I'm posting this in honor of International Women's Day which is Mar. 8.
Jan. 26, 2024 "Women making boardroom gains, but they're still a decade away from parity": Today I found this article by Jeff Green on the Financial Post:
Women keep reaching new highs in America’s boardroom — but they’re still a decade away from reaching parity.
While women occupied a record 33.5 per cent of S&P 500 companies’ board seats at the end of last year, the ratio was 50-50 or more at just 29 companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
At the current pace, the gender ratio won’t reach parity until 2032 as last year’s gains were below the pace set in 2019 and 2020, when boards responded to heightened activist pressure by adding more women and people of colour. What’s more, the recent conservative-led backlash has had a chilling impact on some corporate diversity initiatives.
Adding more women ensures “that you have diverse perspectives,” said Heather Spilsbury, chief executive of 50/50 Women on Boards, which advocates for boardroom parity.
“And that’s the imperative because I think that helps broaden the company’s perspective.”
Asked about the criticism that diversity efforts could tip the scales too far toward one demographic,
Jane Stevenson, vice chair of executive recruiter Korn Ferry, said, “I have absolutely less than zero concern that there will be too many women on boards.”
“When we can start to worry is when over 50 per cent of boards are over 50 per cent women,” she added.
Intercontinental Exchange Inc.,
owner of the New York Stock Exchange,
Hasbro Inc.,
Paramount Global,
American Water Works Co.
and Omnicom Group Inc.
are the S&P 500 companies with female representation of at least 60 per cent on their boards, according to the Bloomberg data.
A decade ago, ICE had one female director amid a group of white men, said Andrew Surdykowski, ICE’s general counsel. It was then that the company decided it needed to diversify its board, setting a schedule starting in 2016 to have longer-term members be replaced by a more diverse slate of directors, he said. The board has a short list of candidates that’s reviewed regularly, he said.
“There were some difficult conversations, but we were up front with the full board, telling them this is what we’re going to do,” he said.
The board, which first hit 60 per cent women in 2022, uses many criteria when selecting new directors, Surdykowski said. One of the first directors picked during the beginning of the campaign was a White male, who the board added because of his cybersecurity expertise, he said. The expectation is the female-male ratio will ebb and flow, Surdykowski said.
Hasbro, which has 64 per cent women and is tied with Paramount Global for the highest ratio in the S&P 500, doesn’t have a target but wants leadership to mirror its market, said chief communications officer Roberta Thomson.
The leadership team is half women, and a quarter of the group are Black women, she said.
“We consider a diverse board and leadership team tremendous benefits in serving our fans, employees, shareholders and partners,” Thomson said.
The best outcome will be as close to an even gender split as possible for all corporate boards, said Spilsbury of 50/50 Women on Boards. There are 27 boards in the Russell 3000 that have more than 60 per cent women, according to the group’s database.
“We believe you should have equal parts, and we don’t want to take men out of the mix, per se,” Spilsbury said. “Too much of any one thing on any board may not serve the company well.”
In December, women held 10 more S&P 500 seats than the previous month, according to Bloomberg data. The average number of female directors was unchanged at 3.7, out of an average board size of 11.1.
- The percentage of female directorships increased to 33.5 per cent in December from 33.4 per cent in November.
- That’s roughly double the 16.7 per cent figure for companies in Japan’s Nikkei 225, and compares with 19.5 per cent for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, 37.7 per cent for Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 and 39.9 per cent for Europe’s Stoxx 600.
- Fifteen S&P 500 companies, including Procter & Gamble Co., International Business Machines Corp. and General Electric Co., increased the number of women on their boards in December.
- Four companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., Crown Castle Inc. and Digital Realty Trust Inc., reduced the number of female directors during the month.
- Charter Communications Inc. has the lowest percentage of women on its board.
- The materials sector led the net gain in female board members, with one woman added each to the boards of Air Products & Chemicals Inc. and Ecolab Inc.
- Real estate notched a net decline of two female directors, with Crown Castle and Digital Realty losing female board members.
- Robert Half Inc. surpassed 30 per cent female board membership for the first time since Bloomberg started tracking the data in January 2019. The number of S&P 500 companies above this key threshold rose to 360 in December from 351 the previous month.
- The Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index returned 5.4 per cent in December, outperforming the 4.9 per cent gain of the MSCI World Index.
The Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index is a modified capitalization-weighted index that tracks the financial performance of those companies committed to supporting gender equality through policy development, representation and transparency.
— With assistance from Carly Marasheski.
https://financialpost.com/fp-work/women-boardroom-gains-decade-away-parity
"Adding more women ensures “that you have diverse perspectives,” said Heather Spilsbury, chief executive of 50/50 Women on Boards, which advocates for boardroom parity. “And that’s the imperative because I think that helps broaden the company’s perspective.”"
Arguably, shouldn't companies like Aritzia and P&G be mostly women and companies like Callaway and MolsonCoors be mostly men?
Feb. 15, 2024 "How to get more women to the top of Canada's corporate ranks": Today I found this article by Mirjam Guesgen on the Financial Post:
The number of women holding executive positions in Canada has been slowly climbing since 2016, but the rise has been anything but dramatic.
In 2020, women made up a little under a third, or 31.4 per cent, of officer positions, up from 29 per cent four years earlier, according to the latest data available from Statistics Canada.
The majority of boards across Canada are still comprised solely of men, with education the only sector to have achieved gender parity on its boards.
But looking past those numbers, some female business leaders say Canada is still making strides, especially when it comes to attitudes and opportunities.
“At the board level there’s been quite a lot of progress,” said Carol Hansell, a senior partner at Hansell LLP, a firm that advises boards, management and shareholders on legal and governance issues. “The attitude towards women on boards has changed radically over the past 10 years.”
“Originally when the push came to have more women on boards, there was skepticism and, I would say, reluctance,” she added. “There wasn’t a strong sense of why this was necessary — is it a social good or is it actually good for business?”
Now, Hansell said there’s widespread agreement that having the most talented people on a board means not neglecting half the population. “It’s not a discussion I have to have,” she said.
Data collected by Hansell’s firm points to progress for women. Close to 28 per cent of board seats in 2023 were taken up by females at TSX companies disclosing numbers to meet Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA) diversity disclosure requirements, an increase from 21.6 per cent in 2020.
But Hansell said challenges around getting more women into those positions lie at senior management level. Boards don’t do enough to push companies to foster a broad range of talent — including females — that can move up the ranks. “You have to have women all the way through the pipeline. By the time it comes to two or three levels down from the CEO, there aren’t many women there,” she said.
When it comes to getting promotions, the gap between women and men widens the higher up the corporate ladder you go, according to a 2023 study by the United States’ McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.Org.
That was partly because of an exodus of women from the workforce during the pandemic, with females accounting for more than half of the year-over-year employment losses recorded between March 2020 and February 2021, according to Statistics Canada. Those numbers have since bounced back, particularly among women entrepreneurs.
Many studies highlight a multitude of other, more persistent reasons for the widening gap.
Those include pay inequality (the wage gap between women and men in Canada is closing, but was still at 12 per cent in 2022),
differential attitudes towards women versus men,
a lack of mentorship
and because some women feel they haven’t earned a promotion in the first place.
Hansell believes some of those issues are the result of negative societal narratives around what women can expect from their careers, which they then internalize.
“If you don’t see (advancement) as a natural evolution in your career, I think that ends up being food for thought for a women who’s thinking about staying at an organization or not,” Hansell said.
Andrea Limbardi, chief executive of Reitmans Canada Ltd., regards impostor syndrome as one of the greatest challenges facing women in business today.
Limbardi, a self-described “lifetime retailer,” often has conversations with women at all levels of business about impostor syndrome, which many describe as feeling like a fraud.
“It’s almost shocking the amount of time I spend saying ‘If everyone else believes this in you, why don’t you believe this in yourself?’” she said.
Part of tackling impostor syndrome, according to Limbardi,
is asking women what unachievable or high standards they’ve set for themselves that aren’t expected by anyone else, and then letting those go.
The second part involves surrounding themselves with people who will push them to achieve.
“It’s not just that they’re going to cheerlead you, that’s not enough. Women are smarter than that. They don’t just need someone who’ll say ‘you go girl’,” she said.
Limbardi keeps her own unofficial team of people who act as her sounding board for major life and career decisions. “I can count on them to give me the real, real,” she said.
“Not just what I want to hear and not just criticisms.” They help her
balance and analyze the pros and cons of any given situation,
and, above all, are willing to put in time to help her work through her thoughts.
The best mentorship doesn’t always come from a formalized program, but from supportive individuals.
As an example, Limbardi points to the guidance she received from Tina Fagan-Shane, the then-vice-president for Western Canada at Indigo Books & Music Inc. when Limbardi held the equivalent position in the east.
“I’ve probably learned more from that experience than any of the formal mentorship programs I’ve done over the years, which are countless,” she said.
Fagan-Shane included Limbardi in all aspects of the business, from participating in conference calls to accompanying her on visits to operations managers.
“She just went out of her way to make sure I had full access to everything and she never treated me like I was younger or lesser than her,” she said. That style of mentorship played a critical role in her development, Limbardi said.
Meanwhile, women rising through the ranks should also know there’s no right way to be a leader. Lombardi said that’s something she learned the hard way as she climbed the corporate ladder.
“I went in with this idea that I had to be this quote-unquote ‘leader,'” she said. “That I had to come in with … all the answers, to know what I was talking about and feeling like I had to prove myself, only to realize how exhausting that is.”
Over time — and guided by a mentor at Indigo — she began working in a way that was more true to her authentic self.
“I instead viewed leadership
as being in service of others,
helping remove obstacles,
being a sounding board
and helping others reach their potential.”
Building authentic relationships with others is something Hansell encourages women to pursue as well.
“The ability to work well in groups is an important skill, particularly at the board level,” she said.
“I often see people begin their careers as corporate directors and they don’t really understand how to come together.”
She recommends finding ways to establish bilateral relationships to really get to know other people. “You need to understand how people express themselves, not just what they’re saying,” Hansell said.
Of course, getting more females into leadership positions shouldn’t just be the problem of women.
Progress can be accelerated by
regulating,
supporting
and incentivizing companies to promote women,
the Organization for Economic Development said in its 2020 report, Policies and Practices to Promote Women in Leadership Roles in the Private Sector.
For example, the OECD cites France’s gender equality index, which mandates companies to report indicators such as the percentage of men and women who’ve gotten a pay increase, as legislation that’s driving positive change.
Another success is Japan’s “Nadeshiko Brands,” a label placed on companies that actively promote women to their boards and senior management, and which signals to investors the organization is positioned for long-term growth.
Still, both Limbardi and Hansell agree there’s more work to be done to even get women to parity with men in leadership roles. Organizations must keep shedding light on how many women hold positions at every level of the company, Hansell said. That will keep up the pressure on boards to ensure the number of executive women matches up with the broader shift in attitudes.
“I think we’re moving along well, but we can’t take our eye off it,” she said.
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