With a response rate of 80 per cent for UBC Vancouver, this year’s Employment Equity Survey reports high rates of female representation.
Associate VP Equity and Inclusion Arig al Shaibah reported the results of the survey to a committee of UBC's Board of Governors in November, discussing the representation of various groups across the university's workforce.
80 per cent of employees completed the survey, representing 6,201 faculty members and 11,483 staff participating in the results.
She also acknowledged “persistent areas in underrepresentation” of certain groups.
Strong representation among women
Broadly, the survey demonstrated strong representation among women in the university’s workforce, polled at 54.9 per cent, higher than both municipal and national workforce representation levels.
This number is also a slight increase from the 2021 report’s 53.6 per cent.
Underrepresentation in Indigenous, racialized and disabled groups
However, three categories fell short of regional or national workforce levels.
Indigenous representation remains slightly below Vancouver’s workforce and two percentage points below the national average.
The representation of people with disabilities is slightly below both regional and national averages.
Racialized representation is higher than the national average, but roughly seven percentage points below Vancouver’s workforce.
Looking specifically at senior managers – deans, associate vice-presidents and others, representation drops below regional and overall university workforce levels. Last year’s report noted that only 21.5 per cent of senior managers were BIPOC. In the recent interim report, the number remains largely unchanged, at 22 per cent.
Future plans for increased data collection
al Shaibah said UBC will work to collect more comprehensivec data in light of the survey's results.
Firstly, UBC will begin investigating employee life cycles and how faculty move through their experience at the university. She explained this process would involve a deeper analysis of career progression, tenure timelines and turnover rates.
The university is also looking into gathering disaggregated data, which is data that has been broken down into detailed sub-categories.
“It’s much more useful to be able to know what the data looks like for different ranks of faculty,” she said. Some groups of interest include lecturers, assistant professors and full time professors. At the higher levels of operation, the university is looking into analyzing representation among senior-most leadership and governing bodies, including the Board of Governors and Senate.
Future plans include exploring the intersection of various marginalized groups. al Shaibah explained that the current survey structure centers around reporting on singular identities. Therefore, the university does not have comprehensive data on how intersecting marginalized identities, like gender and race, affect staff experience.
In addition to this quantitative data, the university is also planning on focusing their efforts on improving qualitative information, including experiential and campus climate surveys.