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Doing Academia Differently: CAUT Biennial Women’s Conference
Ottawa, February 22-24, 2007
By Eve Haque, DLLL, York University
12 Mar 07 - The CAUT Biennial Women’s Conference was held in Ottawa this year (five years since the last one) February 22-24, 2007. The goal is to reinstitute this conference every two years again, and have it in the fall so that more people can attend (and so that people don’t have to go to Ottawa in bitterly cold February). I have attached a conference program so that people can see the names and affiliations of the presenters in full.
Opening Plenary
The conference, which was well attended by members from all over the
country, began Thursday evening with an opening plenary, and all of the
panelists gave a lot of interesting information, statistics and
perspectives on the life of women in the academy. However, it was the
presentation by Patricia Monture which left the strongest impression as
she was able to ground the complex and often difficult lives of academic
women within in the context of colonialism – in particular the
neo-colonial project which underpins the project of higher education in
Canada. She spoke about the diversity of her students, the absences in
the curriculum for indigenous students in particular, the genealogy of
residential schooling which finds its legacy in present day higher
education and its exclusions, as well as the impossibility of separating
her personal and professional life as one of the few indigenous woman in
academia. This was one of the more interesting and useful presentations
of the conference, because it brought issues of gender together with
race, region and history, and explicated what the implications were for
women in higher education. At the end of the plenary, copies of an
article which details the findings of Janice Drakich and Penni Stewart
on women’s representation in the Canadian university professoriate were
handed out (copy attached) as well as Feminist and Equity audits (also
attached). It is clear that although women are entering tertiary
education at unprecedented numbers, overall, they are still not making
it into the top levels of academia at the same rate – particulary to
full professor and higher levels of administration. Of course salary
disparities are also rampant. Although this research is important and
generated a lot of coverage, the feminist and equity audits report card
gives a fuller picture of the gendered and raced exclusions in
academia. In particular, the enormous gap for “visible minority”
(Statistics Canada group designations) women is clearly indicated in
terms of income.
Work-Life Balance
The next morning was devoted to the first of three themes of the
conference: Work-Life Balance. Again, a lot of interesting information
was shared, including a handout which compared governmental work-life
balance initiatives and supports in Western Europe so that attendees
could see where Canada is comparatively – not surprisingly we are quite
far behind countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. The
discussion on work life balance highlighted the changing nature of the
academy and the increased emphasis on “research” and indicators of
research such as publication output, securing of research funds and so
on. The changing organization of academic work has meant an increased
workload for women academics who often have the double task of mentoring
the growing number of female students in tertiary education, as well as
the primary family care-giving responsibilities. Restructuring in the
academy has also meant a push for increased flexibility and multitasking
on the part of academics which again have had a disproportionate effect
on women’s work-life balance. It was in the subsequent discussion
groups that a more nuanced picture of how Work-Life Balance emerged.
Issues for new and contingent faculty (which is where the bulk of women
of colour are located in the academy) around workload was raised, as
were issues of child care, maternity leave, etc. However, the
heteronormative and productive nuclear model of the family dominated
both the discussion group and the work-life balance panel presentations.
There were attempts in the discussion group to interrupt the centrality
of this orientation of the discussion; for example, an academic who was
also a single mother talked about how her specific challenges often fell
outside the emerging institutional supports for families, and junior
academics also mentioned how having children was not even on the program
for them due to student loan debt and escalating requirements for
tenure. Even the definition of work-life balance was multiple and
contested – for some women it meant just having enough time to get a
good night’s sleep or publish, for others it meant the opportunity to
develop other areas of their life (eg. Art, poetry, etc.). Clearly the
diversity of women in academia underlay the diversity of the definitions
of what exactly work-life balance might mean.
Next, there was a Luncheon and Presentation to celebrate the Sarah Shorten award recipient, who this year was Janice Dodds, a professor in Biology. She gave an entertaining speech which related her history in academia, from her days as the only female professor in her department to the present. As she related her personal story, the history of women entering academia and the challenges they faced was effectively illustrated.
Wage Equity
The afternoon was devoted to the second theme of the conference: Wage
Equity. This is an important topic and perhaps one where the CAUT
conference was the most effective in disseminating useful and relevant
information. First, there were many handouts given which gave overviews
of salary by University for staff and faculty (many available at their
website), again breaking this information down by gender, rank and
discipline. As well, pay equity and wage discrimination legislation at
the provincial and federal levels was compared. One of the panel
presenters spoke to the difference between pay equity legislation and
employment equity legislation. She detailed how pay equity legislation
was a limited instrument for requiring the structural changes that
needed to happen to ensure that an identified pay inequity was not
repeated. However, employment equity was a better instrument for this,
because employment equity requires that the structures and practices
that resulted in the original inequity in the first place are required
to be identified and changed - all of which is not the case in pay
equity legislation. However, employment equity does not apply to
universities except in the case of federal contracting. Therefore,
depending on the province, there may be limited legislative recourse to
push for changes to structural issues and practices that result in wage
and other inequities.
One of the most informative (and alarming) presentations of the conference was given by Michael Piva who discussed how the academic salary system amplified existing discriminations. He began by detailing the logic of the salary scale; new hires are paid a discounted rate because of their limited experience and efficiency with an understanding that as they become more proficient in their job their salaries will rise to a premium rate to compensate for the earlier discount rate. Given the immense bandwidth between the floor (discount salary) and the premium (ceiling salary range) in academia, and the high number of steps (salary increments) - which is at least 2 times more steps in Universities than most other white collar work - it takes a long time to get out of the discount salary level, through the median range and into the premium salary levels in academia. This means that effectively there are two unequivocal biases in University salaries: 1) longevity – which transfers all the money to the last 5 years of your career and 2) the disparities of salary by discipline. If you factor this with the fact that as Pive states, “something bad happens to women on the way to the PhD”, that is, that women fall out of the higher paying disciplines (science, etc.) into the lower paid disciplines and (Arts, etc.) and that the age of entry of women into the profession is much later than that of men, this has clear consequences for women’s academic salaries and devastating consequences for women’s pensions (eg. A $1000 difference in salary can translate into the $280,000 difference in earnings over a 30 year career). These effects are even further magnified by the undervaluing of women’s scholarship and previous experience which tends to start them off the academy not much above the floor salary levels, and other discretionary measures like merit pay. Even worse, given all these complicating factors, it is hard to articulate a direct pattern of gendered discrimination (which most remedies require) so that the conclusion that there is no pattern, that is, there is no discrimination is often made. In the final part of his talk, the speaker gave compelling data to make the argument that the disciplinary salary gaps in the University, which are argued on the basis of market forces, are in fact grossly over exaggerated if compared with the actual salary bandwidths in those very fields. These insights would useful for planning future negotiations and bargaining priorities and strategies.
Activism in the Academy
The next morning the final theme of the conference: Activism in the
Academy was addressed. Glenis Joyce, one of the panelists, gave an
interesting presentation about her struggles to address this issue at
the University of Saskatchewan. Some important topics she highlighted
included the co-optation of the term “diversity” by administration so
that equity becomes a diluted endeavour, resulting often in simple token
representations, the institutionalization of “in-equity” committees that
claim to work for change, or the heralding by administration of
“diversity” strategies without offering any language or concrete goals.
This speaker ended with suggestions for what she called “moving out of
the ivory basement”, including working collectively and getting
leadership from CAUT to develop and national framework for equity linked
with associations across Canada.
This presentation led to the final discussion group of the conference on activism in the academy. The discussion began with conversation about how to get junior faculty involved with the Unions, to ensure that there were people to take on the struggle as current generations of academic union activists began to retire, decided to scale back their involvement or moved into different levels of work. A barrier to this renewal was workload issues: pre-tenure junior academics repeatedly cited the incredible research, teaching and service expectations that they were met with as they began the job. In particular, the raising of the bar for research - such as the pressure to secure research funding, have several top tier journal articles and one book or at least a book contract before coming up for tenure – on top of teaching and service requirements meant that finding the time for service at the University and Union level was increasingly difficult for junior faculty. This will have severe implications for unions in the future and point to the need to centre issues of workload in bargaining in the future.
However, the most heated discussion emerged when one of the conference attendees stated that as a woman of colour she felt a déjà vu that recapitulated her past activist experiences from the 60’s and 70’s where she was never wholly represented in the discussions and concerns of the conference. Specifically, the figure of the “academic woman” that was central to the concerns of this conference and drove the agenda was a white woman and as such, an intersecting analysis in the discussions throughout the conference was conspicuously absent. A lively and protracted exchange followed, where arguments for and against the need for an intersecting analysis were debated. I will not rehash this discussion as these debates have been happening for over 30 years now (unfortunately). However, it did emerge that there was an equity caucus at the CAUT, and suggestions to have the women’s conference work more closely with the equity caucus were met with mixed feelings. Finally, some members of the discussion group decided to make a motion addressing these concerns from the floor of the closing plenary.
Closing Plenary
At the closing plenary a few presentations were made including a stark
story about one woman academic’s life. As well, my understanding was
that reports were to come back from the various discussion groups, but
because of time constraints, this was an abbreviated exercise. This was
a shame because it meant that the all important task of deciding how to
build on the work of the conference and how to harness the ideas from
the discussions were given short shrift. A suggestion to the conference
organizers would be to plan the final consolidation part of the
conference better so that the energy of the conference could be
effectively harnessed for future change. At the end, two motions were
made from the floor, including
Motions:
- At the February CAUT BIENNIAL Women’s Conference a number of issues were discussed in connection with gender differences in salaries, merit, and tenure and promotion processes. It was suggested that as a Union collective, women need to better understand how to negotiate equitable pay and employment conditions both within their own and across Canadian Universities. In order to achieve more consistency and transparency and to work towards employment equity, we recommend that CAUT survey its members to ascertain:
i. Whether or not local Union offices
disseminate to their members on-line
information about hiring and salary
negotiations, especially to their female
faculty
ii. If members access this information and
find it
useful
iii. What strategies and resources, if any, do
new hires use to negotiate their salaries?
- It was noted that the Conference was predominantly attended by white academics who gathered to discuss gender as it relates to an unspecified notion of who the female academics are, who ‘we’ represent at CAUT. While we appreciate that there was considerable effort on the organizing committee’s part to highlight presenters from a variety of fields and thus frame ‘diverse’ discussions in breakout groups, we felt that the discussions that ensued privileged a particular perspective based on white race, able bodies, 30-something age, heterosexual with traditional family concerns. A woman of colour captured what many of us experienced, that the conference discussions brought her back to a political interpretation of ‘gender’ whereby complex issues that affect the multiple positions that women inhabit were reduced to a notion of gender equity that excluded sustained discussions about race, sexual orientation, and disabilities.
Therefore, we recommend that a clearly articulated commitment to the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, and disability, as they relate to both local and global nation states, underpin future conference organizing and actively frame the breakout discussion groups.
It remains to be seen how the second motion in particular will effect the organizing for the next conference.
Suggestions from the conference include
1) Make the issue of workload a top priority for the union. Workload
issues have severe gendered and racialized effects, particularly as new
faculty are increasingly representative of “diverse” groups and most
precariously positioned with respect to the increasing demands of
research performance. Workload issues also have important consequences
for the future of unions in academia – overloading the next generation
of potential academic union activists is one way to weaken the
involvement of junior scholars and undercut the hardwon gains of the
past.
2) An intersecting analysis should be a given for all union organizing at every level (including our umbrella organizations) – it makes no sense for our organizations to be repeating the exclusions and discussions of the past 30 years – it’s a waste of time, resources and people.
3) Michael Pive’s (see section above on Wage Equity) insights need to inform future union bargaining strategies and priorities.
Members, please feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about the conference.
Other Reports from this Conference:
Joan Allen
Kym Bird
Didi
Khayatt