Pay equity has been on the political agenda of the women's movement in Canada for at least twenty-five years. In that time, political action by women and the labour movement has culminated in pay equity laws in six of ten Canadian provinces. Despite this, a gender-wage gap continues to exist. Why hasn't pay equity law resulted in better pay for women? Why  does the gender-wage gap continue to exist? Is pay equity law an effective tool for eliminating workplace practices that contribute to gender-wage inequality?
Cashing In On Pay Equity? explores these questions through an in-depth study of pay equity implementation in Ontario's supermarket chains during the 1990s, a period of workforce reorganization for the retail food sector. Despite union representation and pay equity legislation that had the potential to deliver gender-wage fairness, gender-wage inequities remained following the pay equity exercise. Intense industry competition, economic restructuring and business unionism worked to prevent a more favourable pay equity outcome.
Nonetheless, Cashing In On Pay Equity? argues that pay equity legislation has the flexibility to win economic justice for women.

Jan Kainer is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Labour Studies Program, Division of Social Science at York University. Her research, writing and public presentations focus on how the gendered division of labour in the Canadian economy, pay equity and labour relations affect women workers.

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