Report says firms don’t have women of colour to promote
Prosperity Project finds Black, Indigenous women missing from middle jobs
While the proportion of female leaders on boards and in executive roles is slowly on the rise, they are still largely under-represented — and a majority of big companies have no Black or Indigenous women on track to take on such roles in the future, says the first survey of its kind in Canada.
The national study by the Prosperity Project — a nonprofit founded at the start of the pandemic to help women, who have taken a hard economic hit — found 89 per cent of the organizations surveyed have zero Black women “in the pipeline to the leadership level, and 91 per cent have zero Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) women.”
The result was no surprise to Mitzie Hunter, the Liberal MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood and a “founding visionary” of the project.
“Part of the reality is that Black women are not represented in those middle jobs across corporate Canada, and therefore how can you be represented in the top positions when you are not in the pipeline?” said Hunter, a cabinet minister in the Wynne government, who held a number of executive positions before entering politics.
“They’re just not there. And to me, it’s a call to action.”
Hunter said it was important for the Prosperity Project to frame its research this way “to highlight who’s missing — and there is a missing middle. And Black, Indigenous women and other diverse groups aren’t represented.”
Throughout her career, Hunter has “walked that path, of being the first and the only, many times.”
The survey heard from 48 of the country’s largest companies, banks and Crown corporations that agreed to collect and submit race-based data. (Some 72 didn’t respond.)
Pamela Jeffery, founder of the Prosperity Project, said it’s a baseline, a “ground zero” to help keep track of women in leadership roles and companies’ efforts to do better in the future.
The project found that from March 2019 to September 2020, women in board roles rose by almost four percentage points, which “is encouraging given this has taken place at a time when more women than men began leaving Canada’s labour force as the pandemic took hold,” the report says.
The smallest increase was women on track to executive roles, which was up by just one percentage point.
But looking at companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange and other corporations that must disclose such information, “too many organizations have zero female directors and/ or executive officers. The vast majority of organizations have zero Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) at the leadership level,” the report says.
Crown corporations have 40 to 60 per cent women at all levels the project looked at — on boards, in the corner offices and in the pipeline — but significant gaps still remain in the financial sector and other industries.
The study also notes previous research that has “already established a link between gender diversity at the leadership level and stronger financial results.”
Jeffery lauded the companies and corporations that took part for collecting race-based data and taking part in the survey, which includes the big banks, CBC, Lowe’s and Costco.
Christiane Bergevin, president of Bergevin Capital, said France is now a world leader after introducing a law in 2011 that gave large companies several years to move more women onto boards. Women now make up 44 per cent of boards.
Jeffery added that systemic racism must be dealt with. She noted that “companies are really grappling with how to disrupt the processes in place that are rife with bias.”
Racialized women make up 22 per cent of Canada’s population, but comprise just 12 per cent of those in mid-level positions that lead to the corner office.
Most of the companies surveyed — more than 80 per cent — had at least one racialized woman moving up the ranks.
While that’s encouraging, Jeffery said, “we certainly need more progress in this area. That is why we are focusing on the pipeline because this is what the future will look like, unless we disrupt it.”