by Donna Lypchuk

The secretary who is still expected to fetch coffee for her male boss... the nurse whose crucial questions are ignored by the male doctor... the waitress who is groped by a customer... the corporate executive who is subjected to humiliating sexual innuendoes. These are just a few examples of what experts now politely refer to as "gender diversity issues" and what is better known to us as sexism in the workplace.
However, sexism in the workplace is not just about sexual harassment. It is also defined by wage inequity and poor working conditions. Sexism also rears its ugly head to eat women alive financially. According to thousands of studies published around the world (mostly from Scandinavian countries and the United States), women are still being passed over for promotions, hitting glass ceilings, being punished for "getting pregnant," fired for no reason at 40 and doing twice as much work as men for the same amount of money.
A global report supplied at the March 2001 Labour Conference in Beijing that looked at the status of working women world-wide summed up the problem by stating, in a nutshell, that this is because men still run the world: "Women only make up a small proportion of employers as the lack of education, training and access to credit have limited them severely in this regard. These obstacles exist and operate within a cultural, social and economic context where gender-based discrimination is the main feature."
However, the Canadian government and even Canadian universities have been slow in releasing reports about gender diversity issues in the workplace. According to Carol Anne Sceviour, an expert on womans rights at The Ontario Federation of Labour, there is a good reason for this. "Canada has legislation, not statistics," she says.
For instance, a favourite topic on the Internet that is debated constantly on about.com is something called "the wage gap myth." Does a woman living in Ontario really make 70 cents for every dollar made by a man here in Ontario just like in the United States? Nobody really knows.
Canadian women could be even worse off than our sisters in the States. According to Sceviour, there will never actually be any statistically credible studies done in this area in the near future, as the Harris government has legislated these studies as "unconstitutional" an infringement on the rights of the male gender.
This is because in order for a study to be done correctly, there must be what is called a "male comparator" a male working in a similar job. There are very few males working in child-care, for instance, so no comparator exists. Therefore, day-care workers will always be very low paid.
The fact that any studies done in this area are usually conducted by partisan groups, and not, for instance, by an organization such as Statistics Canada make it very difficult for sexism in the workplace to be even named as a problem in this country.
However, if you live in Ontario and Quebec and work in the public sector you might be counted amongst one of the more equal female citizens in Canada when it comes to the issue of pay equity equal pay for equal work.
In April 2001, the Harris government passed a bill that okayed pay equity for its own employees. Unfortunately, this law doesnt apply to females working in any other sector of society, whether it be for a factory, a restaurant or a multi-national corporation. In the meantime, six unions, part of the Federation of Labours Equal Pay Coalition, have filed for equal pay legislation for their members on April 17th of this year.
Despite the lack of statistics, however, there is evidence of one study, put out by the Conference Board of Canada. The author, Barb Orser, is a staff member at the Centre for Excellence for Womens Advancement a division of the CBOC. The study titled Sexual Harassment is Still a Management Issue, was part of a "toolkit" put together for employers and suggested that "sexual harassment of female workers is still fairly commonplace in the working world." This data for this study included blue-collar workers as well as over 400 female executives in several organizations.
The small number of women interviewed for this study define its scope as narrow, but it does allow a snapshot of what is going on in Canada. The report states that 27 percent of female employees in senior executive positions claim to have experienced career-related sexism. About 48 percent of women working in non-senior, blue-collar positions (thats almost half!) claimed that they commonly faced sexual harassment The sexist treatment ranged from "flirtation" from male co-workers, to crude comments, to jokes and innuendoes to outright sexual coercion.
This report, says Orser, "demonstrates a statistical correlation between poor general working conditions and sexual harassment in the workplace." Matt Rae, co-ordinator of The Womens Issues Network at Western University, agrees with Orser, stating: "The workplace is still a male-dominated environment... there is a misconception that equality between the sexes has been reached while sexism persists in the workplace."
When asked what the main concerns of the Ontario Federation of Labour were in this area, Carol Anne Sceviour immediately identified "violence in the workplace" as being a huge concern. "Violence in the workplace falls into two streams," she explains. "First of all we are concerned about the front-line workers people who deal directly with the public such as receptionists, nurses and clerks." Apparently these women, by virtue of their position, often "take the fall" for decisions made by male-dominated structures. Men make the decisions. Women take the brunt of abuse from the public.
Sceviour used the example of a receptionist who works in a hospital: "Because of cut-backs, such a person is subjected to a lot of abuse, not only from the patients and family members, who are frustrated by the lack of services, but from their superiors who dont understand how much stress they are under and why they are burn out. This seriously affects the womans health and self-esteem."
Another huge concern is "domestic violence in the workplace." "Very few companies or organizations, government-based and non, have policies in place that prevent a woman from being stalked and harassed by an ex-husband, ex-lover or obsessed fellow employee," says Sceviour. A woman who is suffering from domestic abuse at home, for instance, is often also abused at work by her employers, just for taking time off to deal with the situation.
"Women are expected to be the peace-makers, suffer in silence and take the blame," says Sceviour.
So it seems that sexism in the workplace is not just limited to abuse or disrespect from employers. What alarms Sceviour is that women are getting it from all sides the employers, the public, clients and at home while in the workplace.
However, the most common problem, as Monica Lewinksy, Anita Hill and even the not-so-famous girl next door will tell you, is sexual harassment. According to the American Psychological Association, the worlds largest scientific and professional psychological organization, Sexual Harassment can be defined as the following: unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favours, the rejection or acceptance of the above as the basis for decisions affecting employment, creating a hostile, or offensive work environment, insulting remarks, offensive graffiti, obscene jokes or humour about sex, insistent requests for dinner drinks or dates, persistent letters, phone calls, offensive visual displays (such as pornography) as well as the threat of termination if sexual attentions are withheld.
If it is really true that nearly half of Canadian women working in blue-collar sectors and a third of them working in senior executive positions, (as described in Orsers study) are being subjected to the above treatment, then women living in Canada have a real problem. The American Psychological Association, which calls itself "psychologys voice in harassment law" lists an entire page of negative psychological, physical and career-related effects on women from this type of sexism guilt, self-blame, isolation, depression, embarrassment, headaches, ulcers, weight gain, insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, absenteeism, loss of job or promotion and undesired change in career path, to name just a few.
Sadly, things havent changed much since the visionary socialist John Stuart Mill first published his book The Subjection of Women in 1859. In this book Mill explained why the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the sexes is wrong, and is one of the chief hindrances to human improvement. Over a century later, humans have still not achieved the kind of equality as was defined by Mills "that one sex admits no power or privilege over the other, nor a disability on the other."
Until that magical day, when that is achieved, Canadian women unfortunately seem doomed to survive in the scenario that George Orwell described in Animal Farm where "Some pigs are more equal than others&"