Canada Government Workers

The fight for equal pay had already been going for four years when Rita Cantaloni joined the Canadian civil service in 1988, so she figured things would get better for women in the government soon. But last year, she discovered that a newly hired male receptionist was being paid almost $1,600 a year more than his female counterparts doing the same work. "Just because he was a man!" the fiery secretary said last week. "I was livid. But I thought, this has been going on so long, what can we do?"

The fight for equal pay had already been going for four years when Rita Cantaloni joined the Canadian civil service in 1988, so she figured things would get better for women in the government soon. But last year, she discovered that a newly hired male receptionist was being paid almost $1,600 a year more than his female counterparts doing the same work. "Just because he was a man!" the fiery secretary said last week. "I was livid. But I thought, this has been going on so long, what can we do?"