Victoria named best Canadian city to be a woman for third consecutive year

WATCH: Victoria named best place in Canada to be a woman but gender pay gap still a big issues. Tess van Straaten reports.

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For the third year in a row, Victoria is being hailed as the best city in Canada to be a woman.

A study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives looked at the differences between men’s and women’s access to economic and personal security, positions of leadership, education and health in Canada’s 25 biggest cities.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) says Victoria is the only list where there are more women than men employed. Women also account for nearly half of all elected officials and senior managers.

“In Victoria, we find we’ve nearly reached gender parity ? about 45 per cent of local government officials and leadership positions in the private sector are women,” says Iglika Ivanova of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “That’s somewhere we really see Victoria leading the country.”

However, the study also said the wage gap has actually widened in the last few years in Victoria and is now only slightly better than the national average, with women earning 73 per cent of what men do.

“It’s too early to say if that is due to the increase in the tech sector,” Ivanova says. “We know the tech sector in particular has a big problem getting women at all, let alone in leadership positions.”

In Windsor, Ont., which ranked worst in the study, the wage gap is actually smaller than average, with women making about 75 per cent of what men earn.

The study said only 23 per cent of elected officials and 34 per cent of senior managers in that region are women. It also said women are more likely to be living below the poverty line than men in Windsor.

The CCPA also said that sexual assault is the only violent crime that’s not on the decline in Canada, and every city still struggles with high rates of sexual and domestic violence.

?Statistics will never be a substitute for the full experience of lives lived. But as signposts they mark the spot where more attention is needed from our political leaders and policy-makers,? says study author Kate McInturff, a senior researcher at CCPA. ?We hope they follow through.?

Victoria has come out on top since the study began three years ago.

Here is the CCPA’s ranking of the cities:

1. Victoria
2. Gatineau
3. Hamilton
4. Kingston
5. Vancouver
6. Quebec City
7. St. John?s
8. Sherbrooke
9. Halifax
10. Toronto
11. Ottawa
12. London
13. Kelowna
14. Abbotsford-Mission
15. Montreal
16. St. Catharines-Niagara
17. Winnipeg
18. Edmonton
19. Saskatoon
20. Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo
21. Regina
22. Calgary
23. Barrie
24. Oshawa
25. Windsor

With files from The Canadian Press 

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