YUFA
External
Report from the CAUT Status of Women
Conference
24-26 October 2002
by Barbara Crow
First, thank you for sponsoring me to attend this conference. There
were a number of representatives from York University.
I was only able to attend the events on Saturday as I teach on Friday so
my review may be skewed. Saturday focused on the chilly climate,
women in science and engineering, pension plans, part-timers, and closed
with a debriefing session.
The first two sessions contended that chilly climates still exist in
Canadian universities. In spite of individual and collective
efforts, women's participation through the ranks still relies on a range
of informal and formal strategies. In particular, the speakers
emphasized the importance of being involved in your unions (and hopefully
on the bargaining team) and that women's participation in the sciences has
not changed that significantly in the last decade. Nancy Olivieri's
comments, while not directly related to the panel contents, strongly
supported ethical standards and reviews of research to make corporate
interest more accountable in the academy.
The afternoon panels spoke generally about pension plans -- nothing was
offered that we do not already know about pension plans. There were
no insights on how or what to bargain for pertaining to pension plans.
The session on part-timers was a description of a new publication Women in
the Canadian Academic Tundra: Challenging the Chill, 2002,
McGill-Queen's University Press. It seemed as those the contents
contained women's personal experiences as part-time faculty in Canadian
universities. The final panel -- debriefing -- was an attempt on the
part of the CAUT women's committee to establish issues for next year's
conference. Suggestions included such items as working more closely
with undergraduate and graduate students, but one issue in particular was
raised with a pressing timetable and that was the Canada Research Chairs.
(I know that Monica has the email that went out to launch a human rights
complaint.) I hope that our Association can support this initiative.
Generally speaking, this is the second CAUT conference I have attended.
It is my sense that this conference is designed for those who are new to
women's issues. Therefore, I would recommend that attendance at this
conference be for individuals who are interested in learning about women's
issues. As someone who has been working on a variety of women's
issues off and on campus, I found the conference uneven and largely
descriptive. While I enjoyed the opportunity to hear Professors
Olivieri, Franklin and Armour speak, overall I found the conference
lacking in concrete initiatives and strategies for improving the status of
women faculty on Canadian campuses.
Barbara Crow
4 November 2002