CAUT
BIENNIAL WOMEN’S CONFERENCE:
DOING
ACADEMIA DIFFERENTLY
AUFA sponsored the participation
of two members in CAUT Women’s conference this year, February 22-24, 2007 held in Ottawa. They were Dr. Saroj Koul,
from the School of Business and Dr. M.
The three main themes of the conference were work-life balance, wage equity, and activism in the academy. These were extremely timely topics in relation to the work the AUFA Status of Women’s committee has focused on this year. Participation in the conference by two AUFA members offered the opportunity to become more informed about the issues from a national perspective, and the break out discussion groups each day provided a wonderful opportunity for Drs. Aylward and Koul to network with colleagues facing common challenges.
Work-Life Balance
The panel presentation on work-life balance was given by Katherine Side (MSVU), Lesley Burke (FPSE, BC), and Linda Hawkins (Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being at Guelph). The speakers related how work-life balance gets constructed in academia for women. It has become, in many ways, another task for us all to accomplish. However without some systemic change in the workplace it is an impossible task.
Some of the reasons posed by the panel regarding why work-life balance has become so critical in our academic careers relate to more global forces such as: economic change (labour shortages); family and demographic changes; changing organization of the work (increased workload, multitasking, tele-work); social and institutional changes (deinstitutionalization of health care, difficulty caring for marginalized individuals, children and the elderly). Many of the conditions of our competitive individualistic academic workplaces diminish women’s opportunities to achieve any kind of work-life balance. Some presenters referred to research that names how women practice a lot of “bias avoidance” (making their personal and family life invisible) in order to be viewed as more ideal workers.
Wage Equity (Pay Equity and Wage Discrimination)
Michael Piva (CAUT Assistant Executive Director) and Rosemary Morgan (CAUT legal counsel) presented relevant statistics (as well as a detailed interpretation of them) that demonstrated how and why the male/female wage gap of university teachers’ salaries has not been closed. Female University Teachers’ Salaries as a percent of male salaries are, for all subjects combined, at a level of 88.9%. The main message of this presentation was how wage discrimination and injustice get compounded for women through work place factors such as: the undervaluing of women’s scholarship in certain disciplines; late entry into academic career and therefore lack of career earning longevity; and wage discrimination (one frightening example showed how a difference in 1000.00 of negotiated starting salary can mean a career earnings loss of up to 280,000).
Activism in the Academy
Glenis Joyce (USFA Saskatchewan) and Cindy Oliver, (President, FPSE, BC) offered up plenty of food for thought about what might move women out of what Joyce referred to as the “ivory basement”. The panel named the federal government’s current cuts to advocacy for women’s groups in Canada as well as academic institutions’ resistance to discuss or implement change related to equity issues as actions in need of a collective and united response by all women. One part of the discussion focused on how there is a growing discourse of “diversity management” amongst administrations on campuses, which proposes that “fairness” cannot be achieved through “special preference” to particular groups of individuals. The panel members spoke to the need for more feminist policy analysis, focused and fearless leadership, as well as concerted collective work through our unions in collaboration with CAUT.
A highly recommended read for all AUFA members related to women in academia is: Janice Drakich and Penni Stewart’s February 2007 Academic Matters article: “Forty years later, how are university women doing?” The authors state that, “with employment equity off the radar screens at most universities, we may miss out on the opportunity provided by the current hiring wave to transform the professoriate.” ( p.9).
http://www.ocufa.on.ca/Academic_Matters_February2007/index.htm.
M. Lynn Aylward