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Neither the staff association or the university would comment on the tentative deal Friday while members were voting. The university did not provide a cost of the deal.

On the association’s website, president Kevin Kane encouraged members to approve both the general two-year deal and the agreement on female professor pay.

The offer follows a 2017 AASUA task force report that found faculty who are women, visible minorities and/or Indigenous are paid less for the same work than their white, male counterparts.

Equal pay for equal work

The wage-gap issue has arisen at universities across Canada, some of which have committed to regularly compiling data to monitor for potential disparities.

In 2013, all female faculty members at the University of British Columbia earned a two per cent wage increase, retroactive to 2010, which cost the university about $2 million.

McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., raised all female faculty salaries by $3,515 in 2015, and the University of Waterloo granted female professors nearly $3,000 each in 2016, both in attempts to correct historic pay gaps.

A 2018 report by the Canadian Association of University Teachers found full-time university teaching staff earn about 90 cents for every dollar their male colleagues take home.

Pat Armstrong, a professor at York University in Toronto, and co-chair of the CAUT’s equity committee, said Friday a lack of transparency about professor pay has led to some women taking academic postings at a lower starting salary. As pay often increases by percentages, their income falls further and further behind colleagues who started at a higher salary, she said.