Pay Equity in Canadian Planning

In November 2019, the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) published the first comprehensive compensation and benefits survey of Canadian planning professionals.

This article contains a few of my thoughts on how the survey findings are likely optimistic, show an underepresentation of racialized and disabled planners, and reveal an unfair two-tier pay structure. (For more information about the context that this work is happening in, check out my piece on how planners are looking at social equity in the profession.)

Survey Results Paint a Dismal Picture

Of 7,658 Canadian planning professionals, 1850 responded to this survey. The survey reported back on a number of items, such as the planner’s education, seniority in role, years of experience, etc. But what’s more important to me is what the compensation results say about equity in the Canadian planning profession.

Good Gender Balance, but Evidence of Gender Wage Gap

• Gender Ratio: 51% of the respondents (n=951) identified as male, and 48% identified as female. We don’t know whether this matches up with CIP membership as a whole, because CIP does not collect or publish this data. Assuming that the ratio of male to female planners who responded to this survey more or less lines up with the planning profession as a whole, Canada is doing quite well, with the gender ratio being within a margin of error of the gender ratio of the entire population. By contrast, the Royal Town Planning Institute (UK), for example, has a membership of 61% male planners and 39% female planners. The situation is similarly dire at the Planning Institute Australia, where 35% of members are women.
• Gender Wage Gap Approximates Canadian Average: The survey found a mean salary of $101,116 and median salary of $95,000 for men. Compare this to the mean salary of $88,576 and median salary of $85,000 for women. This means female planners very generally earn $0.88 to the mean male dollar, and $0.89 to the median male dollar. Compare this to $0.82 that Barbara Rahder listed in 1998. These differences are more or less in line with what the Conference Board of Canada reports, and their data also breaks down geographical differences. We don’t have a detailed breakdown from CIP of how this wage gap by gender changes by geography or over the lifetime of a planner’s career (i.e. do men start out and retire with higher wages, and how much does that add up to over a career?). Neither does the report measure the wage gap against additional marginalized lived experiences, such as ability, race, or sexual orientation.
• Results do not go Beyond the Gender Binary: 1% respondents marked “other”. The report doesn’t report back on any group with fewer than 30 people responding. So, there is no salary data or description of what “other” means.

Conflation of Sexual Orientation with Gender Identity

• The Queer Wage Gap Exists: 5% of respondents (n=91) self-identified as LGBTQ2. Within this group, the mean salary was $88,047 and median salary was $85,000, reflecting the same wage gap pattern also seen for women (above) and racialized planners (described below).
• Defining Queer: The survey didn’t break down what respondents mean in terms of sexual orientation or gender identity. For convenience or perhaps ignorance, this question was separate from the male/female question, showing a conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity plus a basic lack of understanding of what LGBTQ2 means (a political coalition, not an identity). This is important, because it comes down to a matter of “passing”. Some folks, like myself, “pass” for straight and cis-gender. So, I’m not likely to experience discriminatory earnings or hiring practices for my sexual orientation and gender identity. For example, a 2014 study of Canadian workers found nearly 30% of LGBT-identified Canadian workers experienced discrimination in the workplace, as opposed to 2.9% of the general population. The stats are even higher for Trans colleagues, who face huge hurdles in even getting hired in the first place.
• Representation is Lacking: This number could over/under represent the proportion of queer members of CIP overall, depending if people who identify LGBTQ2 responded to the survey at a higher/same/lower rate as non-queer planners.

Underrepresentation of Racialized Planners Plus Racial Wage Gap

• The Race Wage Gap Exists: 8% of respondents (n=153) self-identified as a person of colour (POC). The mean salary of $88,983 and median salary of $85,000 for this group is similar to the wages noted for women, described above.
• Defining Racialized: No data was gathered on what “person of colour” means or what sub-groups could within POC. This is important, because a whole body of research looks at the impact of perceived race on incomes. The Conference Board of Canada reports that university-educated Canadian-born members of a visible minority earn, on average, $0.87 for every dollar earned by their white peers, and that the gap varies by geography. Atlantic Canada has a smaller racial wage gap and Quebec has the largest one. The racial wage gap also changes based on ethnic ancestry. In the Conference Board’s 2010 research, they found that Canadian-born individuals of Japanese ancestry on average earned 3.7% more than white peers, and individuals of Latin American ancestry earned, on average, 31.7% less than white peers. So, by lumping all racialized people together, the results artificially smooth out what could be stark differences in earnings, and quite likely make the wage gap look better than it is in reality. No data was collected specifically from Black planners (3.5% of the population, third largest visible minority group after South Asian and Chinese).
• Underrepresentation of Racialized Planners: Another way that the racial wage gap reported by CIP could actually be worse in reality relates to the proportion of racialized people who responded to the survey. We know that of 7,658 Canadian planning professionals, 1850 responded to the survey. And, of the 1850 who responded, 8% self-reported as racialized (compare this to 2016 Census findings that just over 22% of the population labour force identify as visible minority). We don’t know whether racialized planners comprise 8% of all 7,657 planning professionals, or whether the proportion is higher or lower.

Alarming Lack of Attention to Indigenous Planners

• Underrepresentation of Indigenous Planners: Per the Census, Indigenous people comprised about 6.2% of the population in Canada in 2016. About 1% of survey respondents identified as Indigenous, a sample size that was too small to report back on salary figures. Given that the entire Canadian planning regime and sets of land title systems are based on the legacy and ongoing practice of colonizing Indigenous land, the fact there are not enough Indigenous planners to report back on mean and median salaries is both alarming and an indictment of the profession.

People with Disabilities: A missing 22% of the general population

• Underrepresentation of Disabled Planners: As with Indigenous planners, the 1% sample size of people with disabilities responding to the survey is too small to report back on salary figures. As with the other stats, the reality could be that an even smaller proportion of planners identify as disabled, depending on whether disabled planners responded to the survey at a higher/same/lower rate as able planners. Regardless, 22% of Canadians are disabled (an undercount because this doesn’t include people in institutions). So you can already see how underrepresented people with disabilities are within the planning profession.

Averages Obfuscate Actual Differences in Earnings

• Need to measure multiple identities: The survey did not cross-tabulate the impact of multiple identities, i.e. racialized and queer, racialized and Indigenous, female and queer and Indigenous, etc. This is concerning, because for all equity-seeking groups, except those born outside of Canada, the reported salaries are similar as the salaries reported for all women, acknowledging the aforementioned points that the way the data has been reported is likely smoothing out differences and presenting optimistic results.
• Proportion of equity-seeking respondents matters: If the 5800+ planning professionals who didn’t respond to this survey are mostly white, cisgender and male, the mean and median earnings would increase, thus making the racialized, gender, Indigenous, and disability wage gaps even larger.
• Missing nuance on multiple oppressions: Research shows that racialized men generally earn more than racialized women. For example, a 2011 Canadian Centre for Policy Initiatives report found racialized women earn $0.55 for every dollar earned by white men and $0.88 for every dollar earned by white women. The report also found that Indigenous women are paid even less, at $0.46 for every dollar earned by men. So additional analysis is needed to better understand what initially looks like a two-tier pay structure in our profession.
• Immigrants boost equity-seeking stats: The survey found that 7% of respondents (n=137) identified as being born outside of Canada. The mean salary of $91,454 and median salary of $90,000 reported is higher than the average salaries reported for all respondents. This way, immigrants who also identified as another equity-seeking group, such as gender, sexual orientation, or race, would have brought up the average salaries reported for those groups. This is an interesting statistic, because typically immigrants experience a wage gap. CIP has a membership reciprocity agreement with the American Planning Association and Planning Institute of Australia. So it could be that structural discrimination is in place within the accreditation process that discourages other immigrant planners from becoming members of CIP.

Common Faulty Responses to Reported Wage Gaps

Over my career, I have heard many lacking “explanations” about why wage gaps exist. Here are a couple, plus the reasons why they are false:

“If the numbers were adjusted for hours worked and level of seniority, then the salaries would match up.”

• This “explanation” ignores actual discriminatory hiring and career promotion practices that take place in planning workplaces, things that are both structural and interpersonal. Discrimination includes people not getting invited to interview for positions due to implicit biases of hiring managers; people not offered mentorship, continuing education, or opportunities for advancement on the basis of their identity(ies); people having to do two jobs at work due to their identity(ies) — their actual job, and the job of educating their coworkers about their identity(ies); people having to manage the additional stress and emotional toll of microaggressions, aggression, and overall discrimination at work; and more.
• A more fair measure would measure salary against years of experience instead of seniority, breaking those numbers down further by equity seeking identity(ies). This should be followed-up with an examination of seniority against years of experience, breaking those numbers down further by equity seeking identity(ies), along with qualitative data about the respondent’s career experience.
• Results that show how some higher-paid planners actually have less experience at same level of seniority would illuminate structural bias within employers and in the profession.

“If we looked into childcare responsibilities, it would explain the differences.”

• This “explanation” ignores the fact that the survey didn’t ask the planner to respond to whether they have children, and if so, whether they are the primary caretaker of that child (or elder, for that matter).
• Results should be measured geographically, because Quebec has more affordable quality childcare compared to other provinces and territories, tempering these values against the high racial wage gap typically seen in Quebec.
• The lack of quality, affordable childcare and eldercare in the Canadian economy in general is one example of how the economy is structured on the assumption that working people live in stereotypical 1950s heterosexual, white, middle-class families with a wife at home and additional household “help”. It is exceedingly hard for working parents to succeed against this standard. Further, there are biases in the workplace where men are socially and financially awarded for being parents, but women are stigmatized and penalized.
• Further, the study shows a race wage gap, a queer wage gap, and there are too few responses from Indigenous and disabled planners to understand the magnitude of wage gaps they experience. So, this isn’t just a gender issue. There is a larger issue of who feels represented, supported, and successful in the Canadian planning profession.
• The other question remaining is what CIP is going to do to support workers in receiving adequate child and elder care, in its role as a national advocacy organization.

“The salary differences probably reflect different kinds of planning work that people are doing.”

• This “explanation” ignores how discrimination funnels certain people towards certain kinds of planning, and that the type of planning that cisgender white and Asian men favour is more lucrative than other forms of planning. I’m quite confident that the data will show development planning as more lucrative, more male, and more white, with social planning as amongst the least lucrative, more female, and more racialized.

For more reading on why wage gaps exist, check out City of Vancouver’s Equity Strategy “Why It Matters” and “Inequality’s Differential Impact” chapters.

Implications

The compensation survey results show that we planners should do a soul-search of why the profession does not adequately reflect the broader population of Canadians, when our jobs directly and quite significantly affect the daily lives of Canadians. It is both unfair and hubristic to expect planners who do not know the lived experience of vast proportions of the Canadian population to be adequately equipped to make significant decisions for them.

CIP needs to ask itself what it, the Provincial/Territorial Institute or Associations, the Professional Standards Board, and the accredited universities need to do to better attract and retain equity-seeking members of the profession, what the attrition rate is, and why. Salary is just one indicator of this broader issue.