Too much lip service and not enough hard work

When Jennifer Reynolds graduated from university, she was certain she was just as likely to be in a CEO chair as the man sitting beside her in class.

But now, 25 years later, only 4% of CEOs in Canada are women, “and that number is basically flat,” Reynolds says.

“If you look around, in any industry in Canada, it’s the same story in the CEO chair,” she points out. “I assure you, myself and all the women I graduated with, we thought the problem was solved. We didn’t think we were going to face what we faced.”

The fight for gender equality is an ongoing — and sometimes uphill — battle, and nobody knows that better than a woman who has built her career in a male-dominated field. Reynolds, president and CEO of Toronto Finance International, is one of that 4% of female CEOs, a figure that comes from a recent review of disclosure related to women on boards and in executive officer positions from Canadian Securities Administrators.

The recently published review, which looked at data from 2019, also laid out key trends including that 17%, or less than one-fifth, of board seats were held by women, and just 15% of issuers had a female chief financial officer. 22% of issuers adopted targets for the representation of women on their board, but only three percent adopted representative targets for women in executive officer positions.

“So, basically no one,” says Reynolds, adding this is despite the fact that for decades, credible sources have been making the case over and over that more diverse leadership teams and boards result in stronger companies. “That’s a paltry number.”

Requiring diversity disclosure was an attempt to highlight the lack of women in senior leadership roles and on boards and force companies to be proactive and prioritize gender diversity.

Other countries had already taken steps, such as diversity disclosure requirements in the UK and Australia and quotas in many parts of Europe, to address the issue — and experienced far more success. In the UK, the number of board seats held by women went from 12% to 26%. In Australia it went from 9.5% to 29.5%. In the five years since Canada has had disclosure requirements, board seats has increased only about a percent a year.

“We’ve effectively taken our foot off the gas pedal,” Reynolds says. “It’s just not good enough, it’s just not fast enough. We’ll be well into the end of this century before we reach parity if we continue at the pace we’re at.”

While there’s not an appetite in Canada for quotas, Reynolds believes companies should set realistic targets for gender representation. Bigger companies tend to already be better at paying attention to diversity, and certain industries are ahead of the game as well — for example, retail has better numbers than mining because retail attracted women to begin with. A retail company will only have to focus on retaining and developing female talent, whereas a mining company will have to work hard to first get women through the door. Targets can be tailored to each company’s individual situation, which makes them a useful tool.

Another key part of adopting effective targets is to share them publicly.

“It does hold your feet to the fire a little bit and I think would spur on more real ambition to change the outcome here in terms of board representation and representation in the executive suite,” Reynolds says.

Along with targets, companies that have more success with women rising through the ranks also carefully track the numbers at every level of their organization — so when promotions happen they can identify patterns. There can be a lot of unconscious bias in how talent is assessed, as people tend to gravitate towards what they’re comfortable with, and good companies are offering training and challenging people to ask themselves, am I being fair in my judgments?

Another key piece is sponsorship, which for men tends to happen organically but for women not so much, Reynolds says. The good companies out there are focusing on promoting sponsorship, whether through official programs or by encouraging a more diverse and inclusive approach by those doing the sponsoring.

Reynolds encourages women to cultivate sponsorships, as these connections become more and more important the further you advance in your career. These are the people who can open doors for you, she says.

“When I took over the CEO role of Women in Capital Markets, I managed to get some men I had worked with throughout my career involved in a serious way and saw them taking a real interest. That for me was a real turning point where I managed to benefit from that network but also in a very important way impact progress because we needed men in that conversation.”

Reynolds adds that over the past six or so years it’s become much more common for men to actively speak up, and says that’s another critical piece of the puzzle.

Women have represented more than 50% of university graduates for 30 years, but those classes are increasingly diverse from a multitude of perspectives. Reynolds says companies need to start thinking about the impact on these young people heading into the workforce if executive suites and boards don’t reflect them. If they look ahead and all they ever see is one type of person, they’re not going to think they can get there, she adds.

“The ultimate measurement of progress is what does our executive suite look like, what does our board look like? Is it reflective of the rest of society, of our workforce, of our customers? Senior executive teams need to start asking themselves those questions and figuring out how they’re going to make real progress.”

Reynolds says International Women’s Day is important because it raises the profile of the issue, but while inspiring speeches are great, it has to be followed up by hard work.

“I think too often we have a great celebration and then in a lot of places not much happens after that until next year, and that leaves your workforce feeling pretty dispirited and disillusioned,” she says. “That’s what we have to be careful of.”

This year, the UN Women’s theme for International Women’s Day is “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.” The UN says women’s rights and gender equality are taking centre stage in 2020, and notes that as it’s been twenty-five years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action — a progressive roadmap for gender equality — “it’s time to take stock of progress and bridge the gaps that remain through bold, decisive actions.”

Reynolds finds the theme ironic, because she was so sure she was part of that generation.

“That makes me think very hard — and should make others think very hard — about how long we’ve been at this and the lack of progress,” she says. “We need to get serious about this because I don’t want my daughter to be in the same position where she graduates from university thinking the same thing that I did, and fast forward 25 years in her career and she’s still having the same discussions.”

It’s not enough to keep pushing solutions into the future — Canada’s corporate world needs to make this “a today problem,” Reynolds says.

“There’s been a lot of lip service to date, and not enough hard work on actually making it happen.”