Dr. Cynthia Alexander
on the "WOMEN IN THE ACADEMY" Roundtables
held at the General Assembly of the HSSFC in Ottawa on 20 November 1999

In a period of rapid and radical transition in the university environment, it is important and timely to take time to consider the status of women in Canadian universities. Technological changes on and off campus, a prolonged period of universities underfunding across the country, regional disparity between universities, marked demographic shifts, the changing research grant environment across the country, the rationalization of the way university departments are organized, the push for commercialization ... all of these issues pointed to a need to reflect upon how women were fairing in academe, as teachers, researchers, students, administrators. The Humanities and Social Sciences Federation (HSSFC) held two roundtables on 20 November 1999 at the Annual General Meeting of the HSSFC in Ottawa, designed to identify what we know and the gaps in our understanding of the academic communities within which women contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge, the organization of university systems, and their other contributions to the communities within which work, learn and live.

The first of the back-to-back double roundtable sessions on "Women in the Academy," gave participants the opportunity to hear several invited guest speakers share their insights, while the second roundtable was designed to discuss the organization of an annual, full-day "Women in the Academy" Colloquium at the yearly Congress. The first such event will be held on May 26 2000 at the University of Alberta. It is hoped that this initiative will attract an interdisciplinary audience of faculty and graduate students, and the interested public, and that studies undertaken by different organizations, such as the CAUT, and by researchers in different disciplines, can be coalesced, followed by collaborative endeavours to fill the gaps in our understanding.

The special guest speakers at the first Roundtable in November were invited to provide some insight into the status of women in Canadian universities, based on their experience and on their research. The challenges and opportunities, choices and constraints facing women in the academy are campus wide. We therefore invited Dr. Monique Frize,¹a professor in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, and at the University of Ottawa, a Professor in the School of Information Technology and Engineering, to speak to us about the status of women in the sciences. In December, 1989, she was appointed the first holder of the Nortel-NSERC Women in Engineering Chair at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton) and Professor in the Electrical Engineering department. Dr. Penni Stewart,² an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at York University, was invited to share her research findings, undertaken with Drs. Michael Ornstein and Janice Drakich, on the progress of women through the ranks in Canadian universities. As President of the Women's Studies Association, Dr. Marianne Ainley,³ an historian of science and Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, was invited to share her insights about the status of Women's Studies Programs in Canada and their future. We invited Dr. Ruby Heap⁴ (B.A., M.A. (McGill); Ph.D. (Montréal) History.), the Director of the Women's Studies Program at Ottawa University, to share her observations about the strategies used to create a success story in the evolution of her university's Women's Studies program. Unfortunately, Dr. Jeannette Lynes, who chairs the CAUT Status of Women Committee, was unable to attend, tho' she had hoped to do so.

Dr. Penni Stewart reminded us that "how to count is important." At least statistically, she stated, twenty years of activism has made a change for women in academe. From the 1950s to the mid- I 970s, data show that women academics experienced pay discrimination. That gap, she's found, has narrowed considerably: "Women and men in universities as full-time faculty are starting to look more alike. ... There's a real shift. Women are progressing through the ranks, tho' a little more slowly than we may have liked." Stewart, Drakich, and Ornstein have been following a cohort since 1985 of women and men to chart their progress through the ranks, with the finding that "people are moving through." Their research doesn't give them knowledge about inclusivity and diversity, but Dr. Stewart knows from her two-year term as Director of Affirmative Action at York University, that York has made very little progress. While the overall statistical findings show progress, the research project shows that major gains in some disciplines have not been made. For example, "after ten years of affirmative action, York has not hired a single woman in chemistry, computer science ... and maybe one in economics." The sciences remain "quite chilly." Equity concerns arise when we look to the downsizing of the Humanities, Arts, and Fine Arts across the country. Dr. Stewart advised that we have to watch very carefully, the growing importance of 'marketability' considerations in many universities, with the shifting of hiring into interdisciplinary areas. Further, she reminded us that between 1967 - 1972 when a huge proportion of faculty were hired, we lost a great opportunity to build women into the campus; indeed, between that period, the number of women on Canadian campuses actually fell. Given the greying of the professoriate, we may have another opportunity to introduce more women into Canadian campus life. However, Dr. Stewart cautioned that we 64 run the risk now of having exactly the same thing happening now" as in the '67 - '72 period. That is, "there will be a huge scramble for people to teach and equity issues can get quickly pushed aside." Her research indicates that we need to "press Statistics Canada to undertake survey work that is useful to researchers ... educational data is very unfriendly. It's not longitudinal."

Dr. Monique Frize was the first women to graduate in engineering from the University of Ottawa. She walked into her office as the first holder of the Nortel-NSERC Women in Engineering Chair at the University of New Brunswick on the day after the Montreal Massacre. Her concerns about women in science engage her in a host of activities, including preparation for a conference in 2002 in Ottawa, which will bring together between 800 - I 000 men and women in engineering to examine equity issues. The statistics on female enrollment in Canada in the sciences are scary. Progress has not been made, with some exceptions, namely Environmental Science and Chemical Engineering. In computer science, enrollment statistics show fewer that ten per cent of students are women. From her work with Canada's science and engineering summer camps, she shared statistics that show that between 1993 - 1998, the number of girls aged 8 - 13 enrolled in those camps was decreasing! In response to those statistics, the camps now run a week for girls only, using different ways to interest girls in science. Of course, the major influence on girls which affects their interest in science are parents and teachers. Girls need role models. Dr. Frize travels Ontario spending a morning with young girls in their classes. That short time together, she's found, affects their course and career choices. In her discussion on women faculty in the sciences, Dr. Frize referred roundtable participants to an important new report"that she recommends everyone take a look at, entitled "A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT," which is available online [http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html#The Study]. The statistics, shown in Figures I and II as examples from the report, reveal a problem that is reflected in campuses across North America.

Figure II: % Women Faculty in the School of Science at MIT - 1985-1994

Dr. Frize has written: "Enrolments of women in engineering have increased steadily (at the rate of 1 percent per year) for the past five or six years. We may reach a plateau or see a decline if the obstacles, that are more systemic in nature, and embedded in the culture, the curriculum and the teaching style, are not removed. The workplace environment is also a major factor and issues such as accommodating career and family (for both sexes), the elimination of harassment, sexism, and discrimination will have a positive impact on the retention of women who have chosen to be engineers. Women must also participate actively in the governance of the profession if it is to reflect their perspectives and respond to their needs."⁵

Dr. Frize made a further observation that surprised some roundtable participants: "when women get full tenure, they come to see how isolated they are. Age is a factor in women's isolation and invisibility." In the end, Monique stated, the main problem is cultural-how we view women and what they do. Things that will help alleviate the situation, according to Monique: more women on recruiting committees; more women students on recruiting committees; a spousal hiring program; toping up positions; a women's faculty award; better balance between work and life; a redefinition of 'success'. She reminded us to consider: "While the numbers of women may be increasing, but what is their impact?"

Dr. Marianne Ainley shared some very important insights and observations about the status of Women's Studies programs in Canada. She has provided a textual version of her talk, which follows below:

Women' studies in Canada has a history, a present and hopefully a future. Individual courses have been offered at Canadian universities for about three decades, while actual sequence of courses, leading to minor, major, or honours degrees began in the mid-to-late 1970s. The number of institutions offering undergraduate and graduate degrees has grown in the past few decades¹. Some have achieved high profiles. We can safely say that in Canada, the existence of women's studies, the academic arm of the women's movement, is no longer "Our universities' best kept secrets."²

This does not mean, however, that we have a) up-to-date information about each of our academic women's studies programs, b) comparative data across the country, and c) a clear sense of what it is like to teach and do research as well as study in women's studies units. In fact, there has only been one major study on the state of women's/feminist studies in Canada and that is nearly IO years out of date. Funded by the SSHRC in 1987, Dr. Margrit Eichler and her team (all sociologists) began collecting data in 1987. Reports of the various phases of the Canadian Women's Studies Project (CWSP) were published in the Fall 1990 issue of Atlantis.

Since 1990, several Canadian articles on women's studies appeared in feminist journals. In a Review Essay entitled "The Canadian Women's Studies Project: Inside Looking In?" published in Resources of Feminist Research in 1991, Somer Brodribb and the late Michèle Pujol wrote a critique of the CWSP. Linda Carty's article "Women's studies in Canada: A Discourse and Practice of Exclusion" appeared in the same issue of the journal. In 1994, Peta Tancred published "Into the Third Decade of Canadian Women's Studies: A Glass Half Empty or Half Full?" in Women's Studies Quarterly. Two years later, Margrit Eichler's presentation at a workshop in Berlin, "Women's Studies in Canada: Progress or Stagnation ... ? was published in the workshop's Proceedings.³ A series of articles based on a round-table discussion concerning "field-based learning in the practicum course," held at the 1997 CWSA's conference in St. John's, appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of Atlantis; more recent papers on "Equity in the Women's Studies Classroom" by Jacqueline Reed-Walsh and Elaine Correra, and "Women's Studies and the Internet" by Alison King and Avi Hyman were published in Canadian Woman Studies (1998) and Resources For Feminist Research, 1999 respectively. In contrast, a recent major study on "The status of women faculty in Canadian universities," by Michael Ornstein, Penni Stewart and Janice Drakich, published in Education Quarterly Review in 1998, does not mention women's studies professors.⁴

In addition to the few published articles, issues concerning women's studies have been discussed at the Annual General Meetings of the Canadian Women's Studies Association (CWSA), and at the coordinators' breakfasts held during the annual Congress, as well as the meetings of the various provincial associations, such as the BC and Ontario WSA. The outcome of these meetings has not been generally made available to other women's studies faculty or students. Moreover, many of these discussions may not be representative, because not all women's studies chairs/co-ordinators are able to travel to the annual meetings and many women's studies faculty members do not even belong to the CWSA--our national organization. Thus the number of groups discussing the situation of Canadian women's studies, and the audiences of sessions, talks and keynote addresses devoted to women's studies issues and concerns, is rather limited.⁵

Students are present at some public fora but may not be part of the "invisible colleges" or informal network of women's studies teachers/researchers which may provide qualitative infon-nation to members of the networks, though not to others. Clearly, we need to do another major project on Women's Studies in Canada.

What I would like to do in the rest of my presentation is to 1) identify issues arising from the Canadian Women's Studies Project (CWSP); 2) report on the responses to my recent email request for input for this "Women in the Academy" round table; and 3) outline the need for a large-scale interdisciplinary research project.

1) Issues arising from the CWSP.

The research team, consisting of sociologists Margrit Eichler and Louise Vandelac and a number of graduate student at OISE, was sociological inits approach. It used mainly survey instruments and relatively few in depth interviews during the study. Somer Brodribb (a political scientist) and Michèle Pujol (an economist) critiqued the research team as being white and heterosexual whose data included men, but not women of colour or lesbians. They considered the study "a massive, yet incomplete, source of quantitative data ... [which ] is short on qualitative information and on strategy-oriented analysis."⁶ They further identified issues which should have been included in the interview questions such as "sexual harassment, processes of exclusion, racism, lesbian visibility, isolation" and part-time and sessional employment.⁷ According to these authors the data also lacked diversity and the questions did not deal sufficiently with institutional support, flmding and staffing of women's studies programs. By contrast, Peta Tancred, a sociologist and, at the time, Director of the McGill Centre for Teaching and Research on Women, wrote in 1994, "Despite considerable criticism of the project ... the official overview of women's studies programs in Canada is particularly well done and enables us to appreciate the extent of progress over the first two decades of women's studies in the academy and including the recent past."⁸ She also wrote that "Despite this image of a numerous and solidly rooted women's studies community on the Canadian scene, I cannot help feeling -- along with many of my colleagues -- that the structure is fragile."⁹

Now, five years later, in spite of the establishment of several new academic programs and units, including the one at UNBC which I chaired from 1995-98, and the growth of other programs, it does indeed seem that something is fragile. Is it the structure? We need to find out.

2) Responses to my request for input.

Following Cynthia Alexander's invitation that I participate in this round table, I sent out an email letter to all universities, two CEGEP and five BC community college women's studies chairs, directors, or coordinators."¹⁰ My letter explained the purpose of the "women in the academy" round table and asked for input."¹¹ Given the shortage of time, I was unable to contact students outside my own university."¹²

Many of the respondents agreed that my inquiry was timely and praised Cynthia, WIN, and the HSSFC for initiating the round table discussion. [The findings follow.]

Topics and Concerns In Women's Studys

1. Sexuality and sexual orientation.
2. Racism.
3. Rarity of ethnically and racially diverse faculty.
4. Experiences of minority women as faculty and students.
5. Under-representation of First Nations women among faculty and in the curriculum.
6. Need for broadening the Women's Studies curriculum to include the environment, science and technology.
7. The situation of sessional instructors--overworked, underpaid, insecure, and often left out of contract negotiations.
8. Non-replacement of faculty (on leave, retired, etc.)
9. Dependence on the goodwill of the administration.
10. undertow/ebb-tide effect¹³ that is the erosion of previous gains concerning women and women's issues.
11. Lack of institutional support including funding.
12. Lack of promotion for women into higher administration.
13. Women in higher administration who do not mentor other women
14. Overwork - heavy teaching workloads plus most of the emotional work (e.g mentoring) -- no energy left for meetings and lobbying.
15. Technological push
1. negative effect: having a PC means less secretarial support;
2. positive effect: web-based courses can reach students who would not be able to commute from distant locations.
16. Pedagogical issues deriving from the administrations' wish to increase class sizes.
17. Under-staffing.
18. Marginalization of feminist researchers who are located in conventional departments and are tangentially associated with a women's studies/feminist teaching and research unit.
19. Small universities in remote areas have special concerns (isolation, low enrolment, misconceptions re value of degree).
20. Shoe-string budget for some, increase in funding for others.
21. Interference from the administration re structure and curriculum.
22. Safety issue for students, concerns over the reduced funding of university women's centres.
23. Impact of lack of administrative support on students (worry over the survival of their program and the value of their degrees).

3) Do we need another large scale study of Canadian women's studies?

I firmly believe, along with many of my respondents, that we do. This new study needs to be designed and carried out by an interdisciplinary team and has to address issues such as

1. Growth--in 1999 there are more women's studies academic units than were a decade ago.
2. How programs function, what are the different structures, i.e. autonomous--with its own faculty, dispersed-- drawing on faculty from other departments, or semi-dispersed having its own faculty, cross appointed faculty as well as associate faculty who teach one or more courses in the academic program.
3. Compositions of faculty, their age, training, philosophy, ethnicity and self disclosed sexual orientation.
4. What proportion of the women's study faculty is tenured, tenure track, sessional or part-time, as well as their commitment to women's studies--some professor may be in women's studies units because that is where they found positions, rather than in history, English, or anthropology. How does this impact on their pedagogy, collegiality and commitment to the field?
5. Concerns of sessional instructors who, at some universities, carry a disproportionally large share of teaching women's studies.
6. Concerns of undergraduate and graduate students.
7. Institutional differences between small and large universities, as well as universities and community colleges.
8. How regional and geographical differences impact on faculty and students and the communities in which the universities are located.
9. The relationship between undergraduate and graduate curricula, faculty and students.
10. Administrative and other secretarial support for chairs/co-ordinators, including course remissions.
11. Recognition for work done for the CWSA and in the community. Although the CWSA is in the process of updating its records on women's studies units in Canada, currently it has neither the funding nor the personnel to carry out a major project on its own. The CWSA office should be, however, an important part of a diverse and interdisciplinary research team which would do the research work. It should become the repository of the data. This major new project will provide:
1. up-to-date information about each of our academic women's studies programs
2. comparative data across the country, and
3. a clear sense of what it is like to teach, do research, as well as study in women's studies units.

Qualitative and quantitative data from such a project will enable us to formulate strategies to ensure the survival and growth of Canadian women's studies in the next century.

Dr. Ainley recommended that such a study should be undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of researchers.

Following Dr. Ainley's presentation, Dr. Ruby Heap reflected on the Women's Studies program at the University of Ottawa. She reflected that Women's Studies were one of the first authentic multidisciplinary programs. In thinking about the strategies for the program she has been directing for six years, she advised that hard data is very important, about the number of courses, the number of faculty, and external research funding. A directory of professors and students in Women's Studies was created which, she said, "helped break the problem of invisibility. We were able to make ourselves known." In 1998, a proposal was submitted to create an Institute of Women's Studies; that effort required the mobilization of all women in Women's Studies. It took over a year's work of effort with women sending letters, describing projects that they wanted to do. The initiative had the support of the Equity Officer and importantly, of Support Staff, including administrative assistants. Overwork and stress are key challenges of Women's Studies faculty. Over the next five years, however, the new Institute will gain five times the number of appointments and significantly, control over appointments. One other factor which made a difference in achieving a new Institute, was the M.A. program which began in 1995, the 'credibility' of which made a difference.

As you can see from the above-and inevitably limited-description of the presentations made at the first roundtable on Women' in the Academy, we were exceptionally fortunate and very grateful for the insights offered by Drs. Frize, Stewart, Ainley, and Heap. Indeed, participants overwhelmingly agreed that the roundtable should be replicated at the May 26 "Women in the Academy" Colloquium at Congress 2000 at the University of Alberta.

Biographical Notes

1. Dr. Frize graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science (Electrical Engineering), received an Athlone Fellowship and completed a Master's in Philosophy in Electrical Engineering (Engineering in Medicine) at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London (UK), a Master's of Business Administration at the Université de Moncton (New Brunswick), and a doctorate from Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She worked as a clinical engineer for 18 years, initially at Hôpital Notre-Dame in Montreal (I 971-79), and then was appointed as Director of the Regional Clinical Engineering Service in Moncton, New Brunswick, providing services for seven hospitals in the South-Eastern region. Dr. Frize was also Research Associate in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Université de Moncton and was the first Chair of the Division of Clinical Engineering for the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE).

In 1992, Monique Frize received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa (DU); in June 1993, a Ryerson Fellowship; in 1994, an Honourary Doctorate in Science (DSc) at York University; in 1995, an Honourary Doctorate in Engineering at Lakehead (DEng). She was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 1992 and as Officer of the Order of Canada in October 1993. In 1995, Dr. Frize received the Second Historical Professional Achievement Award (jointly with Dr. Michael Shaffer) from the American College of Clinical Engineers, for her paper: "Clinical Engineering in today's hospital: Perspectives of the Administrator and the Clinical Engineer". In September 1996, Dr. Frize received the 6th Annual Meritas-Tabaret Award for career achievement from the Alumni Association of the University of Ottawa and the Advocacy Award presented by WITT (Women in Trades and Technology) in May 1997.

2. Dr. Penni Stewart was also the Director of Affirmative Action at York for two years before becoming Chair of the Faculty Association in 1998. She has also been active on York's research various equity committees. Her scholarly work, conducted mainly with my research partner, Professor Janice Drakich (Windsor) has involved a study of the Status of Women in Ontario Universities (I 99 1) and more recently, an SSHRC grant to study the status of women in Canadian universities. Although our work has taken up the broad question of women in universities, our recent work has been more focused on the question of women faculty and their representation. Hence, our analysis with Michael Ornstein of women's progress through the ranks."

3. Dr. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley was the first Chair of the Women's/Gender studies programmes at UNBC, 1995 - 1998. She has recently completed her sixth year as President of the Canadian Science and Technology Historical Association and is the President of the Canadian Women's Studies Association. Beginning in 1988, she developed and taught courses on women and science and the environment in the Women's Studies programme, Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. At UNBC she has been teaching interdisciplinary undergraduate courses on feminists issues, research methods, the women's movements, science, technology and women's lives, and women, power and environments. She has also taught graduate seminars on feminist perspectives on science and technology, and gender, power and environmental problems. She is the recipient of two SSHRC Strategic "Women and Work" grants, two team grants, as well as Principal Investigator of several internal Concordia University grants for research in the areas of "Integrated Curriculum in Women's Studies," "Oral History of Women" and "First Nations Women and Environmental Knowledge in Eastern North America." Her publications include two books: Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (I 990) and Restless Energy: A biography of William Rowan, 1891 - 195 7 (1993), eleven book chapters, and more than twenty refereed articles on women and science and the history of Canadian science. She is working on three other books.

4. Dr. Heap's research is in the fields of History of Women and History of Education; Gender and Education; Women and Work; and Women in the Health Professions.

5. Monique Frize, "Women in Engineering in Canada: The next Challenges", published: 1996 Canadian Conference on Electrial & Comput. Eng., (CCECE '96), May, Calgary: pp 365-368.

1. In 1987-88, researchers of the Canadian Women's Studies Project wrote to 59 institutions, 29 of which had "offer[ed] or proposed to offer either a minor, major or diploma in women'§ studies or have some special institute." Margrit Eichler and Rosonna Tite, "Women's studies Professor in Canada: A collective Self-Portrait," Atlantis 16, 1 (Fall 1990): 8; nearly a decade later, Dr. Marilyn MacDonald, Simon Fraser University, sent inquiries concerning courses that are given from feminist perspectives on science to 88 institutions of which 36 had Women's Studies programs. Some were in "the process of changing (generally moving up the academic hierarchy)." Her sample did not include "CEGEPS, community colleges, and university colleges which were not members of the AUCC." MacDonald to Ainley, 15 November 1999.

2. Rosonna Tite and Margaret Malone, "Our Universitie'Best-Kept Secret: Women's Studies in Canada," Atlantis16, 1 (Fall 1990).

3. Proceeding of the workshop "Curriculum Transformation. The Impact of Women's Studies/Gender Studies on the University Training in Canada and Germany." Center for Interdisciplinary Women's Studies (ZiF). Sonderbulletin1996: 1-17.

4. I thank Lesley Biggs for bringing this article to my attention.

5. The 1997 keynote address by Dr. Margaret Conrad, "Cracking the Ideological Code: Women's Studies Strategies for the Millennium" was never published. As I was unable to travel from North-central BC to Newfoundland for this conference because of financial constraints, I learned about this talk from the CWSA's Newsletter(Fall 1997, 7).

6. Brodribb & Puj ol, Ibid., 143.

7. Ibid., 144.

8. Peta Tancred, 'Into the Third Decade of Canadian Women's Studies: A Glass Half Emptyor Half-Full?" Women's Studies Quarterly 1994 (3&$):14.

9. Ibid., 17.

10. The only francophone university was UQAM.

11. I received 30 replies, 27 from chairs/coordinators and three from LYNBC graduate students. I received no response from colleagues in Manitoba, New Brunswick, PEI, and the Yukon.

12. I asked three UNBC Gender Studies graduate students for input. Two of them were transfer students, from Concordia and the University of Western Ontario, respectively; the third was among the first undergraduate Women's Studies students at UNBC.

13. I thank Valérie Raoul of UBC for this term. She uses it to denote the "surreptitious removal of things we fought hard to get (such as wording in job ads positively welcoming applications from women, etc; no more funding for student's women of colour mentoring program, Academic Women's ass. dying because no one had time to lead it....... Raoul to Ainley, 5 November 1999.