Midwives are affected by gender in three different ways: they belong to a profession overwhelmingly composed of women; they provide services only to women; and the services they provide support women's distinctive reproductive capacity to bear children. In a decision that the Association of Ontario Midwives (“AOM”) has called a "landmark", the Human Rights Tribunal recognized that discrimination based on gender has infected the Government of Ontario's determination of pay rates for midwives since 2005. 

The Tribunal's decision fully acknowledges the systemic discrimination that skews pay rates for a profession that is so gendered. What is troubling is that the AOM has spent years of work to obtain this decision and that they had to lay down again facts and principles about women...