I can tell you a lot about that.
I have also been chair of the status of women committee at the University of Victoria. I just came back, actually, from a meeting of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which at a national level is very much concerned with the diversification and the inclusivity—or lack of inclusivity—of our university environments, with respect to staff but also with respect to faculty particularly.
The issues are challenging. There's much formulation and discussion of equity and what equity requires, but in terms of changing the numbers, there's been slow progress. To the extent that we have seen some progress on the equity front—I'm talking primarily about faculty and faculty moving into positions of leadership within the university—it's primarily been progress that has helped more white women to get positions.
Women are still under-represented, but women who are racialized are very much under-represented. The progress has been progress that has been enjoyed by non-racialized women to some extent. The issue therefore is a complex one, across the different dimensions by which exclusion happens in the university environment. Gender is important. Racialization is important. We certainly need a key focus on retention of our indigenous scholars and movement of indigenous faculty into leadership positions.
I don't want to say that gender doesn't matter. It's hugely important and I've invested many years into working towards the advancement of gender equality in the university environment. However, gender includes women who are indigenous, women who are racialized, women with disabilities....
We have universities mirroring the power structures, not surprisingly, in broader Canadian society. We have yet to reach a position where we're taking advantage of the full wealth of expertise, of experience, and of talent across the range of wonderful diversity that we have in Canadian society. Certainly we see, as we move higher up in the ranks of the university, from assistant professor to associate professor to full professor to dean, and from associate vice-president to vice-president and so on, that a disproportionate number of women and other under-represented groups increasingly drop out of the picture.