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—