For the 2024/2025 academic year, there were just over 49,000 full-time teaching staff at Canadian universities, a stable number compared with 2023/2024, representing the smallest annual increase since 2016/2017. In 2024/2025, more than one-third (37.0%) of teaching staff were full professors, the highest academic rank, and two in five teachers (43.7%) were women.
Parity is not reached at all academic ranks
Over the years, women have represented a growing share of the full-time teaching staff in Canadian universities. In 2024/2025, 43.7% of teaching staff were women (more than 21,000 women), compared with 15.9% in 1984/1985, when the number of women was more than 5,000.
At universities, the career path generally begins at the assistant professor rank and moves through the associate professor level before reaching full professor. The proportion of women professors has increased from 1984/1985 to 2024/2025, exceeding that of men at the rank of assistant professor to reach 52.9% and approaching parity at the associate professor rank, reaching 45.1%. Achieving parity at the full professor rank is slower; the proportion of women at this rank increased almost sixfold in 40 years, rising from 5.7% to 33.6% (over 6,000 women) in 2024/2025.
