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OCUFA Reorganizing Our Reality: A Better Work Environment for University Women

Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Status of Women Workshop (26 October 2007, Delta Chelsea Hotel, Toronto)

by Alice Propper, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

9 January 2008 – OCUFA is the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, the provincial voice for professors and academic librarians. The purpose of this day-long workshop was to collect ideas about what women want and discuss strategies to implement these wishes.

The workshop was led by Jane Murdoch Adams, an organizational development consultant who effectively used a variety of techniques designed to elicit ideas in small groups, to record these ideas, and share them with the group of approximately 40 participants.

Summary of What Women Want:

  1. race and gender equity in hiring, salary, promotion, tenure, graduate faculty appointments, teaching loads, merit pay, research funding and release time. Faculty associations need to conduct regular audits and include equity clauses for every stage (tied to human rights) of careers in collective agreements. An active search and equity plan is required for units with under-representation. The achievement of equity will require mandatory equity training for unit administrators and use of model equity clauses (some references for these are cited below).

  2. recognition by unions that women are clustered into tiers which are associated with heavier teaching loads and less access to research assistants and grants. These tiers include contractually limited faculty and tenured faculty women who are not appointed to the graduate faculty. YUFA should conduct an equity audit to determine if York University is unique among Ontario universities for its method of determining which people will attain graduate faculty status. Other Ontario faculties may not employ York’s seven year reviews to classify faculty into two tiers of graduate and non-graduate faculty. At York, YUFA was once concerned that some tenured Associate Professors were excluded from appointments as graduate faculty and their accompanying benefits (e.g., being assigned a grad student to assist in research and teaching preparation, teaching small grad courses, getting credit for thesis supervision, status in the discipline). Once excluded from the graduate program and assigned an increased undergraduate teaching load with large numbers of students and TAs to supervise, it is difficult to find time for research, a healthy work-life balance, and merit pay. When denied, tenured Associate Professors are assigned the same heavy teaching responsibilities as contract faculty.

  3. good data on gender stats, ranking, and income. Some participants claim that Stats Canada will cease reporting these on the University Teacher Survey. Good and recent data cannot be taken for granted: we need to demand them. But knowing data does not create change on its own: York knows women are paid less than men of similar merit, yet its equity payments are not large enough to close the gender gap.

  4. less quantification of work / repeated scrutiny of performance through mechanisms of merit, and graduate programme review

  5. inappropriate use of on-line evaluations for merit, tenure, promotion, etc. Recognizing experimental data showing students rank women as less authoritative than men when conveying the same information (Millicent, Abel, and Meltzer, Andrea. “Student Ratings of a Male and Female Professors’ Lecture on Sex Discrimination in the Workforce.” Sex Roles, 2007, vol. 57: 173-180)

  6. correcting gender and race imbalances in hiring, retention, and promotion

  7. achieving better work-life balance through good daycare; pregnancy, parental, and compassionate leave

  8. human rights and harassment protections

  9. mentoring, reduced teaching loads, and social support for tenure and promotion

  10. training for actively participating on negotiating committees

  11. healthier workplace environments, reduction of “chilly climate” resulting from repeated systemic, inequitable treatment (particularly in science, engineering)

  12. cross-labor organization and networking (government, industry, education) for best practices. Some principles, audit procedures, and model clauses for Gender Equality Bargaining are available in publications by CUPE, CEF, and International Labour Organization (ILO). Linda Briskin’s keynote address titled “Vision, Voice and Power: Equity Organizing and Equity Bargaining,” cited her similarly titled, Equity Bargaining / Bargaining Equity. Toronto: Centre for Research on Work and Society, York University, July 2006 (112 pages), and this sample of online resources from OCUFA and CAUT,

How to Implement What Women Want

In addition to some strategies included above, participants encouraged creative strategies for educating union membership and administrators about the issues. Some emphasized the need for theatre to publicize the issues: one example was to leave babies (or dolls) at the President’s office to demonstrate the need for daycare. Another was to challenge administrators to spend a day in wheelchairs.

In addition, achieving equity requires establishing specified action plans, with specified goals and timetables. Regular equity audits are essential.

It is also important to improve the overall quality of university in Ontario. “In 2003-04, there were twice as many students per faculty member in Ontario universities compared to American Peer institutions . . .compared to the student faculty ratio in other provinces. Ontario is last.” (OCUFA brochure Knowledge Diversity Matters, undated).

To build on the status of Women Workshop, OCUFA’s status of Women Committee is holding the First Annual Status of Women Conference on Friday, May 2.

For more information on equity issues, YUFA members may want to contact Linda Briskin , subscribe to CAUT’s equity listserv by writing Lynn Braun, or contact OCUFA directly. OCUFA can also supply the interested reader with a more extensive six-page summary of notes detailing the issues raised at the 25 Oct. 2007 workshop. Contact Lauren Starr, OCUFA Policy Analyst, 83 Yonge Street, Suite 300, Toronto, ON M5C 1S8, 416.979.2117 x 232.

Other Delegates from this Conference:
 Shobna Nijhawan
Andrea O'Reilly