It was a commercial you’ll never see again, though it was quite popular when it appeared in the late 1960s. It began with an Edwardian woman hiding in a gazebo while smoking a cigarette, then after being discovered by her husband is chased back to the house. There are some other vignettes between, including that of the suffragettes, before it ends with a mod girl coolly lighting up and enjoying. The catch phrase was, “You’ve come a long way baby.”
Of course, this is a battle we’d have been better off not winning, but that message underlined the reality that women had come a long way. One of the big differences was a farewell to the June Cleaver era, with birth control and free thinking. More and more females were seeking higher education in the hopes of earning their own income. Unfortunately, it seems there is now an addendum that should be added to the statement — “Just not as far as you should have.”
Today is Equal Pay Day in Canada and the United States, established to bring awareness to the gender pay gap that still exists today. According to thestar.com, the average Canadian woman would need to work an extra three months to equal the average man’s yearly pay. Thus her 2012 workload roughly ended April 9. Today.
Mary Cornish, a Toronto human rights lawyer and coalition chair, who led that coalition to get the 1987 Pay Equity Act in Ontario, said that while things have improved there’s still much to be done. “At this rate, women still have to work an additional 13 years to earn the same pay as men earn by 65.”
There is also economics to consider as the pay gap is a leading cause of women’s poverty and also, according to a 2005 Royal Bank report, results in the potential of annual lost income.
Women in the workplace are as important as their male counterparts. Whether they willingly strode there or were driven to it by necessity, they deserve to be fairly compensated. On the plus side, we’ve all heard about girl power, so I have little doubt it will happen.
Here’s a selection of photos to salute these women in the workplace.
iCLIPART.com Photos of Women at Work
