Many women who completed the training found themselves competing in a tight job market with others from one or two year career or technical programs and their education was at best second to "real" post-secondary education. The effect of "make-work" education programs, such as those under CJS, is to sap money away from more successful education, which has long term benefits. Such programs also provide a too-easy rebuttal to those who demand access for what are seen as "under-privileged" students---52% of the population of Canada.

University of Toronto

Employment equity, too, has been a non-issue in the B.C. college system. The implicit assumption is that women are employed and paid equitably, but a review of the data indicates that such assumptions are unfounded. The lack of women in senior management persists and many departments, including those traditional for women such as English and Social Sciences, often show a distressing imbalance. In computing sciences and mathematics women are notable only by their absence. Hiring and laying off do not occur in the context of gender parity: women are still the last hired and first fired. In fact, gender equity is not mentioned at all in issues of hiring and firing and protection against outright discrimination is not available to women working in the college system. The official position is that employment equity has been legislated and therefore employment equity has been achieved. A closer scrutiny is warranted.

Women frequently find themselves permanently on the part-time or sessional teaching lists; they are often placed several steps lower on salary scales than comparably educated and experienced men; are given time schedules and course loads that are crippling; and qualify for few educational leave opportunities. The inequities of the early seventies seem to have rolled, with little resistance, into the late eighties.

A summary of full-time teaching faculty in B.C. colleges and universities shows that over the last ten years the number of men had remained constant at about 1250 and the number of women at 500. A screen of thirteen colleges conducted in 1987 (1) confirms that the situation for gender parity is not as rosy as one would hope. Women in nursing sciences, for example, occupy 98% of the positions, while women in business administration occupy only 23%. English and Social Sciences have 38% and 36% respectively, despite the fact that 43.3% of M.A. candidates in 1986 were women.

Where are these qualified women going? As the demand for "Ph.D. preferred" increases, women may find themselves without the necessary credentials for initial employment or advancement; in 1986, only 27.5% of Ph.D. graduates were women. However, now that more positions are about to open up, the drive for affirmative action is imperative. Without legislative intervention, the status of women employed in the post-secondary system could further erode, since the move is toward not gender parity but "hiring the best," as if the two were mutually exclusive.

The college system sees itself as above any discussion of employment equity. There is a smug confidence that we do well enough. Yet it continues to be very difficult to prove that we do well enough at all. Collecting information on pay scales, education levels, work loads and employment history and mobility is difficult if not impossible. The idea seems pervasive that gender parity used to be a problem; the issue of systemic discrimination against women and minorities is not even raised on college boards, in senior managements, by union executives or hiring committees. Silence encloses it.