"Only 62% of Canadians are comfortable with the idea of female CEOs"/ "Women still earning 24% less than men: survey"

Nov. 20, 2019 "Only 62% of Canadians are comfortable with the idea of female CEOs": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps in the Star Metro:

A significant number of Canadians are still uncomfortable with women leading prominent companies, even after years of efforts to improve gender equality and reduce sexism in the workforce.

Only 62 per cent of Canadians in a recent survey say they would feel “very comfortable” having a woman as the chief executive officer of a major company in their country. When broken down by gender, 67 per cent of women and just 57 per cent of men would feel comfortable with a woman in that position.

That is according to the Reykjavik Index for Leadership, which released an annual report on Tuesday measuring perceptions and prejudices towards women in leadership roles in the G7 countries. The report — compiled by research firm Kantar and Women Political Leaders, an organization aimed at increasing the number and influence of women in leadership positions — surveyed 22,000 people aged 18 to 64, including at least 2,000 Canadians, between July and September to reach its conclusions.

“In every country we researched, women are more likely to see men and women as equally suitable to lead, and women themselves are not 100 per cent very comfortable with women in a CEO position,” said Michelle Harrison, the CEO of Kantar’s public division, in an email. “This disparity reveals the attitudes that inhibit society from true equality.” (The report does not provide any data revealing how respondents felt about male CEOs.)

Canada tied with France for first place, when the report ranked countries based on the extent to which men and women are viewed to be equally suitable for leadership. Trailing them were the U.S. and U.K., with Japan, Germany and Italy rounding out the bottom of the list.

The previous year Canada also tied with France, but for the second place spot, behind the U.K.

When the report looked at equality across 22 industries, Canada ranked first in 14 of them, including the automotive and aerospace sectors, which are typically male-dominated.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau placed gender equality at the top of his priority list during G7 2018, so what we see may be the result of a concerted effort in Canadian public policy,” said Harris. “However, whilst Canada scores the highest amongst the countries in this research, Canada, like every country studied, is a country where women experience significant and ongoing discrimination that constrains their ability to exercise their potential for leadership.”

Stephania Varalli, the co-CEO at advocacy organization Women of Influence, said she is “sad” but not surprised that she often hears some Canadians are uncomfortable with women in leadership.

“If you’re asking men who are in power now, they most likely came up through power in a system where there were fewer women leaders,” she said. “It goes back to kind of an unconscious bias of putting men in certain roles and women in certain roles, and that’s something that takes some time to change.”

Many have complained that the trek towards equal representation has been slow. The number of women on the boards of companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange only reached 17 per cent in 2019, according to the Canadian Securities Administrators. In 2015, women only made up 11 per cent of boards.

Women’s representation in the senior ranks of those corporations is even worse. Only four per cent of companies on the TSX have a woman CEO. None of Canada’s TSX 60 companies in 2018 were headed by a woman and two-thirds did not include a single woman among top earners, according to an analysis from The Canadian Press.

Experts often say change is hampered by a lack of sponsorship for women, the predilection of executives and boards for appointing people already in their inner circle, child care responsibilities falling mostly to mothers and long-held misconceptions about a woman’s capability and dedication to running a company.

Vandana Juneja, the vice-president of global markets at women’s equality organization Catalyst, has seen banks really put an emphasis on fixing these problems, but believes change has to come from every industry.

“We need to be able to break down those sort of barriers and biases,” she said. “There’s opportunities to address unconscious biases and to not only become aware of what our own biases may be and those of others.”

Varalli believes society can address some of those biases by watching the language it uses because it can foster unfortunate perceptions.

“I worry when a lot of the narrative around is calling (women leaders) things like ‘girl bosses’ because we immediately sort of say, ‘well, women can be bosses, but they’re the girl version of the real thing,’” she said.

However, Varalli is heartened by the push she has seen in recent years to address the lack of women.

“Even though there are certainly people in power, who still can’t see women as CEOs, there’s a lot of men who are CEOs who are really coming on as allies, and using the power that they do have to try and make things better for women and for other nondominant groups,” she said.

“We’re in a place now where the conversations are happening more … but I still feel like more needs to be done.”

https://www.thestar.com/business/2019/11/19/only-62-comfortable-with-female-ceos.html

Mar. 5, 2020 "Women still earning 24% less than men: survey": Today I found this article by Colin Mcclelland in the Edmonton Journal:

Canadian working women report earning almost a quarter less than male counterparts despite gains in education and greater numbers in higher-paying professions, a new pay equity study shows.

Women took home an average pre-tax salary of $51,352 in 2019 compared with $67,704 for men — a 24-per-cent gap — according to a survey this year of 755 working men and women by Leger Research for a study commissioned by ADP LLC, which provides human resources management software and services. The report came out Thursday, ahead of International Women’s Day, which takes place on Sunday.

Men received more than twice the additional compensation of bonuses or profit sharing than women — $7,646 vs. $3,250 — according to the survey.

“Despite all the policy changes, all the social changes, women are still earning 24-per-cent less,” Natalka Haras, a lawyer for ADP based in Montreal, said by phone.

Haras said the study wasn’t geared to finding out why the pay gap persists, but a Statistics Canada study last year found that the distribution of women and men across industries, such as more men in higher-paying science- and finance-related jobs, and women’s over-representation in part-time work were the two main factors. 

However, it said nearly two-thirds of the gap was unexplained, and could be down to work experience and gender bias.

Government statistics show that the hourly wage gap disparity narrowed to about 13 per cent in 2018 from about 19 per cent in 1998, largely because of increased education attained by women, their penetration into more industries and the decline of men in unionized jobs.

Still, Canada’s gender wage gap in 2018 ranked 5th-largest among 29 countries at 18.5 per cent, according to a survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This year showed barely an improvement from 2019 when ADP found men out-earned women by about 26 per cent, still within the study’s margin of error of 3.4 per cent 19 times out of 20.

Employers intent on improving conditions should consider banning inquiries about a candidate’s salary history in job interviews and promoting parental leave policies, Haras said.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/montreal-gazette/20200305/282187948069540

Bubba-L5 Mar 2020 4:46 AMFollow

Talk about misinterpreting data. Ridiculous conclusions.