APRIL 14, 2026 is EQUAL PAY DAY

Join the Equal Pay Coalition Rally 12:15pm Pillars of Justice 361 University Ave.

TORONTO, April 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Women in Ontario are marking Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, 14 April 2026 with creative visuals and action to call on the Ontario government to fund the province’s child care child system and close the gender pay gap for child care workers.

Speakers from the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, the YWCA, CUPE, Unifor, OSSTF, OPSEU and the Ontario Federation of Labour are taking a stand to say that women’s equality, both as users of child care and as workers within the child care sector, needs committed government funding.

Child care is the backbone of our economy. Without care work, the economy doesn’t work. But Ontario’s child care system remains too expensive for parents. And because it vastly underpays child care workers, Ontario has fueled a staffing shortage that causes waitlists to grow.

“The 26 March 2026 provincial budget continued to fail parents and child care workers,” says Equal Pay Coalition co-chair Fay Faraday. “The budget simply recycled previously announced commitments. It utterly failed to deliver the much-needed expansion of funding to fully support care workers, women and their families. Most critically, the budget’s lack of new funding means child care workers’ wages remain discriminatorily low.”

Equal Pay Day is marked each April because, on average, women need to work 15.5 months — 3.5 extra months into 2026 — to earn what Ontario men, on average, earned in 2025. Underfunding vital public services that are overwhelmingly delivered by women, is a key driver of the gender pay gap. Recognized globally, Equal Pay Day is a non-partisan day of international action calling on government leaders to advance women's economic equality.

On Equal Pay Day, the Coalition is calling on Ontario to commit to funding the vital public services that women deliver — such as childcare — that meets community needs and that closes the gender pay gap for all women now.

Since 1976, the non-partisan Equal Pay Coalition has been the main advocate for women’s pay equity in Ontario. The Coalition unites more than 40 women’s groups, trade unions, community groups and business organizations representing hundreds of thousands of women right across the province.

For more information, please contact: Fay Faraday co-chair, Equal Pay Coalition: 416-389-4399 or Jan Borowy, co-chair, Equal Pay Coalition, 416-985-2069

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