The release of Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure list on March 31 highlighted a continuing gender wage gap among university employees.
Published annually since 1996, the Sunshine List provides the salary and benefits of every public sector employee earning more than $100,000 in the previous year.
This year’s list has grown by seven per cent, with more than 123,000 people paid more than $100,000 last year, according to CBC News.
Carleton president Roseann Runte is once again the highest paid employee at Carleton. Earning a total of $400,004.97 in 2016, Runte was one of three women amongst the top 10 highest paid Carleton employees last year. Sprott School of Business associate dean of professional graduate programs Lorraine Dyke was fourth, earning $225,776.29, while Sprott professor Linda Duxbury was fifth with a salary of $221,266.12.
William Moriarty, president and chief executive officer of University of Toronto (U of T) Asset Management Corporation, was the top earning university employee with a salary of $1,046,194.34.
The top 30 earners at Ontario universities are all men, with Wendy Rotenberg being the highest paid female and the 31st highest paid Ontario university employee. Earning $403,510.18 in 2016, Rotenberg is a professor of finance and accounting at the U of T’s Rotman School of Management.
Among the top 20 earners on the Sunshine List province-wide, only four are women, according to CBC News.
Women make up approximately 55 per cent of the public service workforce but take home about 12 per cent less money than their male counterparts, according to a statement made by Indira Naidoo-Harris, Ontario’s minister for the status of women.
Female university employees have improved in the rankings on this year’s list compared to the previous year. In 2015, Elspeth Murray was the highest-earning female in 43rd place on the list of university staff, with a salary of $377,918.95. Murray is an associate dean of MBA and masters programs at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business.
Smith School of Business professor Tina Dacin was the third highest-earning university employee in 2014, with a salary of $501,851.60.
In a study conducted by the Canadian Association of University Teachers in 2008, women were found to make up 32.3 per cent of all full-time Canadian university instructors.
Women teaching in the humanities, health and education were found to make up 44.5 per cent of all female faculty in 2004, while just over 10 per cent of all women taught in engineering, applied sciences, mathematics, or physical sciences.
– Photo illustration by Justin Samanski-Langille
