International Women’s Day

Today, CUFA reaffirms its commitment to the advancement of women faculty and the promotion of equitable working conditions at Concordia.

The current health crisis has had a significant impact on women. In particular, female colleagues with children or caregiving responsibilities are often adversely affected. The pandemic has made workload inequities painfully obvious. Many members have had difficulties balancing work and family life and women generally carry a heavier load. This is usually true both at home and in their various departments. Some face challenges focusing on research and worry that this may have a negative effect on their career.

What was for a long time considered a personal issue became an acutely professional one as well, when everyone was compelled to work remotely. Home, office (and classroom!) are now closely intertwined.

Help is hard to come by and challenging to implement… But we received interesting suggestions (and sometimes cries for help…) from members in our recent survey. They urge CUFA to:

• Find ways to support parents when daycare services or schools are closed;
• Advocate for workload arrangements such as extra course remissions or accomodations, reduced service requirements or exceptional releases for struggling parents;
• Improve and simplify the Compassionate Leave program;

We’ll make sure to relay these suggestions to the Employer and continue to push for a commitment on their part to improve the working conditions of women faculty.

In solidarity