Tracy Isaac's

Need to be competitive

I was very please to see Clive Seligman (letter, Nov. 21) highlight two of the central claims from my "In 500-words" Column (Nov. 14), namely that "the  (FCP) program was implemented in 1986 in an effort to rectify an unjust system of practice that has a long tradition of favoring able-bodied white men, and disadvantaging others," and that "the goal of addressing injustice is a moral one."  I'll charitably assume that Professor Clive Seligman agrees that the goal of addressing injustice is a moral one, and infer that his quarrel is with either the claim that practices of inequitable hiring are unjust, or the claim that hiring practices have been inequitable.  He's quite right that I did not provide a s shred of evidence for my claims in the column.

Are the numbers not by now familiar?  In the very report that Professor Seligman refers to, Full-time Faculty Distribution, Appointments, and Recruitment - by Gender, we see that the proportion of full-time female faculty members has improved only because the number of males has fallen, not because the number of females has actually increased (Figure 1).  We see that only 6% of our Full Professors are women (Table 1).  At Western, it is only in the less secure positions of Lecturer and Instructor that the representation of women outnumbers the representation of men (Figure 3).  Women are, indeed, in the system.  Men just seem more likely to "get somewhere."  The report notes that "...women at the Associate Professor and Full Professor ranks are underrepresented at Western, in comparison to other Ontario universities."  The difficulties filter down to our graduate programs as well.  Note that "in general, Ontario universities have graduates slightly  higher annual proportions of women PhDs than has Canada, whereas Western has not matched the Canadian average in the period since 1991" (9).  We're not doing as well as our competitors.

Finally, I must take issue with Professor Seligman's charge that I, and PSCEE, have an "ideologically-based conviction that Western is a hotbed of discrimination against women."  that is simply not true.  I was pointing out that our compliance with the Federal Contractors Program requirements is in jeopardy, and that, like it or not, that could have grave consequences for the University's federal funding.  It is in jeopardy because we appear not to be doing as well as our counterparts in addressing equity issues.

If, as Professor Seligman believes that data show, our efforts to hire women have started to pay off over the past 8 years, I suggest that we redouble them so that we can be competitive with those institutions to which we like to compare ourselves.  Let's remember too that employment equity involves more than just hiring, and more than just women.  Retention and the generation of strong and diverse applicant pools are other issues that need our attention.

Tracy Isaacs, President, Western's Caucus on Women's Issues

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