Canadian university hikes female salaries to remove gender pay gap

A Canadian university has announced that it will increase salaries for female professors in order to eliminate a gender pay gap.

Wilfrid Laurier University will increase wages for 33 full professors by 3.9 per cent and 119 associate professors by 3 per cent. The adjustments will be applied retroactively from 1 July 2016 and alter only the salaries of female academics employed by the university from 1 July 2014.

The changes were recommended by a committee that was jointly established by the university administration and faculty union to analyse gender-based salary differences at the institution.

The committee did not find a gender difference in salary at the rank of assistant professor. The university said that this was due to efforts by the university in recent years to monitor academic starting salaries.

Deborah MacLatchy, president-designate of the university, said that gender equity with respect to wages and terms and conditions of employment is “an important principle that Laurier must actively support to achieve its goal of enhancing and sustaining diversity within our community”.

In 2015, McMaster University announced that it would increase the salaries of its female academics by C$3,500 (£2,000).

Similar moves have also been made by UK institutions in the past year, including the University of Essex and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com