a matter of fact. The stress comes from having to live a lie where all know that what they doing day in and day out is not living actually, but merely surviving as wage slaves in a broken system, yet they still convince ourselves that everything is fine. As such gender inequality is simply one part of the equation that is certainly relevant but that does not define the whole picture. So a point to consider when asking such questions is also whether one is looking to blame a particular group instead of actually taking self-responsibility because through that one is ironically placing oneself in an inferior position of powerlessness instead of standing up as an equal.
Women, on average, make less than men do. This occurs in every country and market that has ever been studied. All these can be easily found online, in academic journals and Canada doesn’t have the largest wage gap.
Women work fewer hours than men do, on average. It makes some logical sense that if you work less, you’ll probably make less.
Men also accept more overtime, more off-shifts, and more dangerous work than women do, on average. More OT and more risk seem like a reasonable reason to pay someone more.
Regardless of why some jobs pay more than, men gravitate toward more highly-compensated roles than women do, on average. There are now very few actual barriers for women to enter these fields, and actually, there are active recruitment campaigns to attract them—which may result in this choice-gap closing.
Women are the only sex who can become pregnant and bear children—and that fact also has an impact on work through time off. There are some practical reasons for women to engage in child-rearing over men, breastfeeding being one obvious one), but culturally the role of men being a stay-at-home Dad is becoming more prevalent, as well.
Most of the academic studies explain the grand bulk of the differences in average pay through those factors. Without evidence of discrimination, there are other legally-acceptable reasons for the disparity. People who actually study the facts of the gender wage gap do agree on them. If a person gives a debate or speech or writes an essay that doesn’t include those factors, then you’re probably hearing more of an emotional or political argument. Those women are conditioned to not negotiate "hard enough”. There may be some studies that would support that but there are also other tactics and traits that people can use to increase their wages. Negotiation is most helpful in initial hiring salaries, but its effectiveness drops off precipitously after actually seeing the person’s work ethic and work output. Further, conditioning as a psychological function can be undone, and it’s not entirely difficult to do.
Conclusion
Hence, it can be concluded that gender issues are a very common sight not only in Canadian society but all over the world. Female being targeted and subjected to various mistreatments in the society all over the world and the big authorities are mute over this, No one takes a stand and speaks against the cruelty and oppression. The sad part is this tradition is even carried on in developed and comparatively educated countries like the United States of America and Canada. There are a number of issues that are being faced by women living in Canada currently. Some of these are very specific in nature like religious restrictions (banning the hijab and niqab), while other are general and apply to all the females of the society, irrespective of their age, race, religion, nationality, economic status and even marital status. These issues may be faced by a student or a working woman, a housewife or a woman running a business. Certain measures should be taken in order to curb and control these issues so that females can live and work with complete peace of mind. By taking these measures, females will feel more values and secure and contribute in a much better and productive way in the progress and prosperity of the country.
References
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Best, J., & Best, J. (2013). Social problems. WW Norton & Company New York.
Cool, J. (2010). Wage gap between women and men. Library of Parliament Ottawa, Canada.
Hegewisch, A. (2018). The gender wage gap: 2017.
Latif, E. (2015). The relationship between immigration and unemployment: Panel data evidence from Canada. Economic Modelling, 50, 162–167.
Nadeau, S., & Seckin, A. (2010). The immigrant wage gap in Canada: Quebec and the rest of Canada. Canadian Public Policy, 36(3), 265–285.
Stephens, T., & Joubert, N. (2001). The economic burden of mental health problems in Canada. Chronic Dis Can, 22(1), 18–23.
