This is the Power Gap: Explore the investigative series and data

A two-and-a-half year investigation by The Globe and Mail into the wage gap has revealed a bigger problem: The Power Gap between men and women at Canada’s public institutions. Investigative

reporter Robyn Doolittle runs through some of the key takeaways of how and where men outnumber, outrank and out-earn women in Canada.

The Globe collected salary records from 244 entities in four key pillars that shape Canadians’ lives – 82 universities, 25 cities, seven provincial governments and 130 public corporations –

and then married this information with gender-probability statistics (about 90 per cent of first names in Canada are associated with a particular gender at least 95 per cent of the time).

The Globe’s analysis is the first of its kind and the most detailed picture available of where women stand in the Canadian workplace. (We targeted the public sector because this is the only

workplace salary data available to scrutinize.)

Only high-earning public employees in provinces with legislation are subject to disclosure. Usually, the threshold is $100,000. In jurisdictions with a lower bar, The Globe only captured

employees who earned six-figures. The federal government, the territories, and the provinces of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have no sunshine laws. In Quebec, organizations are

only required to release data for their most senior employees. The Globe’s dataset is connected to the 2017 and 2017/2018 fiscal years, depending on the respective entity’s disclosure

practices. (Read more about our methodology.)

To capture a full picture of what’s happening in each workplace, The Globe assessed the data through multiple lenses: the overall number of men and women among six-figure earners; the gender

divide at different salary bands; the number of women working in executive decision-making roles (the “power positions”); the gender divide at the very top; the divide between white women

and women of colour; and the wage gap at each level. This framework was used to evaluate each individual entity, as well as each of the four pillars. Because Quebec – with the exception of

the City of Montreal – only releases data for the most senior earners, these organizations could not be used in calculations that required the full work force. Quebec entities are included

in “power position” and “top leader” findings. (Montreal agreed to release the first — but not last — names of its employees so we could complete the gender analysis.)

Although the results varied by entity, there was a clear big-picture trend. Men are still making more money than women, although the difference is typically small (low single digits).

However there are dramatically more men in high-paying jobs. Of the 171 organizations that disclosed full workplace data, men outnumbered women at 84 per cent of them and out-earned women on

average 68 per cent of the time. Among the power positions at those entities – the executive leadership team and president – men outnumbered women at 71 per cent of the entities. (And in 10

per cent of cases, the representation was equal.)

Click or tap on the pillar icons below to search your city, university or other public entity. Individual entity data is included on each of these pages.