The Racial Pay Gap - Much Work Remains to Be Done in Canadian Academic Libraries

“The Racial Pay Gap” indicates that there’s still much inequity in Canada’s academic libraries. While Canadian academic libraries have made progress in hiring and retaining employees from underrepresented groups, they still lack offering equitable salaries.  My ViMLoC colleague, Yanli Li’s “Racial Pay Gap: An Analysis of CARL Libraries” is an alarming study on the racial pay gap of visible minority librarians. Using data from the 8Rs CARL Libraries Practitioner Survey in 2014, Li’s research study examined the impact of race on the earnings attainment process based on a sample of 392 CARL library practitioners and found a significant salary disparity between visible minorities and nonvisible minorities. It’s really important research that deserves more attention in our profession.

The study admits that because it is limited to 29 of the larger Canadian university libraries and two federal government libraries that comprise CARL. It would be interesting to study the racial salary gap of other university and college libraries or public libraries for a more comprehensive landscape of Canadian libraries. One can surmise that the racial pay gap probably exists in these institutions based on existing research. Perhaps a more in-depth examination of hiring, promotion, and access to senior positions, particularly the discrimination against visible minorities in the library science labor market, can also be done to further understand the specific factors of the racial salary gap.

 
While academic Research Libraries (ARL) in the US made great strides in the last three decades toward decreasing the racial pay gap, the same cannot be said about Canadian (CARL) libraries and this is surprisingly embarrassing, to say the least. As one social commentator pointed out once, comparing itself to the United States is almost like a national sport in Canada. Canadians revel at their superiority over their American counterparts, but when it comes to paying disparities, it’s business as usual. It’s remarkable how far Canadian academic libraries lag behind their American counterparts. As the authors of this study comment, “[o]verall, [American] ARL libraries have done an outstanding job of fostering racial equality in pay. . . there is no longer a statistically significant wage gap between nonminority and minority librarians in ARL libraries.” In fact, American counterparts have used more tools at their disposal for analysis, too. As opposed to using basic comparisons of group means to examine the racial salary gap in Canada, American studies have adopted multiple regression models to assess multiple variables of earnings in the library science labor market. All this is to say that much work remains for not only closing the racial pay gap in CARL libraries.

The Diversity Audit Tool (DAT)

A diversity assessment can measure an organization’s progress in increasing diversity not only within its human resources functions but also in its activities in the creation of products or services. While there is no shortage of diversity audit surveys out there, one, in particular, stands out to me and that is the Diversity Audit Tool (DAT) developed at the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University.  I like that it has been well used in examining both profit and non-profit organizations and adapted for use by many businesses over the years.

The DAT is a useful tool for assessing and identifying leading practices to increase diversity in organizations. The DAT was created by Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, in partnership with Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance Women in Technology (CATAWiT) Forum, as part of a project on increasing women’s participation in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, led by Wendy Cukier.  The DAT is divided into six key organizational levels or functions:

• Leadership and governance – Success of diversity initiatives depends on senior management’s commitment to diversity in addition to the integration of diversity goals as part of the organization’s strategy
• Transparent HR practices – Identifies areas where organizations can increase diversity in recruitment, performance management, promotion, education, and knowledge building as well as training and development.
• Organizational culture & Quality of Life – Flexibility and ensuring that the organizational culture is inclusive and accommodates the divergent needs of its employees.
• Metrics – Used to track and measure progress relative to diversity goals.
• Integration into the Value Chain -- Diversity in product development, marketing and customer service programs, communication (both internally and externally), media buys, philanthropy, government relations, as well as in procurement decisions.
• Developing the pipeline – Develops a future workforce that is diverse and inclusive

When compared to the other diversity lenses, the DAT is a more comprehensive and inclusive measure of diversity initiatives than other lenses, and part of the reason is that it focuses on general initiatives at the macro-level initiatives. I’m excited about adapting the DAT to my context of academic libraries and publishing organizations. What would the DAT look like for both smaller and larger organizations; profit and non-profit; Western and global firms? If you have any thoughts, please do share them with me!

Gatekeepers of Diversity in Publishing and Writing

I recently wrapped up an arts mentorship program at Centre A and worked with a diverse group of writers, and as a group, we explored the creative writing and publishing industry within the context of BIPOC artists. It’s good timing that the ​​Diversity in Canadian Writing: A 2020-2021 Snapshot has been released. UBC creative writing professors Rhea Tregebov and Kevin Chong led the project and developed the survey design. The results were not surprising: the typical respondent, based on our survey data, was: female, white, in their 60s, living in Ontario, straight, cis-gendered, and able-bodied.

In our sessions, we explored how “diversity washing” has become simply producing literary texts that publishers want for mainstream, but Canadian publishing continues to lack diversity in staffing. The next generations of writers that I worked with show that there is an emergence of diverse authors, but they are still shut out by the literary gatekeepers as there is a shortage of diverse publishers, agents, and editors. In order for BIPOC writers to flourish, they need better representation in those fields to be supported.

“There needs to be more transparency when it comes to how books are promoted and advocated for, and sometimes this has less to do with literary merit and more to do with the PR machine behind the book. This leaves a lot of us out, especially when we already face systemic barriers. We need opportunities to feature our work in more meaningful ways, beyond conversations about our identity and deeper into craft. […] It’s important that these questions are addressed by the publishing industry so that we can have transparency around what needs to be done.” 

• Gatekeepers – Those in positions of power in the sector need to be more diverse, both within publishing houses and in affiliated organizations such as reviewing outlets, festival and prize administration, literary agencies and funding institutions, by creating concrete, transparent and measurable goals around their makeup
• Smaller Presses – Create greater systemic support for them which often are key in recognizing and promoting marginalized authors.
• Training - Mandate EDI training for staff, as well as create a budget and established procedure for employment of sensitivity readers among publishers.
• No More Identity Labels – Titles by marginalized authors should be promoted, evaluated and featured in nuanced, complex and meaningful ways beyond simple identity labels. Organizations, reviewers and readers should recognize that non-dominant culture content is not of limited interest and that publications are not limited by simple identity labels. Content should not have to be trauma-generated or otherwise identity-specific in order for authors to be given a platform.
• Funding – Create funding structures for disabled writers to pay upfront for the support needed to fully participate in events.
• Prizes – Carefully review the creation of new prizes, their mandates and their selection processes to ensure better inclusivity. Moreover, residency and grant opportunities that set an arbitrary age limit for eligibility should be removed.

I’m heartened by the work that the authors of this report and I’m optimistic that it puts the lens of EDI squarely focused on the current landscape of Canadian publishing. I’m often invited to government book awards and grant juries for diversity, consult on EDI by book publishers or join EDI committees. While I’m happy to participate and make a difference, I feel that my role is really at end of the conversation, to ensure representation, but not at the beginning, such as systemic change. It’s about time that EDI is integrated so that box-ticking exercises don’t need to be left at the end, as an afterthought. When I ended my final session of the Arts Writing Mentorship Program, I was heartened that participants understood that they were the next generation of the publishing industry, whether they are writers or acquisitions editors – and had a responsibility to instill change.