Women's status in Canada has eroded over the past five years, despite Ottawa's "unduly rosy picture of achievements in this country," say labour and women's groups.

"Women in Canada have lost ground in many areas," Barbara Byers, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said in a statement as the report was released in Ottawa on Monday.

Barbara Byers, right, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, announces a campaign regarding issues of women's equality in Ottawa on Feb. 11, 2009. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

"So we decided to write our own report, and it provides a reality check on what the government is saying."

The CLC, along with the Canadian Teachers' Federation, the Feminist Alliance for International Action and others, will present the report to the United Nations' World Conference on Women in New York next month. It takes issue with the federal government's report to the UN on women's equality.

The March meeting is expected to outline progress made since the last large-scale UN-sponsored conference on women 15 years ago.

"Canada no longer compares favourably against other nations in assessments of gender equality and the gender gap," the report says.

In 2004, the World Economic Forum gender gap index ranked Canada seventh. In 2009, Canada fell to 25th.

The coalition's report points out the government's decision to eliminate the phrase "gender equality" from the mandate of Status of Women Canada, the country's primary institution responsible for gender equality. It also highlights the closing of 12 of 16 Status of Women offices and the elimination of funding to a program for court challenges related to equality rights.

The report says that while women in Canada have made significant gains in education — with women making up more than half of all undergraduate students — hiring and promotion in academic institutions has not kept pace.

Men with PhDs are still twice as likely to be named full professors than women with PhDs, the report said. And female academics earn 79 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn, which is only slightly better than the overall wage gap of 70.5 per cent.

"Although Canada has made commitments to implement equal pay for work of equal value, the federal government hasn't lived up to its commitments," Patty Ducharme, vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said in a release.

"A case in point is the federal government's removal of the right to pay equity for federal public sector workers in 2009."

As for women's representation in politics, the report points out that Canada's ranking in the world has slid to 49th from 47th, behind a significant number of developing countries.

Women currently account for 22.1 per cent of members of Parliament, even though they make up just over 50 per cent of the population. And while that's the highest political participation rate for women in Canadian history, it's inched up only marginally over the past dozen years.

The report also slams the government for scrapping a nascent $5 billion over five years national child care program and contends that "senior advisers within the office of the prime minister [have] strong links to anti-feminist organizations."

Queens University law and gender studies professor Kathy Lahey calls the report "devastating."

'Women continue to be treated as the invisible careworkers for the country," Lahey said in a release.

With files from The Canadian Press