Ivory Towers: Feminist Audits

Ivory Towers: Feminist Audits is an annual postcard of statistical data on women and other equity groups. Since 2001, data has been collected from CAUT and Statistics Canada to measures trends in:

• women's critical mass at the Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD level in the student body;
• women's representation amongst senior academic administrators and in major research initiatives such as the Canada Research Chairs program;
• the gender-based faculty wage gap;
• academic women's "baby gap"; and
• the number of Aboriginal faculty teaching at universities and colleges across Canada.

Here are the percentages of women holding various positions in the Canadian academic world:

• University Presidents (2007), 13%
• Tier 1 Canada Research Chairs (2006), 15.8%
• University Vice Presidents (2000), 17.2%
• Full Professors (2005), 18.8%
• Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs (2006), 27.3%
• Associate Professors (2005), 34.7%
• Assistant Professors (2005), 41.4%
• PhD Students Enrolled (2005), 45.6%
• Full-time Non-tenure Track Faculty (2005), 48%
• Master's Students Enrolled, 51.4%
• Undergraduate Students Enrolled (2005), 58.2%

Current data on equity groups other than women in post-secondary education in Canada do not exist, despite urgent and repeated demands by public policy analysts, human rights researchers, and academic activists.

Source: Ivory Towers: Feminist Audits, an annual postcard of statistical data on women and other equity groups, compiled by Wendy Robbins & Michèle Ollivier, PAR-L, with assistance from CAUT and CFHSS. Read more at: www.fedcan.ca/english/issues/issues/audit/index.cfm#pyramid2007 .