Advance Notice Hold the Date: Equal Pay Day is April 11, 2017

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - April 7, 2017) -

On Equal Pay Day, a woman, on average, has worked enough to earn as much as a man made the previous year.

The Gender Pay Gap in Ontario is a shocking 30% for the average woman. On average, women need to work 15.5 months to make up the gender pay gap.

But this "average" figure does not capture the depth of the discrimination working women experience. The gender pay gap for Indigenous women is approximately 57%. Racialized and immigrant women face a gap of 37% to 39%. Women who are recent immigrants earn, on average, 57% as much as a white man. Women with disabilities face a 46% pay gap.

The Equal Pay Coalition calls on the Ontario Government to take concrete action now to close the Gender Pay Gap and redress this human rights crisis.

• Four years have passed since Ontario first officially marked Equal Pay Day.
• Six Ministers in the Ontario Cabinet have an explicit mandate to develop a Gender Wage Gap Strategy that will end gender wage discrimination and ensure economic empowerment for women at all economic levels.
• Two years have passed since Ontario announced its Gender Wage Gap Review.

Ontario's huge wage gap persists with no government or business plans yet in place to close it. Action is needed now.