THAT’S SO 2015
PM Trudeau will be at a women’s summit, but what does he have to show for improving their influence?
There’s a note of schoolgirl enthusiasm in Fortune magazine’s announcement that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be participating in its invitation-only women’s summit in Washington next week.
“It’s official: Canada’s most famous feminist is coming to Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit,” the magazine trilled about Trudeau’s scheduled appearance at Tuesday’s evening gala, where he will be interviewed by MPW’s Pattie Sellers. The discussion, we are promised, will be the importance of economic empowerment and gender equality. Fortune notes that Trudeau will be one of the few men in the room.
This summit is not to be confused with Tina Brown’s Women in the World summits — Trudeau appeared at two of those this year, interviewed by Brown both times — nor the Women Deliver summit, scheduled for Vancouver in 2019, nor the summit of all summits, the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Those who have followed the women’s summit road show can anticipate that our most famous feminist will stride onto the stage at the Mandarin Oriental and trot out his set list of anodyne comments about needing more women in leadership roles, about the imperative to promote women entrepreneurs, about the heightened levels of decision making and economic accomplishment that emerge when women claim their rightful place at the boardroom table, about the urgent need for broad social change. And that men, as Trudeau has said time and again, have to be a big part of the conversation.
This is no longer 2015. Are we further ahead? Microscopically, yes. The latest report from the country’s securities regulators, released Thursday, tells us that the representation of women on boards of publicly traded companies has risen to 14 per cent from 11 per cent, “reflecting a difference of 3 per cent.” (Thanks for the assist, but we can do the math.)
Certain issuers, including exchange traded funds, were excluded from the review. But the bald fact is that the representation remains pitiful in this, the third year of the regulators’ review.
Other numbers are more robust: boards with at least one woman director have risen to 61 per cent per cent from 49 per cent in the regulators’ first report. Perhaps some corporate leaders have cottoned on to superior performance when women are present. A recent study by Nordea, the Nordic banking group, found that, on average, companies with a woman in the chief executive officer’s chair, or with a woman lead director, had a 25 per cent annualized return since 2009. The MSCI World Index, which measures corporate performance in 23 developed countries, recorded an 11 per cent return across the same period. We have not been bold. The Trudeau administration inherited an Industry Canada review, launched in 2009, of the Canada Business Corporations Act. Amping up competitiveness was the review’s main goal, and it gave a nod to the need for greater diversity. Last autumn, the Trudeau government introduced Bill C-25 amending the act. In the area of diversity, C-25 would, if passed, compel companies to report on the gender composition of a company’s board and its senior management.
A more limp legislative initiative is hard to imagine.
Ontario had already outpaced the federal government’s soft approach by introducing the comply-or-explain regulation, requiring listed companies to state the number of women on their boards and in executive positions, as well as policies regarding the representation of women directors. If there are no policies, companies are asked, why not?
As corporate governance initiatives go, comply-or-explain gets a “C” grade. But it’s something. The Wynne government has been smarter, earning a B-plus for setting gender diversity targets for provincial boards and agencies: by 2019, 40 per cent of directorships are to be held by women.
The Trudeau government? In this it comes close to a fail. Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains has said that if C-25 doesn’t move the needle in advancing women in business, more targeted measures will be considered. He’s looking for meaningful results “in a few years.”
We need action now, and that includes targeted representation.
The prime minister on display Tuesday would be wise to stick to concrete accomplishments. Chrystia Freeland has focused on modernizing free-trade agreements with amendments that acknowledge that gender inclusivity and fairness are essential to inclusive economic growth. This is good. Driving international aid toward the empowerment of girls and women? Yes.
But in the realm of women in business Trudeau would be wise to give the next summit a pass, until he has something of substance to say.