Emily Vandermeer got her first job when she was 11, as a babysitter at a community hall in her Edmonton neighbourhood. Health-conscious parents arriving to Zumba class with their offspring in tow paid her $10 to watch their kids for the hour. Vandermeer would play games with them in the room next door or walk them over to a nearby park. To her, babysitting?or simply caring for youngsters like her little brother?always felt like more of an expectation set by the rest of the world than a chosen duty.
Over the next couple of years, Vandermeer worked plenty of babysitting jobs thinking little about the gender pay gap between herself and boys her age, or the value placed on jobs she did compared to those done by her male friends. But when she was 14, she managed to negotiate a $1 increase to her babysitting rate?from $6 an hour to $7. The work had been exhausting, so she put her foot down. ?I felt really embarrassed and I don?t know why I should have been,? she says. From then on, she got paid anwhere from $10 to $15 an hour, Alberta?s current minimum wage (the province is partially cutting it back to $13 for teens under 18 in June). Now 17, Vandermeer is keenly aware of the pay disparity that exists among young boys and girls going into the heat of summer?a time when seasonal employment offers the country?s young people their first chances to be paid for their labour.
Canadians are constantly, and rightly, reminded of the gender wage gap that exists in Canada (and men paid fo...