Licence to Belong: Examining the Impact of Systemic Inequities on Canadian Engineering Licensure Rates

In 2022, women accounted for only 14.4% of Canadian professional licensed engineers, and racial data remained unavailable to support equity work for under-represented groups [1]. Our paper analyzes the responses of 982 Canadian engineering graduates to two questions on a national career path survey, employing descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. We found that regardless of gender, white respondents are licensed at a higher rate than their racialized peers. Further, difficulty obtaining a license was most greatly experienced by racialized men and women, and structural barriers to licensing are more prominently experienced by international trainees. Graduates with fewer dimensions of privilege are shown to be more likely to remain unlicensed and to mention structural barriers in their explanations. These findings support the hypothesis that structural barriers to licensing are disproportionately experienced by under-represented engineering graduates. Such results motivate the need for a deeper reflection within the discipline on how barriers can be intentionally lifted to empower more equitable licensing opportunities.