As December draws near I’ve started to reflect on the significance of Dec. 6. Designated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, the day recalls the murder of 14 women at an engineering school in Montreal in 1989. It is also a day on which each of us should renew our commitment to take action to end violence against women and girls.
On that December day 23 years ago I was in the very early stages of my work as a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at the University of New Brunswick. As I recall, almost all of my graduate student colleagues were male and there were no female faculty in the department. This was typical of most engineering departments at that time, especially mechanical engineering departments.
As I reflect on that day and those that followed, I don’t remember there being much discussion or commotion about the events unfolding in Montreal. There was shock and horror, of course, but I don’t recall any sense of danger or concern for safety among the graduate students in our own engineering school more than 500 kilometers away. Only later did I come to realize the full magnitude of what had happened.
The reason for this is clear, now. My department, like many other engineering departments across the country, was composed primarily of men. Whether I knew it or not, my experience at that time was one of privilege and power. I was a male in a male-dominated faculty about to enter a male-dominated profession. I was sheltered from that day’s dark events and the reality of the fear felt by so many others not only in the academy but also across the nation.
Indeed, the violence perpetrated that day against individuals simply because they were women cannot be forgotten, nor should it be. Violence against women and girls was then — and continues now — to be one of the greatest problems and shames in our society. Every day women and girls are the victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
According to the YWCA, more than 100,000 women and children are forced out of their homes and into shelters every year as a result of violence. The situation is especially terrible for women from marginalized groups. We know from the DisAbled Women’s Network that women with disabilities can be as much as 10 times more likely to be victims of violence. The Native Women’s Association of Canada’s Sisters in Spirit (SIS) research documented 582 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women before the federal government defunded the SIS program in 2010.
Despite such staggering statistics, Canada does not have a national action plan to end violence against women and girls, and continues to defund advocacy organizations that have provided a voice for women and the most vulnerable in Canada.
This year, CAUT’s statement for Dec. 6 (see page A8) provides some ideas for concrete action which academic staff associations and their members can do in an effort to end gender-based violence in Canada. I encourage each of our member associations to issue its own statement and to act on one or more of the suggestions.
Marc Lépine’s actions on that December day in 1989 exemplified misogyny and rage against women. They galvanized the Canadian women’s movement in an effort to end violence against women. However, his attack on certain women — female engineering students he saw as rising above their stations in a profession he believed ought to be the domain of men — should also be cause for reflection by those in the academy.
Three months earlier, in September 1989, almost 33,000 students were enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs across the country. According to a 1990 Engineers Canada enrolment report, only 13% were women, a share significantly smaller than that for the academy as a whole, at just over 50%, and for disciplines like education, at greater than 70%. As well, Statistics Canada numbers show there were just over 3,300 faculty members teaching in these engineering programs a year later. A very small fraction of these, less than 2%, were women. On Canadian campuses as a whole, women represented only 20% of university faculty members at that time.
A much more recent Engineers Canada enrolment report from 2010–2011 shows women now account for slightly less than 18% of total engineering enrolments. The highest representations are found in environmental (39.7%), biosystems (38.9%), geological (36.9%) and chemical (33.5%) engineering programs. The lowest are in electrical 12.7%), mechanical (10.4%) and software (9.7%) engineering programs.
Elsewhere on campuses, Statistics Canada’s Post-secondary Student Information System data show that in 2008 women accounted for more than 60% of total university graduates across all disciplines, with the highest proportions in the humanities (64.3%), social and behavioural sciences (67.0%) and education (76.1%).
Engineers Canada reports that in 2010–2011 about 11% of faculty members teaching in engineering programs in the country were women. From CAUT’s Almanac for the same year, the proportion of women teaching in other disciplines was 57.4% in education, 44.2% in humanities, 41.0% in social and behavioural sciences, 35.9% in business, 23.3% in physical and life sciences and 20.4% in math and computer science.
No easy explanations exist for why fewer women pursue professional careers in engineering or become academic staff members in engineering or other hard-science disciplines. CAUT and its member associations, though, have to take the inequity in gender representation across disciplines seriously. What are the barriers and attitudes that exist to discourage women’s participation? What are the additional barriers and attitudes that exist to discourage the participation of women from marginalized groups? Are we doing everything possible to ensure equity in the academy?
The solution is not a passive expectation that women will adapt to current structures. Rather, we must work to ensure our institutions are more inclusive of all genders and those from marginalized groups; that barriers limiting participation are removed; and that protections and rights are not lost along the way. Academic staff associations are in the best position to work towards these goals through collective bargaining and other mechanisms.
While good work has accomplished much over the years, it never hurts to remind ourselves that we can do more to ensure that our institutions are inclusive, equitable and safe for all members of the academy.