Thus far we have discussed how as humans we become grouped by gender, sex, sexuality, race and ethnicity. However, we have broadly hinted that such groups are not only markers of difference but of inequality. In the following we examine forms of gender and racial inequity and the ways such inequality is maintained and challenged.

Gender Inequality and Socialization

Previously we learned that sociologists root gender differences in socialization and the active ‘doing’ of gender in which we are rewarded and sanctioned for appropriate or inappropriate ‘performances’ of gender roles. Over time we develop gendered ‘deep identities’ that come to feel normal/natural. However, as there is considerable variation in the performance of gender roles within and across cultures, we know such roles have a social explanation. See Chapter 5. Socialization for further elaboration on the socialization of gender roles. When trying to understand the source and consequence of gender inequality, it is critical to recognize that such gender socialization and role taking develops our talents, our inclinations and the attitudes we hold about each other. We become more adept at, and comfortable with certain social roles and we expect the same of others (gender stereotypes). In a socially stratified society where some roles and social positions are more highly rewarded than others, gender becomes consequential for the place within structures of inequality we find ourselves in.

Gender stereotypes form the basis of sexism. Sexism refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another. Sexism varies in its level of severity. In parts of the world where women are strongly undervalued, young girls may not be given the same access to nutrition, health care, and education as boys. Furt–her, they will grow up believing they deserve to be treated differently from boys (Thorne, 1993; UNICEF, 2007). While illegal in Canada when practiced as discrimination, unequal treatment of women continues to pervade social life. It should be noted that discrimination based on sex occurs at both the micro- and macro-levels. Many sociologists focus on discrimination that is built into the social structure; this type of discrimination is known as institutional discrimination (Pincus, 2008).

Gendered Inequality: The world of work

How do the distinctions between male and female, and the social attribution of different qualities to each, serve to organize our institutions (the family, occupational structure, and the public/private divide, etc.)? How do these distinctions organize differential access to rewards, privileges, and power? In society, how and why are women not treated as the equals of men? The study of wage inequality offers some answers to these questions.

According to George Murdock’s classic work, Outline of World Cultures (1954), all societies classify work by gender though which task is assigned to which gender, and importantly how such tasks are valued and rewarded differs greatly across societies. In Murdock’s examination of the division of labour among 324 societies around the world, he found that in nearly all cases the jobs assigned to men were given greater prestige (Murdock and White, 1969). Even if the job types were very similar and the differences slight, men’s work was still considered more vital.

Canadian society is also characterized by gender stratification in the world of work and economy. In Canada, women’s experience with wage labour includes unequal treatment in comparison to men in many respects:

• Women continue to do more of the unpaid labour in the household — meal preparation and cleanup, childcare, elderly care, household management, and shopping — even if they have a job outside the home. In 2010, women spent an average 50 hours a week looking after children compared to 24.4 hours a week for men, 13.8 hours a week doing household work compared to 8.3 hours for men, and, of those caring for elderly family members, 49% of women spent more than 10 hours a week caring for a senior compared to 25% for men (Statistics Canada, 2011. This double duty keeps working women in a subordinate role in the family structure and prevents them from achieving the salaries of men in the paid workforce (Hochschild and Machung, 1989).
• Women’s participation in the labour force — On an annual basis, the labour force participation rate for women aged 15 years and older grew from 58.5% in 1990 (the beginning of the current data series) to 61.5% in 2022. The rate for men declined from 76.1% to 69.5% over the same period. . They continue to dominate in “pink collar” occupations and part-time work, which are low paying, low status, often unskilled jobs that offer little possibility for advancement. In 2009, 67% of women still worked in traditionally “feminine” occupations like teaching, nursing, clerical, administrative or sales, and service jobs. 70% of part-time workers and 60% of minimum wage workers were women (Ferrao, 2010).
• Despite women making up nearly half (48%) of payroll employment, men vastly outnumber them in authoritative, powerful, and, therefore, high-earning jobs (Statistics Canada, 2011). Women’s income for full-year, full-time workers has remained at 72% of the income of men since 1992. This in part reflects the fact that women are more likely than men to work in part-time or temporary employment. The comparison of average hourly wage is better: Women earned 83% of men’s average hourly wage in 2008, up from 76% in 1988 (Statistics Canada, 2011; see Statistics Canada, 2018, for a more updated report). However, as one report noted, if the gender gap in wages continues to close at the same glacial rate, women will not earn the same as men until the year 2240 (McInturff, 2013).

The reason for the gender gap in wages is fourfold. Firstly, there is gender discrimination in hiring and salary. Women and men are often not rewarded equally for the same work despite the fact discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional in Canada. Secondly, as noted above, men and women tend to be concentrated in different types of work which are not equally paid. Often because of unequal gender socialization and subsequent ‘choices’ made in high school and postsecondary education, women are limited to lower paying pink collar types of occupation. Thirdly, and closely entwined with gender segreation of work, the work typically done by women is arbitrarily undervalued with respect to the work typically performed by men. It is certainly questionable that early childhood education occupations dominated by women involve less skill, less training, or less significance to society than many occupations dominated by men like tech support or construction, but there is a clear disparity in wages between these typically gender segregated types of occupation. Finally, the unequal distribution of domestic duties, especially child and elder care, women are unable to work the same number of hours or type of work schedules as men and experience disruptions in their career path. Paid work in our society has been constructed around the idea of rewarding long, uninterupted hours of work which conflicts with the social demands placed on women to be caregivers.

One way in which gender roles affect women’s access to higher paying jobs and leadership positions is the glass ceiling phenomenon. Whereas most of the explicit barriers to women’s achievement have been removed through legislative action, norms of gender equality, and affirmative action policies, women often get stuck at the level of middle management. There is a glass ceiling or invisible barrier that prevents them from achieving positions of leadership (Tannen, 1994). This is also reflected in gender inequality in income over time.
Early in their careers men’s and women’s incomes are more or less equal but at mid-career, the gap increases significantly (McInturff, 2013).

Tannen (1994) argues that this barrier exists in part because of the different work styles of men and women, in particular conversational-style differences. Whereas men are very aggressive in their conversational style and their self-promotion, women are typically consensus builders who seek to avoid appearing bossy and arrogant. As a communicative strategy of office politics, it is common for men to say “I” and claim personal credit in situations where women would be more likely to use “we” and emphasize teamwork. As it is men who are often in the positions to make promotion decisions, they interpret women’s style of communication “as showing indecisiveness, inability to assume authority, and even incompetence”
(Tannen, 1994).

Of course in capitalist societies, economic inequality has enormous consequences for our lives, and women are more likely to live in low-income and overwork in combining paid and unpaid work has been linked to por health outcomes. However, this is only one example of the structral inequalities women face in Canada and across the world. Sociologists have long been interested in the problem of violence against women and the control of women’s sexuality.

Gendered Inequality: The Control of Women’s Sexuality and Gender Based Violence

Patriarchal societies are particularly restrictive in their attitudes about sex when it comes to women and sexuality. In traditional patriarchal societies, private property is inherited through the male lineage father to son, so it is not just a matter of pride, but of power, wealth and status to establish biological paternity. As biological paternity is difficult to determine with certainty without modern genetic testing, control of women’s sexuality is central to this system. Moreover, because women marry into the husband’s family, women themselves become property and items of exchange. This leads to the establishment of patriarchal norms, customs and practices based on the control of women’s sexuality, often legitimated and grounded in religious belief. As Christ (2016) summarizes:

The customs that surround patriarchal marriage have the intention of making certain that a man’s children are his biologically. These customs include: the requirement that brides be untouched sexually or ‘virgin’; the ‘protection’ of a girl’s virginity by her father and brothers; the seclusion of girls and women in the home; the veiling or covering of women’s hair or bodies; the requirement that wives must be sexually faithful to their husbands; and the enforcement of these customs through shaming, violence, and the threat of violence (Christ, 2016).

Women’s free expression and disposition of their sexuality threatens the patriarchal structure and ideology, which explains to some degree the intensity of contemporary debates about women’s right to control their own bodies and access to birth control and abortion in the US. Similarly, opposition to LGTBQ2+ rights and gay marriage has its roots in the fundamental importance of  the heterosexual marriage as a means of controlling women and ensuring that inheritance passes to a man’s legitimate heirs.

One mechanism used to control women’s sexuality is gender-based violence. Gender-based violence refers to harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender (UNHCR, 2022). They can include a wide variety of behaviours, from violent sexual assault to unwelcome comments, actions or advances, but have the effect of causing victims to feel unsafe, uncomfortable or threatened.  The term gender-based violence highlights not only the manner in which transgender people, gay men, and women often experience violence, but also how violence takes place more broadly within the context of a society that is characterized by a sex/gender/sexuality system that disparages femininity, sexual minorities, and gender minorities. In public places and on-line, one in three (32%) women and one in eight (13%) men experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in 2018 according to the Statistics Canada Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces (Cotter and Savage, 2019).  For both men and women, younger age and sexual orientation (other than heterosexual) increased the odds of experiencing this behaviour more than any other factor. Approximately 4.7 million women in Canada—or 30% of all women 15 years of age and older—reported that they had been a victim of sexual assault at least once since the age of 15 (compared to 1.2 million or 8% of men).

Intimate partner violence refers to emotional, sexual and physical violence by one partner against another and includes “current and former spouses, girlfriends, and boyfriends” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2004).   Intimate partner violence occurs in queer as well as heterosexual relationships, but this violence is quite clearly gendered in heterosexual relationships. Almost half  (44%) of all women 15 years of age and older who had ever been in an intimate partner relationship reported experiencing some kind of psychological, physical, or sexual violence in the context of an intimate relationship (Cotter, 2021). The most common abusive behaviours were emotional or psychological abuse: being put down or called names (31%), being prevented from talking to others by their partner (29%), being told they were crazy, stupid, or not good enough (27%), having their partner demand to know where they were and who they were with at all times (19%), or being shaken, grabbed, pushed, or thrown (17%). However 23% of women also reported being physically assaulted and 12% being sexually assaulted in the context of intimate relationships. Four in ten (37%) women who were victims of intimate partner violence said that they had lived in fear of a partner.

Inequality and the Diversity of Sexualities

Adrienne Rich (1980) called heterosexuality “compulsory,” meaning firstly that all people are assumed to be heterosexual and secondly that society is full of formal and informal enforcements that encourage heterosexuality and penalize sexual variation. Compulsory heterosexuality plays an important role in reproducing inequality in the lives of sexual minorities. Around the world at least 68 countries have national laws that criminalize same-sex relations between men, 38 countries criminalize same-sex relations between women, and 9 countries criminalize forms of gender expression that target transgender and gender nonconforming people. Many of the laws of former British colonies criminalize same-sex acts in explicitly normative terms as  “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” “debauchery,” “pederasty,” “unnatural and indecent acts,” or “gross indecency” (Human Rights Watch, 2022).

There are indications of global changes in attitude however. Since 2000, when the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same sex marriage, 30 countries and territories have enacted national laws allowing gays and lesbians to marry, including Canada in 2005 (Pew Research Center, 2019). Gender expression and identity have been protected in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code since 2017 (Statistics Canada, 2021). Attitudes towards societal acceptance of homosexuality have also become more positive around the world between 2002 and 2020, including in the United States, where 72% say it should be accepted, compared with just 49% as recently as 2007 Pew Research Center, 2020). In Canada 85% said homosexuality should be socially accepted in 2020 compared to 69% in 2002. The world remains divided on the question, with those in Western Europe and the Americas being more accepting of homosexuality than those in Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. The issue is also divisive along religious and political lines.

Despite the significant advancements in legal rights and societal acceptance, LGBTQ+ and transgender communities in Canada continue to face notable inequalities across various sectors, including economic stability, healthcare access, and social inclusion. Members of LGBTQ+ communities in Canada experience higher rates of poverty compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. A review of Canadian literature highlights that individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit, and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ2S+) are disproportionately affected by poverty. This economic disparity is often attributed to systemic discrimination, employment barriers, and social exclusion (Ross, L. E. 2021). Healthcare access remains a significant challenge for LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly transgender and non-binary people. Studies indicate that belonging to a sexual and/or gender minority group correlates with a higher risk of negative health outcomes, such as depression and anxiety. These communities often encounter discrimination within healthcare settings, leading to reluctance in seeking medical care and, consequently, poorer health outcomes.intimate partner violence and gender-based violence. The prevalence of gender based and violence and intimate partner violence is significantly higher among Indigenous women, LGBTQ2+ women, women with disabilities, and young women (Cotter, 2021; Cotter and Savage, 2019).

Race, Ethnicity and Inequality: stereotype, discrimination and racism

The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. But when discussing these terms from a sociological perspective, it is important to define them: Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people; prejudice refers to negative thoughts and feelings about those groups; discrimination refers to negative actions toward them; racism is a type of prejudice that involves set beliefs about a specific racial group.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people in the sense that they are based on rigid generalizations which do not bear up under critical scrutiny. Stereotypes can be based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation — almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one’s own group, such as when women suggest they are less likely than men to complain about physical pain) but are often negative (usually toward other groups, such as when members of a dominant racial group suggest that a subordinate racial group is stupid or lazy). In either case, the stereotype is a generalization that does not take individual differences into account.

For example, when a newspaper prints the race of individuals accused of a crime, it may enhance stereotypes of a certain minority. It is difficult to think of Somali Canadians, for example, without recalling the news reports of gang-related deaths in Toronto’s social housing projects or the northern Alberta drug trade (Wingrove & Mackrael, 2012).

Where do stereotypes come from? New stereotypes are rarely created; rather, they are recycled from subordinate groups that have assimilated into society and are reused to describe newly subordinate groups.  For example, many stereotypes currently used to characterize Black people were used earlier in Canadian history to characterize Irish and Eastern European immigrants. Current stereotypes about Black youth are also circulated and reinforced through media imagery. Manzo and Bailey’s (2008) research on young Black and Mulatto offenders in Alberta described two types of Black stereotypes, the offenders recognized as imposed on them: the gangsta image, which characterized them as dangerous, defiant and criminal, and the entertainer image, which characterized them as athletic or musically and theatrically talented. As one respondent described it, “because I’m black, everyone looks at you like…a gangsta, playa, baller, right. I don’t look at myself like that, but everyone else calls me that, like ‘What’s up, thug?’…. They look at you and if you’re not that then you are not popular, you are not really black” (Manzo and Bailey, 2008).

Prejudice and Racism

Prejudice refers to negative beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that someone holds about a group. It is a personal disposition or attitude although often shared collectively. If, despite evidence to the contrary, a person rigidly maintains negative beliefs and opinions about that groups, then that person is prejudiced. As such, prejudice is not based on experience; instead, it is a prejudgment originating outside of actual experience. Racism is a type of prejudice used to justify the belief that one racial category is somehow superior or inferior to others. White supremacist groups are examples of racist organizations; their members’ belief in White supremacy — the doctrine that non-White groups are inferior and that  racial discrimination, segregation, and domination is justified — was the basis of African American slavery and has encouraged hate crimes and hate speech for over a century in North America.

Discrimination

While prejudice refers to biased thinking or attitudes, discrimination consists of biased actions against a group of people. It is the unequal treatment of others based on their perceived or actual membership in a group. Discrimination can be based on age, religion, health, and other indicators, but when it is based on stereotypes about race or ethnicity, it can be defined as racism or ethnocentrism, respectfully.

Discrimination based on race or ethnicity can take many forms, from unfair housing practices to biased hiring systems. An example of racial discrimination is racial steering, in which real estate agents direct prospective homeowners toward or away from certain neighbourhoods based on their race. Overt discrimination has long been part of Canadian history. Discrimination against Jews was typical until the 1950s. McGill University imposed quotas on the admission of Jewish students in 1920, a practice which continued in its medical faculty until the 1960s. As evident in the Nova Scotia case of Viola Desmond (see Chapter 7. Groups and Organizations), Canada also had its own version of American Jim Crow laws, which designated “Whites only” areas in cinemas, public transportation, workplaces, etc. Both Ontario and Nova Scotia had racially segregated schools. It is interesting to note that while Viola Desmond was prosecuted for sitting in a Whites only section of the cinema in Glasgow, Nova Scotia, she was in fact of mixed-race descent as her mother was White (Backhouse, 1994). These practices are unacceptable in Canada today.

Race-based discrimination and anti-discrimination laws strive to address this set of social problems. However, discrimination cannot be erased from our culture just by enacting laws to abolish it. Even if a magic pill managed to eradicate racism from each individual’s psyche, societal structures would maintain it. Sociologist Émile Durkheim (1895) would call racism “a social fact,” meaning it does not require the intentional action of individuals to continue. The reasons for this are complex and relate to the way educational, criminal justice, economic, and political systems are historically structured by racial distinctions. Systemic racism refers to the idea that there are numerous overlapping structures of discrimination embedded within and between organizations and institutions, which mutually reinforce unequal race-based distinctions and outcomes regardless of the personal attitudes of individual actors. As opposed to institutional racism within specific institutions (see below), systemic racism emphasizes how racial discrimination within specific organizations and institutions, often unacknowledged, is reinforced by racial discrimination within other organizations and institutions (i.e., it is systemic across a society).

Prejudice and discrimination can overlap and intersect in many ways. To illustrate, here are four examples of how prejudice and discrimination interact. Unprejudiced non-discriminators are open-minded, tolerant, and accepting individuals. Unprejudiced discriminators might be those who, unthinkingly, practice racism in their workplace by not considering racialized minorities for certain positions that are traditionally held by Whites. Prejudiced non-discriminators are those who hold racist beliefs but do not act on them, such as a racist store owner who serves minority customers. Prejudiced discriminators include those who actively make disparaging remarks about others or perpetuate hate crimes.

White Privilege

Discrimination can also involve the promotion of a group’s status, such as occurs with White privilege. While most White people are willing to admit that people of colour live with a set of disadvantages due to the colour of their skin, very few White people are willing to acknowledge the benefits they receive simply by being White. White privilege is defined by Derald Wing Sue (2015) as “the unearned advantages and benefits that accrue to White folks by virtue of a system normed on the experiences, values, and perceptions of their group.” In other words, the norms that White people have defined for themselves and others make their privilege within a system of inequality difficult for them to recognize as such.  In everything from relationships to authorities, to job opportunities, to simply walking in public areas, it seems that their advantages and benefits in society are natural, or even earned. They do not see or experience the barriers or disadvantages that others confront as a matter of course.

However, as Sue continues:

White privilege (a) automatically confers dominance to one group, while subordinating groups of colour in a descending relational hierarchy, (b) owes its existence to White supremacy, (c) is premised on the mistaken notion of individual meritocracy and deservingness (hard work, family values, etc.) rather than favouritism, (d) is deeply embedded in the structural, systemic, and cultural workings of U.S. [and Canadian] society, and (e) operates within an invisible veil of unspoken and protected secrecy (Sue, 2015).

Like the heated reactions to the breaching experiments conducted by Garfinkel and his students (see Chapter 3. Culture), getting individuals to think about these sorts of privilege can be challenging because they are supported by an unspoken system of norms that even well meaning people do not want to think about. Failure to recognize this “normality” as race-based is an example of a dominant group’s often unconscious racism.

Institutional Racism

Discrimination also manifests in different ways. The illustrations above are examples of individual discrimination, but other types exist. Institutional discrimination or institutional racism is when a societal institution has developed with an embedded disenfranchisement of a group, such as Canadian immigration policies that imposed “head taxes” on Chinese immigrants in 1886 and 1904. Institutional racism refers to the way in which racial distinctions are used to organize the policy and practice of state, judicial, economic, and educational institutions. As a result these distinctions systematically reproduce inequalities along racial lines. They define what people can and cannot do based on racial characteristics. It is not necessarily the intention of these institutions to reproduce inequality, nor of the individuals who work in the institutions. Rather, inequality is the outcome of patterns of differential treatment based on racial or ethnic categorizations of people.

Clear examples of institutional racism in Canada can be seen in the Indian Act and immigration policy, as already noted. The residential school system for Indigenous children is another example that provided different types of education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. Similarly, as described below, the effects of institutional racism can be observed in the structures that reproduce income inequality for visible minorities and Indigenous Canadians. This can be seen in the racialized characteristics of the economy.  Although labour participation rates are similar for racialized and non-racialized individuals, unemployment for racialized men, (and even more so or racialized women), is much higher than for their non-racialized counterparts. Moreover, income levels for racialized Canadians are much lower than for non-racialized Canadians (Block and Galabuzi, 2011). These substantial, statistically significant differences between racialized and non-racialized Canadians indicate that economic institutions in Canada are systematically structured on the basis of racialized differences in the workforce rather than on the basis of individual qualities of workers or individual acts of prejudice of employers.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

The Residential School System

 

In 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation near Kamloops, BC, announced the discovery of the remains of 215 children in unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. This, and other ground penetrating radar surveys at residential schools across Canada, have confirmed what residential school survivors have said for years—that many Indigenous children who were removed from their families and forced to attend the schools never returned. Survivors witnessed abuse and the deaths of children. They described how these children just “disappeared.” The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has documented 4,118 children who died at residential schools but the actual number is expected to be greater than that (Deer, 2021).

The residential school system was set up in the 19th century to educate and assimilate Indigenous children into European culture. From 1883 until 1996, over 150,000 Indigenous, Inuit, and Métis children were forcibly separated from their parents and their cultural traditions and sent to missionary-run residential schools. In the schools, they received substandard education and many were subject to neglect, disease, and abuse. Many children did not see their parents again, and thousands of children died at the schools. When they did return home they found it difficult to fit in. They had not learned the skills needed for life on reserves and had also been taught to be ashamed of their cultural heritage. Because the education at the residential schools was inferior they also had difficulty fitting into non-Indigenous society.

The residential school system was part of a system of institutional racism because it was established on the basis of a distinction between the educational needs of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In introducing the policy to the House of Commons in 1883, Public Works Minister Hector Langevin argued, “In order to educate the children properly we must separate them from their families. Some people may say that this is hard but if we want to civilize them we must do that” (as cited in Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2012, p. 5). The sad legacy of this “civilizing” mission has been several generations of severely disrupted Indigenous families and communities; the loss of Indigenous languages and cultural heritage; and the neglect, abuse, and traumatization of thousands of Indigenous children and parents. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded, the residential school system constituted a systematic assault on Indigenous families, children, and cultures in Canada. Some have likened the policy and its aftermath to a cultural genocide (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2012).

While the last of the residential schools closed in 1996, the problem of Indigenous education remains grave, with 40% of all Indigenous people aged 20 to 24 having no high school diploma (61% of on-reserve Indigenous people), compared to 13% of non-Indigenous (Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, 2010).  The impact of generations of children being removed from their homes to be educated in an underfunded and frequently abusive residential school system has been “joblessness, poverty, family violence, drug and alcohol abuse, family breakdown, sexual abuse, prostitution, homelessness, high rates of imprisonment, and early death” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2012). Even with the public apology to residential school survivors and the inauguration of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008, the federal government, and the interests it represents, continue to refuse basic Indigenous claims to title, self-determination, and control over their lands and resources.

Income Inequality among Racialized Canadians

The effects of institutional racism are visible in the structures that reproduce income inequality for visible minorities or racialized Canadians. As discussed in Chapter 9. Social Inequality, race and ethnicity are the basis of ascribed status, a status one receives by virtue of being born into a category or group, as opposed to achieved status, a status one receives through individual effort or merits. In a society like Canada, which is based on formal equality of opportunity or meritocracy, race should not be a barrier to equality and social mobility. The evidence shows otherwise however.

In 2015, the median income of Registered Indians living on reserve was less than half that of the non-Indigenous population ($20,357/yr. vs. $42,930/yr.), whereas Registered Indians living off reserve, Non-Status Indians, and Inuit had median incomes between 75% and 80% of the non-Indigenous population median income (Department of Indigenous Services, 2020). In 2015, the rates of poverty (using the after tax Low-Income Measure) for Registered Indians living on reserve were at 47.7%, Registered Indians living off reserve were 30.3%, Non-Status Indians were 25.2%, and Inuit were 22.3%, whereas the rates for non-Indigenous, non-racialized individuals were 13.8%. Rates of poverty for Indigenous people declined between 2005 and 2015, but in some areas of the country like Saskatchewan and Manitoba poverty rates stood at between 60% and 40% for on reserve, off reserve and non-status Indigenous people.

Institutional racism is also deeply problematic for other visible minorities. While labour participation rates in the economy (i.e., employed or actively looking for work) were higher for racialized than non-racialized individuals, racialized individuals were  20% more likely to be unemployed than non-racialized individuals in 2016 (Block,  Galabuzi, & Tranjan, 2019). The raci0alized population had an unemployment rate of 9.2% compared to the non-racialized rate of 7.3%. This gap was highest between racialized women whose unemployment rate was 9.6% compared to non-racialized women at 6.4%, but racialized men were also unemployed at a higher rate than non-racialized men  (8.8% compared to 8.2% respectively). Moreover, racialized men earned only 78% of the income that non-racialized men earn, and racialized women only 59%, because they tend to find work in insecure, temporary, and low paying jobs like call centres, security services, and janitorial services. Those identifying as Chinese men and women earned 87% and 66% respectively of the income of non-racialized Canadian men; South Asians 83% and 57%; and Filipinos, Latin Americans, and Arabs approximately 75% and 52% (60% for Filipino women). Black men and women earned 66% and 56% of the income of non-racialized men. These figures were more or less unchanged between 2006 and 2016.

Some people suggest that these inequalities are less to do with race as an ascribed status and more to do with immigration status. It stands to reason that the percentage of racialized individuals is highest among recent immigrants and therefore it will take a generation to catch up with native born Canadians. However, according to Block, Galabuzi, & Tranjan (2019), these inequalities in income are not simply the effect of the time it takes immigrants to integrate into the society and economy. Table 11.2 (below) shows how the income inequality between racialized and non-racialized individuals remains substantial even into the third generation of immigrants.

Source: Average Employment Income for Racialized and Non-racialized Canadians by generation in 2016 [modified], from Block and Galabuzi and Tranjan (2019)  [Original data source: 2016 Census of Population, Statistics Canada, Catalogue Number 98-400-X2016210 and Block, et al. (2019) calculations. Open Government License 

The question concerning racial and ethnic inequality therefore remains a sociological problem. How can sociologists draw on the different paradigm of sociological explanation to provide insight into the sources and nature of racism, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination? Is more than one theory needed? Which of the sociological frameworks makes the most sense, and why?

Media Attributions

• Figure 11.8 A Ku Klux Klan cross-burning ceremony in London, Ontario, Canada in late 1925 by the Toronto Star is in the public domain.
• Figure 11.9 Quotation: “Friendly reminder that White Privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard…” by Ken Whytock, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 licence.
• Figure 11.10 Class of Mi’kmaq (Micmac) girls taken in the Shubenacadie Residential School, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, 1929 by Library Archives, via Flickr, is used under CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 11.11 Marijuana Shop by Eric Parker, via Flickr, is used under CC BY-NC 2.0 licence.

Ross, L. E. (2021). Poverty in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Two-Spirit, and Other Sexual and Gender Minority (LGBTQ2S+) Communities in Canada: Implications for Social Work Practice. Research on social work practice, 31(6), 584–598. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315219968