The Chilly Climate for Faculty Women at Western: Postscript to the Backhouse Report

Abstract

Despite the great interest that the Backhouse Report (A Historical Perspective: Reflections on the Western Employment Equity Award – available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2263372) had generated among members of the university community, little of substance appeared to be happening at the level of institutional change. Those seeking real and significant reforms began to wonder whether the Report would be ignored because of its historical nature and whether persistent inequities would be explained away as relics of an earlier era, unrelated to current procedures and practices. Given these concerns, a number of women began to think about updating the Backhouse Report and about documenting the “environmental” factors which have a negative impact upon women faculty.

Four faculty members, Constance Backhouse, Roma Harris, Gillian Michell, and Alison Wylie, conducted a series of interviews with a variety of faculty women during the summer of 1988. Their aim was to document the extent to which informal factors were creating problems within the workplace. These interviews were originally intended to serve as the background for testimony presented in public hearings that the University had been urged to hold on employment equity. However, none of the women interviewed was prepared to speak out publicly at the time. Consequently, Backhouse, Harris, Michell, and Whylie undertook to produce a second report which would provide the University community with an account of what they had learned in these interviews without disclosing the identities of the individuals concerned. Released in November 1989, this report came to be known as the Chilly Climate Report.

Keywords: university, institution, employment, women, equity, equality, historical, Backhouse, community, discrimination, institution, Canada, Ontario, Western Ontario, faculty