More and more Canadian women are the breadwinners in their families — but there’s a catch.
Women’s contributions to family income have increased over the last 30 years, coinciding with their growth in the labour market, notes a recent report from the Vanier Institute of the Family.
And Statistics Canada data analyzed by the independent national think-tank shows that women provide more than 50 per cent of total family income in a growing share of husband-wife families, compared to one-third in 2022, and one-quarter in 2000. However, that’s less likely to be true if those women have children. And even worse if they have more than one, with that proportion dropping by three to four percentage points per additional child.
Seeing the numbers in black and white starkly demonstrates what’s called the “motherhood penalty,” said Allison Venditti, a human resources expert in Toronto and founder of Moms at Work, Canada’s largest advocacy group for working mothers.
“It’s so deep and engrained, this belief that mothers belong in the home and should be caring for their children, and that’s really reflected in how they’re compensated at work,” Venditti told CBC News.
“You’re being penalized over and over and over again, every time you have another child, and at the same time, society is screaming, ‘I wonder why women aren’t having more children?'”
Sonja Baikogli and Jen Murtagh, founders of Maturn, which supports mothers with their transition into motherhood, are putting the spotlight on the motherhood penalty — a significant hurdle faced by working mothers, hindering their path to achieving gender equality.
Moms in the workforce, and the motherhood penalty
The Vanier Institute’s “Family Work” report highlighted that women earned the majority of their family’s income in 32.8 per cent of gender-different couple families in 2022, up from 25.9 per cent in 2000. (Statistics Canada refers to these as husband-wife families.)
But having children under age 18 changes the numbers.
Women earned the majority of the couple’s employment income in 36.8 per cent of couples without children under age 18, compared with 29.5 per cent of those with children.
Broken down further by the number of children, in 2022, the woman earned the majority of a couple’s employment income in 32.1 per cent of couples with one child, 29.3 per cent of those with two children, and in 25 per cent with three or more children.
And despite the overall trend of women’s contributions to family income increasing, the institute said, “women continue to earn less than men on average, and are more likely to live with a lower income.”
This is evident in a 2024 report by TD Economics that showed the average family income was nine per cent lower in families where women were the breadwinners, and that those families had fewer financial assets — about $30,000 less than families with male breadwinners, on average.
“Men are able to step forward because women step backward…. They are boosting their ability to do work,” Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, told USA Today in October 2023.
Last year, Goldin was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for advancing the understanding of the gender gap in the labour market. Among her many contributions from studying 200 years of labour market data, Goldin found that the “motherhood penalty” was one of the reasons women earn less than men, and particularly, why mothers earn less than fathers.
In contrast, she’s pointed out that men enjoy a “fatherhood premium,” where fathers make more than men who aren’t parents over the course of their careers.
‘A lot to ask of any woman’
Women are still the ones making more financial sacrifices to have children, said Marina Adshade, an assistant professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia who specializes in economics and gender.
And this doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that women are earning more than their partners in about a third of husband-wife families, added Adshade.
“What happens in that relationship when they have children? Does the total household income go down because a woman starts losing out on her income?” she said. “That’s a big hit for the family as a whole.”
It’s something we don’t talk about enough when we ask why people aren’t having more children, Adshade said. Canada recorded its lowest-ever fertility rate for the second year in a row in 2023, according to Statistics Canada, at 1.26 children born per woman.
For the second year in a row, Statistics Canada says the country recorded its lowest-ever fertility rate. We break down the stats, including which province is the lowest.
When you consider the financial impact, plus the fact that women still do the “lion’s share” of household labour and child care, it’s little wonder, she said.
“Now she’s a breadwinner, and she’s the principal caregiver for the family. That is a lot to ask of any woman.”
Shifting the dynamic
It’s hard not to look at reports that highlight this disparity and feel like it’s all really bleak given how hard women have fought, said Venditti of Moms at Work.
Society’s ideal worker is still a man providing for his family, she said, and that stereotype and bias still persist when you look at company hiring and firing decisions.
But Venditti also sees reasons for optimism. More fathers are taking parental leave, for instance. And while it’s too early to see the true economic impacts of $10-a-day child care — introduced by the federal government in the 2021 budget with the goal of bringing down fees countrywide by 2026 — that initiative will “no doubt” help boost women’s economic participation in the workforce, she said.
“Those two pieces are going to shift this dynamic fundamentally.”
But the other piece that still needs to change? We focus too much on saying women with children need workplace flexibility, Adshade said.
This mindset contributes to the wage gap because it anticipates that it’s women who will work fewer hours, she said.
“Everyone with children needs flexibility. We need to give men more flexibility to leave work when their kid has a doctor’s appointment or has a sporting event.
“And we need to normalize that so that when employers are hiring and they see a man and a woman, they don’t see two different people in terms of the amount of productivity or hours that they’re going to work.”