Women immigrants often place their career plans on hold while prioritizing family over their own aspirations. Their growth in Canada tends to be a long negotiation between childcare, licensing, language, family stability and emotional survival.
This inequity is compounded by the fact that Canada’s economic immigration programs have historically admitted more men than women as principal applicants.
According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s 2018 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration, women represented 42 per cent of economic principal applicants in 2016, compared with 58 per cent for men.
More recent IRCC Gender-based Analysis Plus data, however, show that this gap has narrowed considerably. In 2024, women accounted for 48 per cent of federal economic immigration admissions and 49 per cent of Federal Skilled Worker admissions, suggesting that while access to economic immigration has become more balanced, women continue to face different realities after arrival.
Employment specialists say newcomer women often bear a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities, delaying or reshaping careers they spent years building.
Rosie Nguyen and Rula Nader know that reality well.
Both arrived in Canada as experienced physicians. Nguyen spent more than 14 years practising medicine in Vietnam, including nearly a decade running her own dermatology clinic. Nader worked for 20 years as a physiatrist before immigrating with hopes of continuing her medical career.
Both found themselves navigating unfamiliar licensing systems and balancing the immediate demands of helping their families establish new lives.
National data reinforce the experiences described by the women interviewed for this story. A 2023 Health Canada study using 2021 Census data found that women made up 71.2 per cent of internationally educated healthcare professionals in Canada. Yet only 57.7 per cent of employed internationally educated healthcare professionals were working in health occupations.
Nguyen and Nader were introduced to New Canadian Media through the Société de développement économique de la Colombie-Britannique (SDECB), a British Columbia-based non-profit organization that supports Francophone and Bilingual immigrants as well as internationally trained professionals.
For Nguyen, the transition was as emotional as it was professional. “In Vietnam, I was a doctor and a clinic owner,” she said. “In Canada, I had to start again as a student, improve my English, understand a completely new system, and take jobs that were very different from my previous career.”
Today, she works part-time as a pharmacy assistant at London Drugs, volunteers at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver and has completed a business administration program at Langara College. She hopes to return to healthcare, but says that dream had to wait while she focused on helping her family adapt to life in Canada.
“My dreams were (are) still there,” Nguyen said, “but sometimes they had to wait quietly in the background while I took care of the urgent needs in front of me.”
Despite two decades of medical experience, Nader found that rebuilding her career in Canada required credentials,”It is very difficult because any job here requires Canadian certificates and experiences, so my previous ones do not count.”
Nader found herself balancing professional ambitions with family responsibilities. Raising three children while trying to re-establish her career required, in her words, “many balances and compromises.”
Asked whether she missed the career she left behind, her response was brief but powerful. “Yes,” she said. “Every day.” Their experiences reflect a broader pattern that settlement professionals say they encounter regularly.
The pattern extends well beyond medicine. Pragati Mhasalkar arrived in Canada from India in 2017 as a stock market analyst, only to learn her credentials wouldn’t transfer without additional licensing. She pivoted to IT, taking contract work to help support her family, and it wasn’t until the pandemic — when she began distributing food in her community — that she found what she calls her true calling, eventually building a food business through Newcomer Kitchen’s training program in Toronto. Like Nguyen and Nader, her professional identity didn’t disappear; it just had to find a new shape before she could return to it on her own terms.
Before they can think about themselves, Maroua Marzougui-Yacoubi, a human resources manager who supports immigrant women’s professional integration said, many women are focused on ensuring “the kids are in school, the home is running, everyone is adjusting.Their own ambitions often come last.”
Statistics Canada also found that among immigrant women with a bachelor’s degree or higher, those who obtained their university education outside Canada were significantly less likely to work full time than Canadian-born women. Among recent immigrants, the full-time employment rate was 59 per cent for women educated outside Canada, compared with 80 per cent for Canadian-born women.
Nguyen said her professional plans slowed as she juggled studying, working, raising her children and adapting to an unfamiliar healthcare system. At one point, she also faced a difficult personal decision when her husband wanted to return to their home country while she chose to remain in Canada with their children to pursue a different future.
For Nader, the compromises became part of everyday life.
Asked whether she still hoped to practise as a physician, her answer reflected the reality many internationally trained professionals eventually face.
“I do not think so,” she said. “Success for me now means finding a stable, satisfying career.”
Marzougui-Yacoubi said one of the greatest misconceptions about immigrant women is that settlement begins only after they arrive in Canada. In reality, many spend months or even years putting their own aspirations aside while helping every member of the family adapt.
That delay carries consequences beyond employment.
“When you’re still trying to stabilize your family’s finances, investing in a recertification process can feel completely out of reach,” Marzougui-Yacoubi said, referring to the cost of licensing exams, training and professional upgrading.
For Nguyen, however, changing direction has never meant abandoning who she is.
“I still carry the heart of a doctor,” she said. “We are not starting from nothing. We arrive with education, skills, leadership and years of experience.”
Marzougui-Yacoubi believes those experiences expose a broader issue that Canada has yet to fully address.
For employment specialists, improving labour-market integration requires more than faster credential recognition.
They argue that affordable childcare, mentorship, employer willingness to recognize international experience, paid work placements and stronger settlement support are equally important if immigrant women are to rebuild their careers without sacrificing years of professional growth.
For Nguyen and Nader, the issue is not whether immigrant women are willing to work hard. It is whether the systems designed to welcome skilled newcomers recognize the full value of what they bring.
Asked who ultimately bears that hidden cost, Marzougui-Yacoubi did not hesitate.
“Immigrant women do,” she said. “They absorb it quietly, invisibly. And the price they pay is their ambition.”
Dayo Ojerinde
Dayo Ojerinde is a multimedia journalist with over 10 years of experience covering health and social issues, with a focus on human-centred and data-driven reporting.