Preamble to the Series

This series of summaries, in honour of National Truth and Reconciliation Week, reviews the progress of reconciliation from the very limited perspective of work-related concerns: employment, income, and education (click here to see #1 in the series for more explanation). 

Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Women’s Full-Time Employment  

This summary highlights selected information about the current state of affairs regarding women’s employment and income among Indigenous peoples in Canada and how the distributions have changed in the past few years. The calls to action were published in 2015; have they had an impact?  

Unlike previous summaries in this series, which calculated changes in Indigenous work-related conditions using Statistics Canada data, this summary is based on an “Insights on Canadian Society” report written by Statistics Canada’s Marie Drolet. Drolet’s report analyzes changes in women’s full-time employment from 2007 to 2020 in three main populations: Indigenous women¹, Canadian born non-Indigenous women, and immigrant women. The focus of this summary is comparing change in the first two populations: Indigenous and non-Indigenous (Canadian born) women. Unless otherwise noted, “non-Indigenous” will refer to non-Indigenous people born in Canada.   

Full-time employment. In 2007, 65% of women aged 20 to 54 were employed full time and by 2021, 68% were. In 2021, 70% of non-Indigenous women were employed full time compared to 59% of Indigenous women. The gap in rates of full-time employment between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women did not change between 2007 and 2021; it remained at about 12 percentage points². 

Education. In 2021, Indigenous women with a university degree had the same likelihood of employment as non-Indigenous women. This is noteworthy: There are very few areas related to employment, income, or education in which an Indigenous population’s rates match the non-Indigenous population.  

Gender gap. Employment rates for non-Indigenous women have been rising since 2007 (4 points) as men’s have been declining (-2 % points): i.e., the gender gap has narrowed by 6 percentage points.  

Roughly the same changes have occurred in the Indigenous population, but for different reasons. The increase in non-Indigenous women’s full time employment rate was half due to rising participation rates (i.e., more women seeking work) and less availability of part-time work. For Indigenous women, however, the rising rate in full time employment was almost entirely due to greater participation rates, particularly in those in the 50-54-year-old range.  

Drolet’s analysis explores the age differences in more detail; here, suffice it to say that differences in family structure, such as Indigenous women having children earlier than non-Indigenous women, may explain most of the differences. 

Education. Women in Canada have become more educated since 2007. Indigenous women’s rate of completing a bachelor’s degree or higher went from 10% in 2017 to 18% (almost double) in 2021. For non-Indigenous women, the shift was from 23% to 36%. As mentioned above, holding a bachelor’s degree or higher results in roughly the same employment rate for Indigenous women as non-Indigenous. 

The key takeaway for this summary and the others in this series is that very little has changed vis-à-vis work-related concerns between Indigenous people compared to non-Indigenous people. Indigenous women’s gains in education are one of the few instances in which change is positive, significant, and, hopefully, durable. These gains in education began long before the TRC’s calls to action were released, however. It is very clear that there is no evidence to suggest that CDPs or any others in Canada can relax in the pursuit of reconciliation.