Alberta leads Canada in gender pay gap

A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows women in Alberta make 64 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Women in Alberta earn 64 cents for every dollar men make annually, according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

The national average is 72 cents.

The report also examined weekly earnings, finding women in Alberta make 71 cents for every dollar earned by men, compared with 80 cents nationally.

“On both those measures, Alberta has been at the bottom of the league table for many years,” said Katherine Scott, a senior researcher with the CCPA.

“Government has frozen the minimum wage for a long time in Alberta. That tends to impact low-wage workers, the most disproportionately female.”

The report based those findings off 2024 (annually) and 2025 (hourly) information from Statistics Canada. Scott also pointed to provincial cutbacks in sectors where women tend to work more often than men, such as education and health care.

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Marsi Sund, a biological science student at the University of Calgary, called the gap disheartening.

“It is because, as a woman personally, I’m working just as hard as men,” Sund said.

It’s a sentiment shared by other women on campus, including petroleum engineering student Alexandria Hunt.

“I feel that with that statistic, my chances of success are lower,” Hunt said.

Hunt’s eventual salary may be more competitive. The wage gap in Alberta is partly driven by its economic ties to the male-dominated oil and gas sector.

“Many men are in those positions, and so many of those positions are high-paying. It really does skew the averages quite a bit,” said Mount Royal University Professor Christian Cook.

“The difference in pay is actually significant.”

Cook said the province needs a more thorough system to address pay inequities.

“Alberta has what is called a complaint-driven system,” Cook said. “In Ontario, there is a pay equity commission. That is a proactive system that audits organizations and works with them to remedy things like pay inequities.”

In a statement, a press secretary for Alberta’s jobs, economy, trade and immigration minister said employment standards laws set out the rights and obligations of employers and employees.

“These rules apply equally to all employees, regardless of gender. Alberta’s government continues to review evidence, monitor developments in other jurisdictions and hear from stakeholder groups to guide our approach,” the statement said.

Tom Buchanan, a sociology professor at Mount Royal University, said there needs to be more transparency when it comes to wages.

“There need to be processes in place by which people can analyze wage differences more closely,” Buchanan said.