Just when we seemed to be coming a long way, baby, new research shows the gender wage gap has barely shrunk and may soon grow again.

Depending on how you measure it, women are still paid between 11 and 31 per cent less than men, even though we have made very slow progress over the years toward equal pay for equal work.

Why is this inequity so persistent? Two new studies suggest a simple explanation with no simple solution: systemic sexism.

Take a new report from Tammy Schirle, an economist at Laurier University, and McMaster PhD student Moyosoreoluwa Sogaolu, who pulled apart hourly wages and adjusted them to take into account all sorts of factors that influence why one person may be paid more than another. They found that while some of the gap’s stubbornness can be explained by workers’ choice of occupations or family structure, education or age, race or other factors, much of it makes no sense. That is, unless you consider systemic gender discrimination.

This troubling conclusion is supported by new work published Tuesday by the Labour Market Information Council and the Education Policy Research Initiative based at the University of Ottawa, which shows that the more educated people are, the more they will earn over the course of their career. But that’s less true of women than of men.

“Women earn less than men across all credentials and fields of study — and these gaps widen following graduation,” the authors say.

The knotty roots of this problem, the way sexism is ingrained in our culture, mean there’s no easy fix for the policy-makers, employers, unions and individual women and men working to close the gap.

Consider, for instance, new research about how we are taking care of the growing numbers of aging Canadians, and how this burden is disproportionately borne by women.

Almost eight million Canadians were involved in caregiving in 2018, including just slightly more women than men who stepped up to take at least some care of their parents, spouses, in-laws, children and friends. However, research shows the real disparity is that women are carrying a much heavier load than men in the type of caregiving they deliver.

The Vanier Institute of the Family has done work that shows older men and women are almost equally engaged in caregiving of some kind, but when it comes to working-age caregivers, women are spending more time than men helping those close to them, and handling far more of the tasks that are not compatible with work. They peg the cost in wages at $221 million a year for women compared to $116 million a year for men.

In other words, caregiving is getting in the way of women excelling in the workforce.

This is especially true of lower-income female workers, says economist Janice Compton of the University of Manitoba. Women in higher skilled and higher paid jobs have the power to negotiate the flexibility they need to incorporate caregiving into their job demands. But female workers with fewer skills and lower pay have less bargaining power. Caregiving compounds their disadvantage.

As the population continues to age, will the resulting caregiving burden exacerbate the wage gap?

Of course, that’s the risk — that increasing numbers of middle-aged women who have just graduated from the heavy lifting of child care are then confronted with parents or spouses that need all their attention. They’re left trading in pay and promotions for flexibility to take care of their aging family.

But researchers aren’t entirely pessimistic. The last census showed a growing number of multi-generational households. And when the extended family gets involved, the burden on any single person can be diffused. Plus, employers who are dealing with labour shortages may be increasingly inclined to offer flexibility to attract and retain employees who also happen to be caregivers.

And men are taking on part of the load, encouraged by strong signals from policy-makers, employers and society at large. There’s a chance they will step up more than in the past, normalizing the need for flexibility in the workplace and neutralizing the financial penalty that comes with asking for it.

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But while things may not get worse, there’s reason to doubt they’ll get much better. The easy government policy responses to confront the wage gap have already been implemented, says Schirle, and the impact for many women is barely perceptible.

“There’s no obvious quick fix for this.”