equal pay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 30, 2015

McMaster to boost all female faculty members’ salaries

McMaster University will add $3,515 to the base salaries of all full-time female faculty members to help correct what it calls “a systematic bias” in favour of male professors.

University officials announced Monday it will spend more than $1 million each year to ensure pay equity among its male and female faculty. The change will affect roughly 340 women — about a third of the university’s 1,000 full-time academic staff.

“It’s an equity issue we felt we simply had to address,” said David Wilkinson, McMaster provost and vice-president (academic). “How can we afford not to do it?”

The average salary of a full-time, permanent faculty member at the school (not including clinicians and clinical faculty) was $139,900 in 2013.

Michelle Dion, incoming president of the McMaster University Faculty Association, was part of the joint committee of faculty and administration members that endorsed the change.

“It would have been nicer to not find a gender pay gap,” she said. “The most surprising thing, I think, for most people, is that McMaster is doing something about it.”

The changes come out of a two-year study of Mac’s wages that found a gap between the salaries of men and women. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)