Theoria

Hardly a surprise, but female professors in Canada are underpaid in comparison to male professors at the same rank, they are hired at a lower rate (i.e., disproportionate to number of female doctorate graduates), and have a harder time securing promotions. Article “below the fold.”

This is on top of the annual audit of the Canadian Research Chairs program – i.e., the highest tier publicly supported system of research chairs in the country – which reveals that women are also discriminated against in obtaining these positions. The audit is by the Canadian Association of University Teachers [pdf].

Interested readers – either men who want to exploit the systemic discrimination or women who want to see how much of the shaft they are getting – are encouraged to look at the salary disclosures for university staff making over $100,000 CDN in Ontario.

Female profs lag in pay, promotion

Colin Perkel, Canadian Press

Despite making some significant gains in recent decades, women are still struggling to crack the glass ceiling that hangs above the halls of Canadian academia, recent statistics indicate.

The issue is especially stark in the higher ranks, where female professors are both underrepresented and paid less than their male counterparts.

Despite comprising about one-third of faculty in 2004-05, women made up just 19 per cent of the country’s full professors, the top academic rank – up from just eight per cent in 1990-91, Statistics Canada numbers show.

Women accounted for only 14 per cent of new appointments to that level, up marginally from 12 per cent in 1990.

When it comes to pay, the median salary of women holding a full professor rank was about $6,000 less than that of male colleagues of equal rank, and $1,800 lower at the level of assistant professor.

Climbing the academic ladder is supposed to be merit-driven, generally based on an evaluation of factors such as a candidate’s track record of research, publication and teaching.

Prof. Janice Drakich, director of faculty recruitment and retention at Ontario’s University of Windsor, said the data suggest other factors are at play.

“Systemic discrimination is alive and well in the academy,” Drakich said in an interview. “It’s not going to correct itself.”

In an article in the February edition of “Academic Matters,” Drakich and co-author Penni Stewart, an associate professor of anthropology at York University [sic - she's in the sociology department], call the situation “disturbing.”

Most students are now female – a situation that’s existed since 1988, they note.

“The number of women in Canadian universities has grown remarkably both at the undergraduate and graduate student levels,” the researchers write.

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

They also note that women academics lag substantially when it comes to senior decision-making positions as well.

In an interview, 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 gender gap narrows when age is factored in, Yssaad said.

“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.”

In common with the larger workforce, many female academics step off the tenure track and on to the mommy track for part of their careers, she added.

Female academics also tend to be clustered in fields such as the humanities, which pay less than those in male-dominated business or math departments, the data show.

Drakich, however, said she’s not convinced those explanations for the gender gap tell the whole story.

Both sexes are achieving permanent status, or tenure, at roughly the same rate, she said.

“Yet, there is a significant, considerable lag for women in the achievement of full professor rank,” she said. “What’s the difference in the process?”

Universities have to be more rigorous in hiring by setting clear criteria for promotions and establishing strong oversight of appointment committees in order to close the door to discrimination, Drakich said.

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

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