Science and Research Committee on Sept. 27th, 2023

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

You could probably count most of engineering and physics, which are the last bastions where women are not dominating in the academic fields. This is because you have more female graduates in most other disciplines, compared to engineering and physics.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you so much for that.

Switching gears a bit and going to your colleague.... Thank you again for appearing and for your testimony.

I understand that you were the president of the university faculty association. You've engaged in contract negotiations with the university administration. I note that pay and gender equity were some of your primary focuses during the negotiations in 2019.

In your view, are university administrations open to gender equality concerns?

[Robin Whitaker]

You're asking me about my own institution. Is that correct?

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Just in general, are university administrations open to gender equality concerns? I'm assuming they would be.

[Robin Whitaker]

Yes, certainly I think that's right. There is increasing openness. However, as we've seen from Catherine's testimony, there are still multiple points at which bias can creep into the process.

Were you referring to Memorial University and the negotiations that resulted in a gender pay gaps study? Is that what you were asking me about, or is this a more general question?

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

It's just in general. I'm trying to understand your role. Thank you for the work you do for the public service—on all aspects but especially on narrowing that gap, hopefully.

If this was identified by you in 2019, it's now been four years. If the university administrations are open to addressing this, I just want to know how the four years have gone. How much of that gap do you think we've closed, in your experience?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We are over the time. Could you submit that writing? It sounds as though there might be some detail you can dig up from your work, which would be helpful for our committee.

We go over to Lena Metlege Diab for six minutes, please.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Beaudry, we know that the pandemic has had a very significant impact on women in the workplace, particularly on mothers of school-age children. Can you tell us more about the effect of the pandemic on the university wage gap, according to your research?

You mentioned 2017, but do you have any post-pandemic data?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

As part of our studies, we looked at the impact of scientific publication on salaries, and noticed that, quite often, a more research-oriented career, resulting in greater scientific output, has an impact on salary. During the pandemic, women published less, but men published more, because women took on a lot of child care during the school years. I myself did some homeschooling with two of my children, which took up a huge amount of my time, on top of all the tasks associated with my professorial role, which took up more time.

So I expect that this gender gap in publishing that we've seen in 2020 and 2021 will have an impact, but it's hard to measure right now, because we're waiting for the upcoming promotions to have enough data to know the exact gap. It's certainly something we'll see in the Statistics Canada data.

On the other hand, I reiterate what my colleague was suggesting. It's going to take a lot more data in these surveys to fully understand the phenomenon, and this data will have to be systematically matched with data relating to funding, articles and citations, for example. In fact, we need to document the professorial career, because for a researcher like me, who spends a lot of time studying and matching this data to make sure that the John Smith of Memorial University is not the John Smith of the University of Toronto or the John Smith of the University of British Columbia who has changed institutions, it becomes very complex to measure.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'm also very curious to know if you think that one of the reasons why women publish less is that they take on administrative roles in universities more often than men.

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

In our study, we separated administrative positions such as rector or department director from other administrative positions such as laboratory director or bachelor's or master's program manager. When it came to less prestigious administrative positions, women were systematically paid less than men, in terms of administrative bonuses.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

Madam Whitaker, I have a question for you. I know that you're here representing the Canadian Association of University Teachers, but you're also from Memorial—from Newfoundland—and I'm an Atlantic Canadian as well.

My question for you is this: In the research you have and in the information you've come up with, do you find any differences between the smaller universities as opposed to the larger universities? Is there anything that you could share with us on that—or even the colleges?

[Robin Whitaker]

That's a great question.

Clearly, institutions and provinces have a major role to play in addressing pay inequities. We don't have institutional data at such a fine-grain level. I would hesitate to generalize in that sense. I think that, given the nature of this committee, what we can point to is some of the work that the federal government can do to support institutions, faculty associations and unions that are trying to work on this issue—such as the kinds of things that I pointed to in my opening statement, where the federal government can help with improved data that's fundamental to undertaking the kinds of studies that lay the groundwork for correcting inequities.

Certainly, as you know from our regional challenges, there's been a lack of renewal of full-time, full-year or tenure-stream faculty, in large part because of decreases in the public funding that's available. The federal government certainly has a strong role to play there, working with the provinces and institutions to expand those opportunities, especially for early-career researchers. Federal funding to granting agencies is also vital. This is a time to open the glass door that's been—

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you for talking about the early-career researchers. That was going to be my question. I'm glad you got it in, because I'm getting the signal from the chair.

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Now we'll go to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I welcome the two witnesses who are joining us for the second hour of the meeting.

Ms. Beaudry, I listened carefully to your speech. I've also analyzed the survey you conducted regarding the disparity between men's and women's incomes in academia. Earlier, you said that the most considerable gaps were in market bonuses and fee bonuses.

Tell me about the other factors. It says in your survey that age, number of children and taking a sabbatical don't necessarily have a significant effect. What do you think explains this?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

In fact, it's not that they don't have a significant impact. It's that we are able to explain the pay gaps by age and number of children. To give you an idea, we measure the percentage attributable to age, which, according to some results, contributes to 5.48% of the gap. So we're able to explain a portion of the 4% to 6% gap between men and women by a difference in age between men and women.

We are able to explain, for example, the 0.27% difference due to administrative bonuses. We're able to explain the 0.56% difference based solely on whether or not we did the consultation for which we received professional fees. It's not that these factors don't have an impact. Rather, we're able to explain the wage gap by the differences between men and women for each of these variables.

I'd be happy to share the results of the regressions with your constituency office.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That's good. Thank you very much for the clarification.

I'd like to hear your comments on a question I asked the final witnesses last week about data on the gender pay gap in Canadian universities. These data show that among Canada's 15 largest universities, those with the lowest gender pay gap were two Quebec universities, Université de Montréal and Université Laval. They were nevertheless significantly different, since the pay gap at the third university was three percentage points higher.

I'd like to know your point of view as a person living in Quebec. You're a Quebecker, and you work at a Quebec university. Why is it that Quebec's francophone universities have such a good record when it comes to pay equity between men and women on the faculty?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

In Quebec, if I'm not mistaken, with the exception of McGill University and HEC Montréal, all universities have collective agreements, that is to say professors have a union. We haven't looked at it in detail, but where there is a collective agreement and a union, the gender gap is much smaller than in universities where there isn't that kind of support, which contributes enormously to reducing those gaps.

It's also very rare for men to negotiate market premiums when they are recruited. When there is a collective agreement that allows this or that causes these market premiums to disappear over the years, they serve as a power of attraction for some professors. At Polytechnique, they wanted to get rid of all the premiums that existed and adopt a much more egalitarian approach. If you look at the rest of Canada, I think you have part of the answer in terms of who is unionized and who is not.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That's very specific. Thank you very much.

I'd like to hear what you have to say about possible solutions. Based on your experience, what could the Government of Canada do to better support equity for university faculty members?

[Dr. Catherine Beaudry]

I've done a number of studies on the state of young scientists. We were talking earlier about the start of careers. Where the problem lies and where we really need to work very hard is with young women who are starting their careers and have children. That's where we're really lagging behind, because we are juggling family, children and the start of a career, writing grant applications and setting up courses. This is where we need to help women develop their scientific network, rather than disappear as I did. I didn't do any lectures from 1999 to 2006, because I was taking care of my four children. We really need to work on this, and perhaps have nannies who accompany women speakers who want to continue breastfeeding. You really have to be very creative.

When you look at men who have children, men who don't, and women who have had children and are further along in their careers, these three groups are very different from young women at the start of their careers who have children. That's where we're falling behind.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

I must say that this testimony is very helpful. It's great to hear data and examples, and I know that our analysts will be busy trying to compile this work for us. Thank you for providing us with some great testimony.

We'll go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you again to both witnesses for being here today.

I'm going to start with Dr. Whitaker from Memorial. I just have to say that I did my master's degree at Memorial, back in the 1970s, on birds, and it's nice to see the puffins behind you on the wall. Thank you for that.

You have brought up an issue a couple of times about the declining rate of universities in filling tenure-track positions, and filling them instead, I assume, with perhaps contract positions that focus more on teaching than on research. We heard testimony in an earlier meeting that, within that cohort or group of workers in universities—the people that are hired more for teaching—there is less of a pay gap, I presume because of how that is structured and funded.

I'm guessing that for those people who are hired in that manner, that group is dominated by women. Is that the case? Do you have data on that? Also, how is that related to this bigger story?

[Robin Whitaker]

Thanks. That's a really important question.

Yes, from what we can see, there is a greater tendency for both women and other equity-deserving groups to be located in the part-time or contract academic field. I think this is something that's crucial for us to address.

You said there is more equity, but it would be within that group. If we're looking at overall equity, the gap becomes larger and we start to see greater areas for concern if people don't have access to full-time, full-year jobs, which we often refer to as “tenure stream”. We also know that the number of precariously employed academics is increasing.

I think we should also be concerned about what might be a lost opportunity for some young scholars now to fully develop their potential as scholars if they're being increasingly streamed into jobs that allow them to perform only part of what they're trained for. I think this is where the federal government has a very important role to play, working with provinces, in stabilizing the funding to post-secondary education, particularly with a view to renewing the full-time faculty complement.

More than ever, we have what are often referred to as highly qualified personnel, but there's a diverse group of doctorates who are prepared to enter the academy but need the opportunity to get in there. That means creating those positions, allowing them to get in the door and providing research funding that will support them.

This is obviously also going to benefit us all. It will enrich Canada's capacity by diversifying the talent pool that's available. I think this is the moment to do it. We've seen this shift. It's keeping people out who are quite prepared to get in. I'm glad you asked the question.