Canada has spent decades confronting the gender pay gap, enacting legislation and building public awareness around the fact that women earn about 84 cents for every dollar men make. That gap persists because of systemic barriers, and is wider for women who face multiple forms of discrimination.Yet an equally significant wage penalty for ethnic and racial minorities rarely commands the same attention, and has not prompted a comparable policy response.Racialized men earn just 78 cents for every dollar non-racialized men earn. Racialized women face a double penalty, earning only 59 cents. Post-COVID pandemic data shows this wage gap remains largely unchanged.Both injustices are real and well-documented. So why has gender-based pay equity produced dedicated legislative tools, while ethnic and racial wage penalties continue to be addressed unevenly?As an expert in public policy and ethnic studies, I see the answer lying not in the severity of the problem, but in the mechanisms that bring gender and ethno-racial wage discrepancies to light.A century of feminist momentumProgress on gender pay equity has been largely driven by sustained, organized activism. By the time wage discrimination entered mainstream political debate in the 1960s and 1970s, women’s groups had built national coalitions, testified before commissions and established gender inequality as an object of state intervention.This momentum translated into policy. The 1977 Canadian Human Rights Act defined wage discrimination solely through a gender lens, making it discriminatory “for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees.”Ethnicity and race were absent from this definition — a gap that labour organizations and anti-racism advocates have long pushed to change.The 1995 Employment Equity Act requires federally regulated employers to track representation and remove barriers for four designated groups: women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities. But it stopped short of requiring employers to correct wage disparities for ethno-racialized workers.Gender pay equity later received its own legislative tool: the 2018 Pay Equity Act, which obliges federally regulated employers to proactively assess and remedy gender-based wage gaps for work of equal value.While this framework has strengthened accountability, significant gaps remain, especially for women who experience intersecting forms of discrimination.The legislative landscape is beginning to shift, but at a snail’s pace. The Employment Equity Act Review Task Force has recommended expanding designated groups to include Black workers and 2SLGBTQ+ workers. If implemented, these changes would mark the first major update to Canada’s equity regime in decades.A delayed start for ethno-racial equity advocacyWhile feminist organizations were building national advocacy networks in the mid-20th century, ethno-racialized communities faced a different political landscape.Until the mid-1960s, Canada’s immigration system restricted non-European immigration, forcing many ethno-racialized communities to fight first for the right to be in Canada.Because of these structural barriers, research on ethno-racial earnings disparities emerged far later. Economists began documenting the “colour of money” in Canadian labour markets only in the 1990s — decades after gender wage gaps had become a staple of academic research, public policy and media coverage.Subsequent studies have shown persistent earnings penalties for ethno-racialized workers, with Black, West Asian and South Asian workers facing some of the steepest disadvantages.In recent years, the federal government has introduced new institutional mechanisms, including Canada’s Anti‑Racism Strategy. Such initiatives have expanded data collection and supported community-based research, but they remain policy frameworks rather than enforceable tools because they lack binding obligations and compliance mechanisms.The ‘visible minority’ problemOne of the challenges in achieving pay equity is the lack of categorical clarity in the term “visible minority,” a label frequently used by the Canadian government.“Visible minority” functions as a bureaucratic catch-all. The last census recorded more than 450 distinct ethnic and cultural origins. Within this umbrella, labour market outcomes vary dramatically.For example, university-educated Japanese Canadians often earn more than white Canadians, while those of Latin American ancestry earn 32 per cent less. Statistics Canada data shows that, even after controlling for education, Black male graduates earn 11 to 13 per cent less than non-racialized peers, while West Asian and Arab female graduates earn 15 to 16 per cent less.Such variation makes collective advocacy more difficult. When some subgroups are advantaged, political attention can wane because the problem appears inconsistent.Advocacy is most effective when it spotlights the worst-affected groups: Black Canadians, West Asian Canadians and Latin American Canadians. Organizations such as the Black Legal Action Centre and the Canadian Arab Institute demonstrate that targeted, community-specific advocacy is both possible and necessary.Precarity as a silencerAnother reason the ethno-racial wage penalty is also muted by labour market precarity. Many ethno-racialized workers are overrepresented in temporary, low-wage or insecure forms of employment, including temporary foreign worker programs, non-unionized contract work and short-term service roles.Research has repeatedly shown that newcomers and ethno-racialized workers face higher rates of job insecurity and lower access to employment protections.For workers on conditional permits or pathways to permanent residency, speaking out about wage discrimination can risk contract termination or loss of status.Under Canadian law, employers are required to measure ethno-racial representation but are not obligated to ensure ethno-racial pay equity. In effect, ethno-racialized workers are counted, but their wages remain unprotected.Laws reflect which inequalities we care aboutThe ethnic and racial wage disparity in Canada is not inevitable; it is political. If sustained activism and legislation can tackle the gender pay gap from a policy perspective, the same tools can address ethno-racial wage penalties.Community organizations have long pushed for this. Unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees explicitly frame discriminatory wage structures as a form of racism that must be confronted through collective bargaining and organizing.The Canadian Labour Congress has called for stronger enforcement mechanisms, better data and explicit recognition of ethno-racial pay inequity in federal law.These three shifts would make a meaningful difference:Move beyond “visible minority” categories and require wage reporting for specific groups most affected by disparities.Extend pay equity obligations to include ethnic and racial wage gaps, with the same proactive assessment and compliance mechanisms used for gender.Link wage equity to broader conversations about immigration, economic justice and Canada’s stated commitment to multiculturalism.If fair and equitable pay is truly a Canadian value, attention to wage inequality cannot stop at gender. Both the gender gap and the ethnic and racial wage gap are products of systemic barriers. Addressing these gaps requires extending equity measures to all sectors where ethnic or racial background continues to influence opportunity and compensation.Reza Hasmath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.