Canada falling behind with gender equality in the boardroom
Posted Mar 8, 2013 7:43 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
March 8 is International Women’s Day; a time to celebrate how far women have come in terms of gender equality.
But a new report suggests corporate Canada is at risk of falling when it comes to equal representation in the boardroom.
Compiled by TD Economics, it found Canada has slipped on a list from sixth to ninth place in terms of women on boards of directors.
Additionally, one half of companies on the TSX/S&P Composite Index have only one woman on their board and one quarter don’t have any.
TD Economics Vice-President and Deputy Chief Economist, Beata Caranci, says it’s not so much about what Canada’s doing wrong but what other countries are doing right.
“The issue is … when you look at companies and the way they hired members on their board, what we find is that they use disproportionately internal networks,” she tells 660News.
Medium and small companies in particular, she says, are not casting out a wide enough net when it comes to the hiring process.
“So there’s no assurance you’re actually getting the best person on the board because you’re using your circle of friends or networks as your touch point of who you’re going to hire,” Caranci explains.
She’s calling for a tough ‘comply and explain’ policy that other countries have adopted.
By reporting the numbers of women on boards, she believes it would create greater transparency and accountability throughout the system.
“The explain portion is basically … if you don’t want to put those numbers in your annual report you don’t, but then you have to tell your shareholders why you’re not doing it,” she says.
At this point, Québec is the only place in Canada that has introduced quotas for crown corporations.
Countries like Finland, which require publicly traded companies to have both genders on their board, have seen their percentage of women double from 2008 to 2011.
Caranci says if corporate Canada does nothing, we could be leap-frogged by other countries and we could fall out of the top ten by this time next year.
