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Research shows women freelancers in Canada earn less than their male counterparts, even though they set their own rates.
According to a recent study conducted by international payments provider Remitly, Canadian women make 16.2 per cent less than men as independent contractors, earning an average of $47.78 per hour compared with an average of $57 among male peers. By comparison, the gender wage gap among all workers in Canada is about 12 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.
Within the 54 nations included in Remitly’s global study, Canada’s 16.2 per cent wage gap ranked 36th lowest, sandwiched between the United States at 16.9 per cent and the United Kingdom at 15.4 per cent. Topping the list was Thailand with a 51.7-per-cent discrepancy in earnings between men and women freelancers, followed by Hungary at 45 per cent and Bangladesh at 42 per cent.
On the other end of the spectrum, Croatia had virtually no gender wage gap among freelancers, while those in South Africa and Vietnam saw a roughly 4-per-cent difference in earnings. The global average is 19 per cent.
While the data doesn’t provide a definitive reason why the pay gap persists among those setting their own rates, freelancers are likely pricing themselves based on prior employment experience, resulting in discrepancies in earning expectations.
“Freelancers may be carrying over salary expectations from when they were employed,” says Ankur Tiwari, the Seattle-based vice-president and general manager of Remitly Business.
Canada’s largest freelance gender wage gap, according to the study, was among regulatory compliance professionals, with a nearly 57-per-cent pay difference.
“The gap is biggest in the highest-paid, most technical freelance roles, like the AI engineers, the data engineers, the compliance professionals,” Mr. Tiwari says.
The discrepancy between industries may explain the discrepancy between countries, he adds, because economies with a higher concentration of technical roles – which the study suggests often see the widest gap in earnings – tend to rank higher on the list.
“These are the jobs Canada is betting its economic future on – and we don’t know the cause of it – but from our data we just know that technical roles are seeing the largest gap,” Mr. Tiwari says.
Other research shows that the gender wage gap among freelancers persists even when controlled for factors such as experience, client reviews and the types of services provided.
According to a recent global study conducted by workforce intelligence company Revelio Labs, women list the same services as men on freelance marketplace Upwork for about 21 per cent less.
“This is completely based on people deciding what they want to [charge], so if there is an opportunity to escape this discrimination in pay, that would have been the place for it,” says Loujaina Abdelwahed, head of economic research at Revelio Labs.
“If I were to guess why women charge less, I would go to that societal reason; women know that their work is valued less and they internalize it,” she says.
The Revelio study shows that Canadian men and women are almost equally as likely to earn a perfect five out of five rating from clients, yet male freelancers charge nearly 19 per cent more for the same services.
And while both men and women increase their fees as they complete more projects on the platform, men charge a higher premium for their experience. As a result, the gap between equally skilled freelancers of different genders tends to widen as their portfolios grow.
The study doesn’t include what freelancers on Upwork actually earn, Ms. Abdelwahed notes, just what they charge. In other words, she says it’s possible that women are charging less per hour but working more hours. The study also found that the freelance platform skews female globally – with about 63 per cent of accounts held by women – but is near parity in Canada.
Both Ms. Abdelwahed and Mr. Tiwari hope that shining a light on earnings empowers freelancers of all genders to charge what they’re worth.
“It really helps to just look at the market first and see what other people charge,” Ms. Abdelwahed says.
“Use our data as a benchmark,” adds Mr. Tiwari. “I would also suggest finding a community of freelancers so you can talk to each other about rates, because this is mostly an information gap problem.”