IN MINORITY: THE STATUS OF WOMEN AT ACADIA UNIVERSITY

2006-07

The AUFA-Women’s Committee presents this summary of the status of women faculty at Acadia University in 2006-2007. Access to this information is supplied by Human Resources to AUFA’s membership in compliance with Article 28.10. In October 2006 women constituted 40% of all full and part-time faculty at Acadia University. Table 1 lists the percentage of female faculty by rank, while Table 2 maps the percentage of change at each rank between the 2005 and 2006 data.

Table 1 Percentage of female faculty by rank:

	Acadia Percentage (October 2006)	National Averages (2006-2007)
Full professor	18.8	20.0
Associated	28.8	36.0
Assistant	34.9	41.0
Lecturer	71.9	55.0
Librarian	90.0	N/A
Instructors	50.0	N/A
CLT	55.6	N/A
Tenured faculty	24.4	N/A
Part-timers	54.2	N/A

Table 2 Percentage of change in female faculty by rank from 2005 to 2006

The one percent increase in female faculty members from 2005 to 2006 is in large part due to the 14% increase in female lecturers (Table 2). In addition, proportionately more women than men occupy the contingent positions such as CLT (55.6%) and part-time (54.2%) appointments. The composition of female faculty at Acadia falls below the national average at all ranks. Women continue to be proportionately underrepresented at the Associate and Full professor levels, and recent hires do not redress the imbalance. Since 2000, the percentage of female faculty hired at the Assistant level is 32.3%, Associate level is 25.0%, and there were no female hires at Full-professor in contrast to two male hires. Women constitute one third of the Assistant level hires, which cannot reflect the pool of candidates given that 47% of PhD graduates (excluding foreign students) are female (Statistics Canada 2007). These figures demonstrate the need to practice equitable hiring.

Full-time Faculty Salaries by Rank

In order to assess the effect of gender and rank on faculty salaries, we ran a regression analysis based on 2006 data. Some of the findings are as follows:

• The raw gap on all full-time faculty demonstrates that men earned $14,434.00 more than women (r²=.088).

A regression analysis on tenure and tenure-track (including CLTs) faculty was run that controlled for rank, date of hire and gender:

• In this model, female faculty earned on average $1,055.35 less than men (r²=.765).

Three further regressions were analyzed that isolated the data by rank (Assistant, Associate and Full) to assess the effect of sex, date of hire by respective rank on salary:

• There was virtually no difference in salary at the rank of Assistant professor.
• A small difference was noted at the rank of Associate professor: females earned $373.22 more than men.
• The largest difference was at the rank of Full professor; men on average earned $4,896.12 more than their female counterparts.

A second regression model was run that examined the same variables but only examined date of hire since 2000.

• In this model, women fared marginally better, earning $845.60 more than men (r²=.575).

Table 3 Percentage of female students by faculty

Faculty	Undergraduate students 2005	Undergraduate students 2006	Graduate students 2006
Arts	52.8	56.7	62.5
Pure and Applied Science	56.6	56.0	48.0
Professional Studies	53.5	53.2	76.6
All faculties	54.0	55.5	60.3

More than half (55.5% of undergraduates and 60.3% of graduates) of Acadia students in 2006 are female (Table 3), yet only 37.1% of the full-time faculty are female. We should further note that in the Pure and Applied Sciences the disparity is even greater, since only 31.4% of faculty is female. There continues to be no female faculty members in Philosophy and Computer Science.

What do these results mean?

Although 40% of the total faculty is female, this percentage is boosted by the number of part-time faculty and CLTs. Women constitute more than 50% of the contingent faculty, and the high proportion of women at the rank of lecturer is a concern.

We are encouraged that data since 2000 indicate no significant salary differences between men and women. This means that at time of hire women’s salary levels parallel those of men, controlling for rank. We anticipate further advances through the implementation of an equitable salary grid structure. There continues to be a large discrepancy between the salaries of men and women at the full-professor level. This is in part explained by the small percentage of female full- Professors at Acadia, but their salaries also cluster at the lower end on the full-professor’s grid. At the same time, if women are spending more time than men at one rank, the higher salaries at the associate level, for example, may be explained by a disproportionate number of women at the high end of the associate grid. These findings are a reminder that we need to better understand the barriers women experience in considering or applying for full-professor. The ramification is that women experience a distinct financial disadvantage in their retirement income as they earn considerably less than their male counterparts

AUFA Women’s Committee

The Women’s Committee would like to thank Dr. Phyllis Rippeyoung for her statistical assistance.

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