Status of Women Committee on Feb. 9th, 2017

[Ramona Lumpkin]

That's right. Certainly in our case, most of our online courses are taught by full-time faculty; it's part of their normal load. So you're looking at those two as an intersection.

I'll just focus for a moment on part-time faculty. Anyone can see the statistics that across the country and across North America, there's an increasing percentage of courses taught by part-time faculty. It's quite mixed. In law or in medicine, for example, they may be practitioners. There may be very valid reasons for using those professional people as part of their contributions back to their profession. It is the case, with the shift in university funding over the past decades, that the ability to hire and invest in a faculty member who would receive tenure—and if things work well, and they usually do—and be with the institution for life, is the biggest financial risk that a university takes, if you like. Universities have increasingly hedged those risks by using part-timers until they're certain there's sufficient enrolment, for example, in an area to warrant adding a full-time position.

Sorry, I should let my colleagues answer as well.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I'll jump in, if that's okay.

I'm currently chair of the status of women committee at UBC, and I also sit on a number of university-wide equity and diversity committees. The situation of women in the academy is one that I spend a lot of time thinking about in the administration portion of my job. I would begin by saying that there are significant gender issues at our universities, both at the faculty level and in the student cohort.

From the perspective of the faculty, I'll name just a few of the issues that we're currently grappling with at UBC. The first is women's slower progress through the ranks. As you look at the numbers of women at the assistant professor level, you'll see they drop off as you get up to full professor. Women are less likely to become full professors in the academy, and when they do, they do so more slowly.

The topic of contract teaching is an important one, of sessionals and instructors. It functions now as a kind of job [Inaudible—editor] for individuals who have their Ph.D.s, who want tenure-track jobs, but instead are given contract teaching that is, essentially, exploitative and covers off on the teaching needs of the university, without delivering the kinds of benefits of the job that a tenure-stream position would. It's not the case that people in contract teaching positions predictably and reliably move into tenure-track positions; for many of them, they carry the work of the university at significantly lower pay, more extreme workload, and without the prospect of the kind of academic process or progress that one traditionally expects.

We also have pay equity issues, particularly amongst contract faculty but also at the tenure-stream faculty level.

I'll just close the focus on faculty by mentioning, and I think you've already heard about gender discrimination—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Sorry, that's your time.

We're going to have to move to the questioning from Miss Harder for seven minutes. Thank you.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My first question here is for Tammy Schirle. You talked about how there is a male wage premium and about the fact this is not justified. I'm wondering if you can expand on that a little bit. In your explanation, please talk a little bit about specific sectors or areas where you see this taking place.

[Dr. Tammy Schirle]

We're at a stage in our research where we're trying to parcel out which industries are the worst offenders with these types of wage premiums in male-dominated occupations that we can't justify. One that I've seen consistently has been in construction. The construction of buildings is an industry where this seems to happen. It doesn't seem to be happening in the professional or technical services types of fields. There aren't any occupational differences representing skills differences in hospital-type industries. There are not large wage gaps, and there doesn't seem to be the same kind of male premium.

What we're doing right now is trying to figure out how to gauge which industries seem to be having the biggest problems and narrow it down a little bit more.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Just to expand on that a little bit, when you talk about an industry like construction, I think that's probably one that stands out to all of us. It's maybe an example that would naturally come to mind.

With that, I'm just curious whether you are taking and comparing a man and a woman with the exact same skill set and seeing that there is a difference in the wages that they earn within the construction sector. Is that what you're seeing?

[Dr. Tammy Schirle]

Basically, yes. It's a little bit difficult. It's a statistical exercise, so it's not such an easy match. Nonetheless, we've created measures that summarize the fine motor skills, the physical strength, the social skills, the interpersonal skills, and the analytical skills that have to go into one's job. That's what we call a NOC, a four-digit level, occupation level. It's a fairly fine level there. We can use that to compare across the male-dominated and female-dominated jobs. Where we would see an overall similar skill level on those dimensions, we see different wage rates.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay, thank you very much. That's helpful

My next question goes to Ms. Lumpkin.

Thank you so much for joining us at the last minute. We certainly appreciate having you here.

You commented on women often lacking the courage or confidence to initiate and pursue some of those higher-up positions, I suppose you could say. I'm just wondering if you can comment why women might be a bit hesitant to do so.

[Ramona Lumpkin]

I do think it's primarily cultural. As so many gender differences are, though, it's hard to get to nature versus nurture dimensions definitively with every trade. But certainly, girls and young women want to have every skill that's required for a particular position before they will volunteer for it.

If you have a team sitting around a table, and there's a project put out, we so often see young men, if they know about 60% of what needs to be done, putting up their hands and saying, “I'd like to try it”, whereas women are sitting there wanting to feel they've got 100% or 120% of the required skills before they volunteer for it. It goes right through youth into maturity.

I think we obviously need to have intervention. Some of it is probably happening in the classroom; some of it is happening at home. We need to be extremely aware of this gender-based tendency and need to start intervening at a very young age to encourage girls to take risks and to try things they're not necessarily certain they can succeed at.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

One of the things that Mr. Nesbitt talked about in the previous presentation was sponsorship, coming onside with women in order to empower them to step into those positions. Is this something that you feel would be helpful when it comes to helping women move into those spots and feel more confident and courageous in putting their names forward?

[Ramona Lumpkin]

Absolutely. It's been very heartening to see pilots for sponsorship. I was reading about one recently in a business report, in which a young woman is challenging and engaging other people within the company to take on a sponsorship, and then they choose to sponsor a woman and they tag someone else and ask whom they are sponsoring. I think we have to be intentional to shift from the mentorship to the sponsorship, and I think it can make a huge difference.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay.

I'd also be interested in your observation. Would you say that a woman is more likely to come on side and sponsor a woman, or is a man more likely to come on side and sponsor a woman?

[Ramona Lumpkin]

The studies that I've seen suggest that it can be a little more awkward for a man to sponsor a woman. There are a lot of cultural things around.... You know, they do the same things as guys do. There was mention of a hockey game; they go to the hockey game together. There tend to be gender-divided activities that make one gender more comfortable with the same gender. I think men may fear looking as if they're predatory; so there are those kinds of barriers as well. That's why it's important to signal to men that, hey, it's okay, we're all sponsoring women, and to make it more accepted.

I certainly have seen a lot of female-to-female sponsorship over my career. I'm a member of the International Women's Forum, for example, and we make a very concerted effort to identify and tap younger women and do more than just mentor, but sponsor.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

All right.

We'll go to Ms. Malcolmson for seven minutes.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to Margot Young, from UBC's Allard School of Law. I love to hear your celebration of the need for Canada to commit to its decades old United Nations promises, and your alignment with the United Nations committee to end discrimination against women. Its report, in November, flagged that successive Conservative and Liberal governments have failed to honour those commitments. We've had, this week, top of the fold stories every day on the police failure to honour sexual assault complaints. I note that UN CEDAW said that, if we had a national framework around ending violence against women that would have included the police response, that the federal government would be taking leadership to make sure that justice and police responses are trauma informed and are gender sensitive and we have a consistent level of training.

If Canada had led in that area, can you speculate about how our countries response to sexual violence and rape might have panned out instead?

[Prof. Margot Young]

I think the answer to that is an obvious one. If we'd led in the area, with a criminal justice system that is victim-centric, that understands the gendered systemic nature, the kind of rape culture that characterizes our nation and others as well, I think we would have done a much better job in reporting under our human rights obligations and we wouldn't find such a high rate of unfounding of sexual assault complaints or claims that are taken to police. It's an issue we struggle with everywhere in Canada. We're struggling with it at the University of British Columbia. I sit on the president's steering committee on developing a sexual assault policy for us right now. It raises a series of really tough issues, but essentially, it's important to be conscious and articulate about undoing the kind of sexist stereotypes that exist in this area of the law, its implementation, and its administration at all levels.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you.

I'd like to take you to another area of your work and also an area that the United Nations has commented on, which is the impact, particularly on indigenous women, of climate change and of investment in resource extraction projects.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on how projects, such as new pipeline and mega-project construction and other resource-based development, can have the impact of negatively affecting the economic security of indigenous women in particular.

[Prof. Margot Young]

I can speak generally to this. There's a lot of literature documenting this in relation to specific climate challenges, but it is the case that women are distinctively and differently vulnerable to the ravages of climate degradation. This is particularly true for indigenous women, who very often live close to large extractive industry sites. We see that women's vulnerability is an economic vulnerability. The kinds of jobs that are generated by extractive industries and the impact on the economy when those jobs fluctuate is often felt quite distinctly and negatively by women.

I'm going to add a little to that scenario—and I think this is common knowledge, of course—that women have a unique and amplified physical vulnerability to environmental toxins. The reproductive health consequences for these indigenous women who live close to these extractive industrial sites are really quite significant as well. We're seeing different indigenous populations across Canada being disproportionately and negatively affected by environmental contamination, not just from extractive industries, but also from tailings or toxins, leaks, and those sorts of things.

It really points again to the need to think about the gendered consequences and to have a lens that allows you access to the gender inequality consequences across a range of policy options. Really, what a national gender equality strategy would allow is the kind of systematic thinking about this issue that really would make the change to women's status in Canada.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you. I appreciate your advocacy and research, because we need to break through this plateau that we've reached.

I'm going to switch my focus to Dr. Lumpkin. Thank you for being here today.

I want to start with a university-related story, just in response to my colleague MP Falk's comments about women entering construction. The university in my riding is Vancouver Island University. I've been hearing from the people who are training the heavy equipment operators—which are increasingly expensive and high-tech. This whole generation grew up on computer games. They say in my region, with its mining and forestry companies, that they're biasing their hiring towards women because they are more respectful of this extremely expensive equipment. They have a more subtle touch, so they have fewer equipment rollovers and so on.

But I'll leave that with you in your work, both on the university side and leadership.

I'd like to hear a bit more about the work you've done in Halifax, especially with YWCA. Perhaps you can offer the committee some reflections on the kinds of economic struggles of some of the women you've been personally mentoring, and especially the effects of poverty on their even entering the workplace in the first place.

[Ramona Lumpkin]

Thank you. I'd be happy to talk about that.

I do sit on an advisory committee to the YWCA Halifax. It's a program working with very marginalized, low-income women, trying to help them develop some very basic skills—confidence, resumé writing, even dressing for interviews—to move them into work experience and help them achieve economic security for themselves and, in many cases, their children.

The women who are part of that program have faced and struggled with extreme challenges. The program that is currently being run, which is federally funded, puts them into 12-week placements so they get work experience in places like libraries, in senior care, and with the homeless. Many of them want to work with children in children's centres. Our advisory group sees through this program the enormous hill that these women have to climb; and I'll share this.

Most recently, with the intake of 12 women, the staff member who runs the program is saying that this is the most gung-ho, excited, committed group she's worked with in the program. They always show up for the training. But she's had real difficulty finding job placements for them because, in this instance, and perhaps uncharacteristically in the program, seven out of 12 of them have criminal records. They've been tagged for assault or for theft. Who knows what is behind that and what kind of desperation drove them or led them to run into trouble with the law? So, they're now triply disadvantaged in even being able to get a work placement. We're all putting our shoulders to the wheel trying to find places that will take them and give them that job experience. Down the road they may be eligible to pay for a pardon and so on. These are women with children—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, but that's your time.

[Ramona Lumpkin]

—who are trying to make a life for themselves.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We'll go now to Ms. Damoff for her seven minutes.