Women still shut out of boardroom

Canada lags U.S. as female executives struggle for recognition, study says

By ELIZABETH CHURCH
Friday, February 20, 2004 - Page B3

Canadian women are making few inroads into the male-dominated landscape of corporate boards and are lagging seriously behind progress in the United States, a study has found.

More than half of the country's 500 largest public and private companies and Crown corporations -- 51.4 per cent -- do not have a woman at their boardroom table, exactly the same percentage as two years ago.

The Canadian representation is well behind trends in the United States, where 89 per cent of benchmark Fortune 500 companies have at least one female director.

"This is disheartening news," said Susan Black, Canadian head of Catalyst Inc., a non-profit research and consulting group that did the survey of data available as of June, 2003. "It is disappointing that so few companies are expanding the diversity of their boards."

The study found women account for just 11.2 per cent of director positions at the country's largest organizations. That is up slightly from the 9.8 per cent they held two years ago when Catalyst did its last count, but well behind the 13.6 per cent of seats held by women at major U.S. firms. The gap is even wider when Crown corporations, which have substantially higher levels of female directors, are removed from the mix. Women fill just 9 per cent of seats at the 243 publicly traded companies in the sample, up from 7.8 per cent in 2001.

"It is a positive increase, but it is certainly not a big leap," Ms. Black said.

Only three of the publicly traded companies had a woman chairing the board -- retailer Indigo Books & Music Inc., steel company Samuel Manu-Tech Inc. and broadcaster and animation firm Corus Entertainment Inc. Just 5.8 per cent of board committees had a chair that was a woman.

Just one-quarter of companies in the survey -- based on the Financial Post 500 -- had more than one woman on their board, compared with nearly half of all companies in the Fortune 500 group.

Ms. Black said other research on female executives shows there are qualified women available to take board seats. But companies, she said, have to be willing to look for them and women themselves need to make sure they have the right kind of experience. Even more important, they need to have visibility. "People have to know you to choose you," she said.

That kind of exposure and experience is what put Sylvia Chrominska on the board of steel maker Dofasco Inc. The executive vice-president of human resources at Bank of Nova Scotia, Ms. Chrominska was noticed by one of the bank's board members -- former Dofasco chief executive officer John Mayberry -- who approached her about a board position after clearing it with bank head Peter Godsoe.

"It never occurred to me that at this point in my career I would have the opportunity to serve on a for-profit board," said Ms. Chrominska, who was in her late 40s at the time of her appointment and had experience with non-profit boards. Her surprise, she said, stemmed from the fact that most companies do not look past traditional candidates to fill board seats, such as CEOs or retired senior executives.

Ms. Chrominska said yesterday's numbers do not come as a surprise, but they are disappointing.

"It was extremely disappointing that more companies over the space of two years had not been more pro-active in looking beyond traditional sources [for directors]."

Elizabeth Watson is one of the people who has moved beyond the old director networks. As the woman responsible for overseeing board appointments at all of British Columbia's provincial corporations, she says the recent experience of those boards -- where women are at the table as never before -- demonstrates that there are highly qualified women available if organizations take the time to look. "We absolutely did not talk about tokenism," she said. "It's a matter of working extra hard, going to non-traditional places. Also, for some people it is a leap of faith because it is an unknown."

Ms. Black said companies that are not making that leap need to address the issue. For those who are reluctant to do that, she said, shareholder pressure and the increasing awareness of corporate governance may prod them into action.