This paper follows up on a fall 2019 Focal initiative paper entitled Women, Youth and Indigenous Peoples’ Employment in Canada’s Automotive Sector and takes a closer look at women’s participation and their employment characteristics in the automotive manufacturing sector.

Other papers published as part of this initiative used a broad definition of the sector that included not only motor vehicle and assembly, but also a share of associated industries such as foundries, metal fabricators, and producers of plastic, glass, rubber, and electronic parts. Due to data availability, this paper uses a more traditional definition of the sector: NAIC 3361 (motor vehicle manufacturing or Assembly) and NAIC 3363 (motor vehicle parts manufacturing), as a proxy when looking at direct employment. However, when we looked at the potential labour supply of women to the sector, we used the 49 key occupations identified from the National Occupational Classification list and outlined in our Post-Secondary Education report, which we are also using in our labour forecast. The employment data for the 49 NOCs do not simply look at the people employed in the automotive sector but in the entire Canadian labour force in order to better understand labour supply.

Understanding labour market participation by women may help employers understand new sources of labour and inform recruitment strategies in the automotive sector; it may inform government policy and programming; and it may support corporate goals that will improve access to jobs, gender diversity, and equity in employment for women.

Representation of women:
Women are under-represented in Canada’s automotive industry with slightly lower representation in Assembly (23%) than in Parts production (25%). This stands in contrast to the proportion of women in Canada’s broader labour force (48%), but is comparable to the broader manufacturing (28%) labour force. The earlier paper on Diversity, Women, Youth and Indigenous Peoples’ Employment in Canada’s Automotive Sector used 2017 data. In this paper we used more recent data when it was available, which will account for some differences.