Female academics excluded from recognition and equal pay: study

Two decades after women began to outnumber men on university campuses, those gains in the student population haven’t translated into many victories for female researchers and faculty.

These are the conclusions of a new report, commissioned by the federal government two years ago after a prominent research granting program failed to choose even one woman for 19 awards. The 252-page study from the Council of Canadian Academies presents a highly critical look at the barriers limiting the progress of women’s academic careers and argues that Canada is not fulfilling its commitments to gender equity as a result.

Some key findings:

• Biases in recruitment and evaluation of women academics can negatively impact career trajectories.
• A persistent salary gap – with even full professors making 95 per cent of male salaries – can have effects over the long term, including in pension payments.
• Women in universities spend more time on childcare than men, and promotion and tenure processes lack exit and re-entry points that would make a career more flexible.
• Socialization and stereotypes define social roles and female students report lower levels of self-confidence in physical sciences, computer science, engineering and mathematics.
• There is a disconnect between the subjects students study in high school and their career goals, particularly in science and math fields.

Reprinted from the Globe and Mail

Today, The Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks the 13th anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that has been set apart to remember the lives of the family, friends, lovers, and strangers we have lost throughout the year as a result of anti-trans* violence. As individuals personally invested in the recognition, protection, accommodation, embrace, and appreciation of transsexual,* transgender,* genderqueer,* two-spirited, and other/non-gendered individuals, it pains us to have to observe this day every year. Therefore, as part of your observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we encourage you to write to your Member of Parliament requesting that they support Bill C-279, the federal ‘gender identity’ bill.
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As you may or may not know, Bill C-279 is the federal bill that seeks to include ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ as protected grounds both in the discrimination provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and in the hate crimes provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada. The bill will provide the frameworks needed to ensure that violence against trans people is accurately recorded and redressed by violence prevention programs nation-wide (including law enforcement). It will also establish the legal foundation needed to get people thinking about the  violence being done to trans people in Canada and around the world, both personally and systemically.

You can find the name and contact information of your Member of Parliament here.

If you don’t know who your Member of Parliament is, you can find your riding here and then find your riding in the contact link above.

Your assistance is deeply appreciated.

In celebratory, pensive, and sorrowful solidarity,

The Queer Ontario Steering Committee