Evidence of meeting #51 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was universities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming today.
I'll start off with Ms. D'Addario. One of my biggest concerns with this study is the fact that universities always talk about how inclusive they are, how they're equal in opportunity, yet that's not what we're finding out, and we've only started this.
Could you give us examples of what you have either witnessed or experienced yourself in gender bias?
Ph.D. Student, As an Individual
Absolutely.
That's absolutely true, especially these days. Since my time starting as a student, there's been more and more talk about equity, diversity and inclusion as being important with regard to the allocation of funding, positions, promotions, etc. Certainly where it counts, you don't see it reflected. I think most people I go to school with would probably agree with that.
One of the biggest things—Dr. Bourgeault brought it out too, and I have definitely experienced it—is that women tend to perform more mentoring activities. Our success in academia comes down a lot to paper publications. That is weighted so heavily, and it's less so for other ways that we service the department and service the faculty as a whole. Something like that is a very big thing that needs to be addressed. Put greater weight towards those, which are very important roles, and less on this “publish or perish” culture, which is so perpetuated all the time.
I hope that answers your question.
Conservative
Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you for that.
I'll also speak to the fact that you mentioned grants. Ms. Bourgeault spoke to that as well, so I'll ask both of you a question, and I'll start off with you, Ms. D'Addario. If you're a female, it sounds like you don't get as many grants or there are certain types of granting situations where you're more of a chaperone, to some degree. Could you give me your experiences where you've dealt with that, both of you, please? I'll start off with Ms. D'Addario.
Ph.D. Student, As an Individual
It's hard for me to say if I've experienced that necessarily myself, but certainly one study I looked at found that with all things being equal, with similar funding applications, men were more likely to receive the funding than their female counterparts. It was a significant difference, a significant discrepancy.
Conservative
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Thank you for the question. It's a very important one.
If you look across the pipeline, doctoral fellows, post-doctoral fellows, new investigators who are women are less likely to get grants. It is required for you to get success at those early stages in order to get success later. That, in part, is based on the gender distribution among the disciplines. Women are more likely to be in the social sciences. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada gets less money than the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
There is a lot of data that has been gathered to show that women in the peer-review process are penalized. Their grants are more likely to be smaller, and they're more likely to be of shorter duration, which makes it very difficult to sustain careers and sustain research teams, which help fuel productivity.
Yes, there are systemic challenges across the board.
Conservative
Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Would you say, then, that the universities would claim it's because of the social sciences side? Is that the reason why? How do you think they would try to defend that?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
This is a complex phenomenon, and there are a variety of different influences. What happens at universities has an impact. What happens in the tri-council also has an impact. Everybody has a role to play. Some of that will cost money, but a lot of the interventions, which I could speak to later, are more policy-oriented and do not cost money. It's about levelling the playing field.
Liberal
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for your attendance here this afternoon.
Ms. Bourgeault, I'll start with you, in terms of the pandemic. I didn't think we'd hear any information or testimony related to the pandemic in this study. I'm glad you raised this. I was looking for recommendations you feel the committee might want to consider as they relate to course correcting with respect to the issues you've raised. You might have been able to further elaborate on those issues if you had more than five minutes for your opening statement.
Can you expand a bit more on the impact of the pandemic? What do you suggest the committee should consider in terms of policy improvements related to the same?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Thank you for asking that.
Yes, the pandemic has had a differential impact on women in academia, on gender-diverse faculty and on faculty who identify as Black or indigenous. That's very important. There are robust studies showing that impact in terms of grants and in terms of the stress around teaching and the emotional labour, as I mentioned.
There are a variety of different issues that could look at that. Pay transparency—and not just for those over $100,000—at universities across the different provinces is something that definitely helps. As well, there is promotion transparency with respect to what it takes to gain promotion and any kinds of checks and balances on who is enabled to move from an assistant professor position to an associate professor position to a full professor position. Each of those positions has a salary floor, so as you move up, your salary will go up, but where we find the greatest inequities is at the full professor level.
With regard to the pandemic, there have been a number of really good recommendations about shifting institutional norms and transparency around gender work and care work, including, for example, providing faculty who have care demands more research and teaching support—and those could be care demands for older adults or for children—waiving non-essential academic service for those with significant caregiving demands, and encouraging a community response in terms of faculty supports. In that, faculty help each other and basically say, “I don't have caregiving demands, so I'm going to take on a heavier load than those who do.” But there are some academic activities that people simply run away from and they're often left to women to do, and to women in junior faculty positions. That makes it even more difficult for them to get promoted.
I want to make it clear here that this is not just a gender equity issue. This is about knowledge. Women academics and folks from diverse backgrounds ask different research questions. They undertake research in a different way, and there are literally undiscovered countries of knowledge that we don't enable by having this inequity. Diversity in science makes better science, so we should really think about this as what we want in terms of that knowledge.
Thank you.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thanks for those answers.
EDI training has become almost the new norm over the last number of years. We would hope it would yield some results as it relates to closing the gap on many of the issues you've raised and Ms. D'Addario has mentioned here today. Given some of the information you and the other witnesses have provided about long-term trends, we would probably all agree that we have a long way to go in terms of closing the gap.
What role, then, does training play in all of this as it relates to policy and making inroads? Whether it's with colleges and universities, the private sector or the three levels of government that are all grappling with these issues, what recommendations do you have around training, whether it's EDI training or otherwise?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I'm so glad you asked that question, because I think a lot of people feel that if we just have some training, we'll fix this.
Now, it depends on how training is integrated. If it's sort of a one-off, it doesn't have the impact. In some cases, it can have a negative impact because the people who have undertaken the EDI training say, “I'm done. I'm fully versed in equity, diversity and inclusion.”
We have to understand that we have been socialized into many of these ideas, especially around care work, from our birth. That is all of the stuff that we need to unpack. I think we need to reach back into high schools, into universities for undergraduate and graduate training, and all across.... We need a multiple interventions strategy that includes training but much more transparency and accountability, so that when decisions are made about what the starting salary is.... There's also really good data to show there. Where you get on the salary grid affects how you proceed across the salary grid. There's really good data to show that. Women are less likely to get higher salaries, even if they ask for them—even if, as they say, they “lean in”.
Again, this is not about fixing women; it's about fixing the structural system, and we can do that at different levels with a variety of different interventions.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you for that.
This is my last question, and I have less than a minute now.
I always like to compare us to what the provinces are doing. There's a lot of overlap with many of the services that we provide. Could you provide some comment in terms of which provinces have made inroads and the policies they've adopted to achieve those gains?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
If you look at Ontario in terms of the salary sector transparency, this is something that could be adopted. I think the federal government can work in partnership with the provinces to figure out the promising practices and how we spread and scale those. There have been provinces that have really tried to implement it across universities, rather than have every university undertake a pay equity study. I think that would be another good thing to do.
Liberal
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome the witnesses who are joining us for this study.
My first questions will be for Ms. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault.
I have no doubt that, like me, all committee members recognize the concerning findings regarding wage inequities in universities across Quebec and Canada. Studies show that women earn less than men, and that members of various minorities have a harder time competing. This is obviously a situation that deserves society's consideration.
However, to me, there is an obvious fact that no one is talking about, but that cannot be ignored: professors' salaries are decided by the internal administration of each university, which is protected by an important principle we call academic independence. Therefore, I am concerned about this study, which prompts the federal government to examine decisions taken by university administrations. If we subject universities to government authority, that could quickly become a slippery slope.
Our universities must be places of intellectual abundance. They must know they are safe from reprisals or interference from political powers, so that researchers can acquire and produce knowledge in all fields. That is what drives the advancement of our society.
In light of this preamble, how do you see the principles of academic independence and pay equity reconciled for members of university faculties? How do you propose the federal government intervene to promote pay equity, while respecting the principle of academic independence?
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
It was for Ms. Ivy Lynne Bourgeault.
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I'm going to start with the last comment you made and go backwards from that.
You say to create knowledge in all fields. Well, I've made a case that we are not creating a level playing field to create knowledge in all sectors. Women do ask questions differently. Black scholars ask questions differently. There are areas where there is not a level playing field. If you want to start on the premise that we need to create knowledge in all fields, then we need to create equity across those different boundaries.
Yes, university independence is a factor, as you note, but universities are not completely independent. They are regulated from a provincial/territorial level, and because universities receive federal funds, they have to comply with employment equity. These are the ways in which there are constraints on university independence. We receive public funds from the provinces and territories. We receive funds from students in terms of fees. We received funds from the federal government vis-à-vis the tri-council agencies.
For those reasons, there has to be accountability to equity as a principle.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you very much for that clarification.
If I understand correctly, the federal government can intervene where it contributes monetarily. For example, it allocates funding for research chairs, including through the Tri-Council Agencies, which are the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
What we understand concretely in the current situation is that there are forms of iniquity. What are your recommendations to the federal government? How can it intervene in public policies or in its programs to restore a true form of equity?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
You raise some very important questions.
I think it is through the research funds. There are other ways that universities receive federal funding support. In some cases, that's directly from different government departments like Employment and Social Development Canada or Women and Gender Equality. There are a variety of different government departments, as well as the tri-council agencies, which are somewhat at arm's length from the federal government, but they are still federal funds.
There are other ways, through the application of employment equity principles, that it can be influenced. It can help support transparency and accountability around pay differentials and what everybody makes. Why is it just in Ontario that we have public sector salary disclosure beyond $100,000? Why don't we have that widely? Then the data would make it very clear that there needs to be accountability with these inequity issues.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you.
Let us get back to what the federal government can do. What are your recommendations? What programs do you suggest we modify? What are your recommendations in the event legislative changes become necessary? To what extent can the federal government really intervene with regard to the wage gap in universities?
Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Well, to a certain extent, it's not that we need a new act. We need to enforce the legislation that is already there. That could be done with a little bit more energy and enthusiasm on behalf of those who are not in a position of inequity. Showing by example is always another good way in terms of equity across the public service and how that can be applied in the university sector.
Those would be some examples: enforcing the legislation that you have, really following the money, and having transparency in how that money is funnelled and the inequity of how it's being transferred.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Lloyd Longfield
Thank you very much.
We have Richard Cannings for the next six minutes, please.