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Originally Posted by ExiledFlamesFan

Thanks guys for the supporting data. Despite being taken off in a tangent by hare, nurses are still a very female dominated profession and are well paid. Gone are the days that female professionals get paid peanuts. Its good that we've dispelled that myth.

They might not get paid peanuts, but there is ample evidence of a wage disparity between men and women, just as there is ample evidence of wage and opportunity disparities between white people and minorities. You've managed to point out a grand total of one female-dominated profession that pays similar to some male-dominated professions. The caveat you've failed to mention is that nursing is not female-dominated because it fails to provide equal opportunities for men. It's female-dominated because men choose to continue to view it as a women's profession.

I really don't understand why we're comparing RNs to engineers anyways. Really, any profession whose salary structures are dictated by a CBA isn't really comparable to non-union professions because the CBA's mandate that you can't pay someone differently based on gender and usually include clauses for promotions and mobility which focus heavily on seniority.

The comparison should be female engineers to male engineers or female CEOs to male CEOs. Hell, if I wanted to be a dick about it we could compare female athletes to male athletes.

Someone mentioned more women in med school and law school lately, but again that's only half the story. What we need to know if we're going to make a comparison of that nature is what percentage of female graduates find employment after law school, and what their average starting salaries are vs. their male counterparts.

Originally Posted by pylon

I would also like to add that engineers salaries are plummeting. Many major oil companies are bringing in foreign engineers for 50-60 cents on the dollar. It used to be after a client told me 'Engineer' I immediately put my finger on the 1 or 2 key to start typing in the 6 digits the bank needed. Now it is more 7's and 8's on 5 digit salaries.

I actually wanted to comment on this because I think you're probably in a unique position to spot income disparity between men and women. I wonder if you looked back at say the last three-months of approved financing agreements and looked to see which gender had higher annual incomes and just how big of a gap there were in the number of clients from each gender. Obviously this isn't scientific because I doubt your application forms ask applicants to identify their gender, so you'd be largely doing this based on names alone, but it would be interesting (for me anyways) nonetheless.

Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix

Basically it was affirmative action, Canada style IMO. It was hilarious to see one 19 year old cashier get promoted over men with 20 years in the company. Well not hilarious I guess. The right word's demoralizing. Helped sucked the moral straight out of the place, poor girl never stood a chance. I have a couple other examples that were minorities but I won't get into them. Luckily we were sold off by the parent company and that insanity seems to have stopped. But ya not to totally go OT, but would anyone consider that a sexist/racist policy? Or is it okay because white men have had it so good, for so... well, since forever.

These two things aren't mutually exclusive, but it sounds like your company had a very poor conception of how Canada's labour laws work with regards to women and minorities. You can take a look at the CN Rail case from the 80s if you're more interested in how this relates to women, as well as one from 90s (whose name is slipping my mind at the moment) relating to minorities.