Academic Discrimination Still A Factor For Women: Report

Posted January 28, 2007 12:00 pm.

This article is more than 5 years old.

A great deal’s changed for women in academia in recent decades, but a new report from Statistics Canada suggests they’re still struggling to crack the proverbial glass ceiling.

This is particularly the case in the higher ranks of the nation’s universities, where female professors are underrepresented and paid less than their male counterparts.

In 2004-05, women made up roughly one-third of all faculty, but accounted for just 19 per cent of Canada’s full professors and just 14 per cent of new appointments to academia’s highest level.

In the pay department, the average salary for a female full professor was approximately $6,000 less than male colleagues of equal rank and experience, and $1,800 lower at the level of assistant professor.

“Systemic discrimination is alive and well in the academy,” said Prof. Janice Drakich, director of faculty recruitment and retention at University of Windsor.

“The number of women in Canadian universities has grown remarkably both at the undergraduate and graduate student levels,” Drakich wrote in the February edition of “Academic Matters” which she co-author with Penni Stewart, an associate professor of anthropology at York University.

“But (it) has moved only glacially in the professorate.”

Statistics Canada’s Lahouaria Yssaad said female faculty tend to be younger, meaning they’ve had shorter careers and less time to establish their credentials.

“The share of women is still low but the growth in proportional terms is there,” Yssaad said.

“Women are getting doctorates more and more, but, of course, to reach the full-professor ranks takes time.”

Yssaad added many female academics step off the tenure track and on to the family track for part of their careers.

The data also shows that female academics tend to be clustered in fields such as the humanities, which pay less than the male-dominated business or math departments.

But Drakich isn’t buying it.

“Yet, there is a significant, considerable lag for women in the achievement of full professor rank,” she said.

“If you don’t have fair and equitable procedures, the opening for systemic discrimination is greater.

“You have to have clear expectations about how you go about doing the appointments process.”

Statistics Canada figures from 2004-05, with 1990 figures in brackets: