Brescia professors are finally fed up and ready for change. This past summer, professors and faculty members at the all-girl affiliate college at Western University threatened to strike due to gendered income disparities as compared to their male counterparts. They also began a letter writing campaign, garnering letters of support from students, faculty, labour ministers, and governmental actors all across Canada to help them both address and put an end to gender-based wage discrimination.
The average salary of Brescia staff is the second lowest in the province, ranking 21st out of 22 institutions. This figure is particularly troubling given that Brescia is Canada’s only all-female university college with 72% women constituting its faculty, and the highest proportion of women academics of any Canadian university.
On October 12, 2016, the Brescia Faculty Association and the Brescia University College administration succeeding in reaching an agreement to close the gap. The deal will eventually bring Brescia’s professors pay roughly equal to their fellow colleagues at King’s, Huron, and Western’s main campus. Despite progressive steps towards pay parity for female staff, it will take four years for this agreement to be implemented.
Pay disparity based on gendered biases takes place all over the world in thousands of professions, and it is truly saddening that this has been the reality in our own Western community. What is even more upsetting is that most students have absolutely no idea that this issue has been occurring. Two polls were posted in separate Facebook groups asking students whether or not that had heard any information about Brescia’s wage gap battle. Out of 45 students in a FIMS group, only six people had responded saying that had heard about the issue, and in an all-female Greek organization group, seven out of 38 members who answered the poll had heard about the issue, with five Brescia students among the students that were unaware.
Part of this widespread unawareness is attributed to the lack of coverage dedicated to this issue. Western nor its other affiliates have issued any statements informing the public about this issue and have not expressed their support for their sister college. Aside from the Gazette, no other news outlet or publication has touched on the subject, one that is negatively affecting many of our fellow students and educators. Especially for female students on the verge of beginning their careers past university, it is a nerve-wracking reality that we are at risk of pursuing professions in a world where we very quite possibly might not be treated and valued the same as our male counterparts.
Though the agreement has been signed and the issue has been resolved within Brescia’s campus, the issue of gendered pay disparity is still very much alive throughout many campuses and in many professional industries. We should see this situation as a source of hope in that gender inequality can be a thing of the past, but we should also be aware of the ways that prominent issues as such needing mass attention can fly under the radar.
As female writers for an online magazine serving to empower the female collegiate, we felt the need to shed light on this issue and make everyone aware of reality at hand. Gender inequality remains a major issue in the world, throughout Canada, and even on our home campus. It is up to us as students and active leaders in the community to help raise awareness and seek to come up with solutions to this problem. We encourage you to find out more about the Brescia wage gap battle and share this information with your peers to spark discussion. To all you girls out there: don’t let anyone coerce you into settling by arbitrarily paying you less than a man and get away with it. Fight for your rights and demand pay parity wherever you end up in the professional realm.
Sources:
http://ocufa.on.ca/blog-posts/brescia-faculty-take-strides-towards-closing-gender-wage-gap/
http://www.bresciafacultyassociation.ca/#newmode-embed-185-196
This article was part of a project creating an alternate mode of dissemination on an issue that was not adequately covered, and was co-written with Hannah Northgraves, Tanya Sahni, and Lisa van der Geest.