Canadian universities fail to meet diversity hiring targets

Another program likely to be examined in the context of  the diversity and inclusion agenda, as Minister Duncan has indicated:

The Canada Research Chairs program – one of the country’s premier tools to attract and retain top academic talent – has failed to meet its own targets for the hiring of women, visible minorities, people with disabilities and indigenous Canadians, and the federal program’s steering committee says it is urging universities to meet their equity goals.

In a letter sent to university presidents last month, the head of the committee said its members are concerned about the “very slow progress” that has been made on diversity among the 1,880 regular chairs.

“We are calling on you and your colleagues to sustain and intensify your efforts, in order to address, as soon as possible, the under-representation of individuals from the four designated groups within the program,” wrote Ted Hewitt, president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, one of three agencies with representatives on the committee.

Federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan, who had a long career in academia before entering politics, says she ordered a review of the program and is taking the equity issue “enormously seriously.”

“I have spent the last 25 years of my life fighting so that young women wouldn’t face the same challenges I did,” she said.

Targets are set based on an estimate of how many people that belong to each group are in the pool of eligible academics. For women, the target was 30.6 per cent, but only 28.9 per cent of research chairs were female; the number of chairs who identified as being a member of a visible minority was 13.1 per cent, against a target of 15 per cent; indigenous scholars made up 0.95 per cent of the program, compared with a goal of 1 per cent; and persons with disabilities had only 0.59 per cent representation, although the target was 4 per cent.

Universities’ compliance varies widely across the country, and can differ slightly from year to year as scholars move among institutions. Of the top 15 research universities in Canada, most met two of four targets, with the University of British Columbia and Queen’s University meeting three. The University of Calgary and the University of Ottawa met none of their four targets.

Dalhousie and the University of Montreal could not provide figures upon request. All schools said the designations are self-reported and, for that reason, identification among the equity categories may not be complete.

Source: Canadian universities fail to meet diversity hiring targets – The Globe and Mail