Highlights from the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity’s
Gender-Based Analysis of Women’s Leadership in New Brunswick’s Community Sector
The Community Sector and Gender
In New Brunswick, as throughout the rest of Canada, the community sector (a.k.a. non-profit sector, volunteer sector, third sector, etc.) largely performs ‘caring work,‘ the type of work that women have traditionally provided society with for little compensation or recognition. This caring work continues to primarily be performed for women, as the community sector’s work and volunteer force is mostly comprised of women (80% of the sector’s full time employees and 86% of its part time employees in the province are women, according to 2007 figures). This is what is called aninstitutional division of labour.
Compensation in the Community Sector
Provincial and national reports indicate that the community sector and its labour force are absorbing increasing workloads as government downloads many of its responsibilities.This increasing workloadhas notbeen accompanied by increases in funding. Provincial reports suggest that our province’s community sector workforce is inadequately compensated; this claim is supported by a number of executive-level managers in New Brunswick community organizations who were interviewed by the Coalition. Many interviewees stated that the sector is predominantly staffed by women because men will not work for thelow pay it provides.
Women’s Leadership in the Community Sector
Even with its female-dominated labour force, the community sector does not guarantee proportional representation for women at the leadership level. Women are proportionally underrepresented in paid and volunteer leadership positions (senior management, executive directorship, board presidency etc.) and overrepresented in support-staff and administrative positions. Leadership positions in the sector are disproportionately occupied by men (disproprotionate given the smaller percentage of the sector that men account for). This trend is particularly evident in larger organizations with higher budgets. Figures from 2010 indicate that even when women do ascend to the executive leadership level, a pay gap persists between them and their male peers, with men earning 42% more.
Valuing the Community Sector and Its Labour Force
It is not difficult to link the inequitable working conditions in the community sector (ie. Increasing workloads without increasing funding, resulting in inadequate compensation for employees) to the type of labour the sector provides and the gender-makeup of its workforce.
Discussion of the community sector and inequitable conditions should not, however, be limited to a focus on institutional divisions of labour and financial resources. Discussion must also interrogate the ways in which the community sector reproduces gender-based devaluation within its own ranks, examining specifically the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions and the pay gaps between female and male executives.