In 2022, almost one-quarter of women provided unpaid care to adults with long-term conditions or disabilities.Rudzhan Nagiev/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
It won’t surprise anyone that women in Canada are more likely than men to provide unpaid care. In 2022, about one-third of women (32 per cent) looked after children, and almost one-quarter (23 per cent) provided unpaid care to adults with long-term conditions or disabilities, according to Statistics Canada. (That compares to 26 per cent and 19 per cent of men, respectively.)
With regard to child care, this has created the “motherhood penalty,” the term used to describe the drop in earnings women experience during maternity leave that still exists a decade after the birth of their first child. The “penalty” is the difference in earnings between mothers and women without children in similar roles.
According to a report this week from CIBC Capital Markets, the average motherhood penalty is 9 per cent for women with children 17 and under. That figure rises to 18 per cent for women with children under 6.
The report also notes that women’s earnings before they have children are generally in line with men’s, but most men’s earnings aren’t affected after having children. (In fact, they may increase “due to a propensity to work more hours after having children,” the report says.)
A separate report this week from online will provider Willful shows parenthood is far from the only unpaid family role women are drawn into disproportionately.
Willful examined 85,587 wills and 121,598 internal incapacity planning documents. It found women are more often chosen as executors (53 per cent of the time) and as the power of attorney for personal care (55 per cent).
Erin Bury, Willful’s co-founder and chief executive, noted the “invisible work” that often falls to women in emergencies and after a death.
“That responsibility can be time-consuming, difficult to navigate and fraught with emotion, and it doesn’t always come with compensation, even when it demands countless hours of our time,” she said in a release.
If there’s a bright side, it’s that the attributes that make women more desirable for those unpaid roles may also make them more appealing as financial advisors.
Rita Silvan reported this week about research that indicates women tend to rate higher than men on emotional intelligence. And while gender stereotypes about risk tolerance should generally be abandoned, there’s some evidence that women who work with a female financial advisor are more likely to invest in risk assets than when they work with a male advisor, and also report higher levels of financial literacy and confidence.
Of course, trusting and empowering relationships are possible with any advisor, regardless of gender. But emotional intelligence is becoming an indispensable skill for advisors, and communicating in a way that caters to a client’s unique needs is more important than ever.
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