Women own one in five Canadian businesses and are seeing faster wage growth, but gaps in progress remain

October is Women’s History Month, a time to celebrate women and girls’ past, present and future.

Always important among their achievements is their labour market participation, which, as our latest data show, continues to increase, though there is always room for improvement. Let’s have a look at some key numbers.

Women’s wage growth outpacing men’s over a nearly two-decade span

Though men have historically outearned women, the gap has narrowed. From 2006 to 2024, average hourly wages grew faster among women (+21.3%) than men (+15.9%), according to recent analysis from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). In 2024, the wage gap had narrowed to 12.6%.

However, there were differences by age group. For example, women aged 55 years and older earned 16.6% less than their male counterparts in 2024, though this was an improvement from the 20.7% gap in 2006.

At 5.9%, the wage gap in 2024 was narrowest among people aged 15 to 24 years, down 3.3 percentage points from 2006. Although the gap in 2024 was wider for people aged 25 to 54 years (12.2%), the decrease from 2006 was larger among this age bracket (-4.2 percentage points).

Women executives have a lower compensation package than men executives; share of women in management positions increases over time

Despite overall progress, there remains a significant gender gap at the executive level.

A StatCan study released last year, entitled “Gender pay gaps among board directors and officers in Canada,” found that the average gender pay gap among board directors and officers in Canada from 2016 to 2020 was estimated at 32.1% for total compensation and at 29.5% for base pay.

The occupational titles of women executives and men executives accounted for the largest portion of the reduction in the raw gender pay gap, indicating that women’s greater concentration in lower-paying executive roles contributed substantially to the disparity.

According to another StatCan study, entitled “Access to managerial occupations, 2023,” the share of women in management occupations increased over time, rising from 27.1% in 1987 to 39.0% in 2023.

Women’s labour force participation rate up over time

On an annual basis, the labour force participation rate for women aged 15 years and older grew from 45.7% in 1976 (the beginning of the current data series) to 61.2% in 2024. The rate for men declined from 77.7% to 69.7% over the same period.

More recently, there were 9.9 million women employed in Canada in August 2025, up 0.9% from August 2024. The number of employed men increased by 1.1% to 11.1 million over the same period.

Employment numbers for both men and women ticked down in August 2025, the second consecutive month-over-month decrease amid a slowing economy and a continued decrease in job vacancies.

Women are majority owners of one in five private sector businesses; most have an optimistic outlook

In the third quarter of 2025, there were just over 1 million private sector businesses, and of those, 20.9% were majority-owned by women, according to the latest data from the Canadian Survey on Business Conditions (CSBC).

In the third quarter, more than one in six businesses majority-owned by women (17.7%) reported inflation being their most challenging obstacle expected in the next three months, followed by recruiting skilled employees (9.3%) and the cost of inputs (5.1%).

Despite these and other reported obstacles and challenges, almost two-thirds of businesses majority-owned by women reported their future outlook over the next 12 months being either very optimistic (24.4%) or somewhat optimistic (41.3%). In comparison, 18.4% of businesses reported being somewhat pessimistic and 5.6% reported being very pessimistic.

Looking ahead

The CSBC will release data for the fourth quarter of 2025 on November 25, 2025, and the LFS will release annual data for 2025 on January 10, 2026.