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The government’s analysis of gender issues is not even done well. Nowhere in the dozens of pages devoted to gender issues is it mentioned that the most obvious difference between men and women in the labour force is where they work. Men reside overwhelmingly in the private sector, where they account for 66.7 per cent of all workers. Conversely, the public sector is 71.8 per cent dominated by women (the budget lock-up is an exception; 16 of the 19 Finance officials attending were men).

The budget ignores the implications for wage data of a female-dominated public sector and a male-dominated private sector. Many public sector benefits don’t appear on a paycheque; hours of work are shorter, vacations are longer, sick leave benefits are greater, medical expense coverage is broader, job security is better, retirement starts earlier. Most importantly, public sector pensions are heavily subsidized by taxpayers, a benefit hidden in income data but equivalent to 20 per cent of federal civil servant pay and 10 per cent of the pay of most non-federal civil servants.

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All those stats about women earning less would be different if incomes were adjusted for the non-taxable benefits women receive because so many work in the public sector. No one in government bothers making that adjustment since it reveals how the civil service has artfully constructed a compensation package to maximize non-taxable benefits and minimize its exposure to the tax system it helped design, while trying to ensnare as much private sector income as possible (last fall’s assault on small business was only the latest example).