Behind the Stories: Robyn Doolittle on the Power Gap investigation

The Globe recently launched The Power Gap, a two-and-a-half year investigation that identifies how progress for women in the workplace has stalled by almost every metric. Today, women represent just under half of the workforce. And yet, men still dramatically outnumber, outrank and out-earn women.

In an unprecedented analysis of hundreds of public sector salary records, The Globe has found that women continue to be outnumbered, outranked and out-earned by men not just at the very top, but on the way to the top and in the middle. Based on a data set that includes over 50 universities, 25 cities, seven provincial government departments, and 130 publicly funded companies, Robyn Doolittle worked with data journalist Chen Wang to understand first the depth of the issue and the real-life impact on Canadians.

You can’t fix if you can’t see. We collected salary records for 90,000 public-sector employees to quantify and visualize the barriers for women we’ve been talking about for decades. (focuses on the public sector because it is the only available workplace pay data in Canada.) pic.twitter.com/Pr7yAJ9IRa

— Chen Wang (@hichenwang) January 21, 2021

Prior to the launch, we spoke with Robyn and asked her to share her thoughts on what she hopes will come of the investigation. Watch her response here:

The team will be exploring the Power Gap over the next year, what it means for the Canadian workforce and economy, and to identify solutions.

Follow the latest developments at http://tgam.ca/powergap.