Our second Annual Performance Report paints a powerful picture of the more than 21,000 female executives and reveals that Canadian companies still have a long way to go.
TORONTO, February 16, 2022 – According to the second annual Gender Diversity and Leadership Performance Report: Project Prosper’s Ground Zero, little progress has been made in advancing gender and racial diversity within organizations. management teams of Canada’s largest companies as governments, regulators and investors focus more on ESG issues and put equity, diversity and inclusion at the “top” of their priorities .
We find that women who have intersecting identities are underrepresented. Overall, only 6.2% of women on boards, in executive or senior management positions, or on executive candidate lists are racialized women and less than 1 % of female executives or candidates for such positions identify as Black, Indigenous, Disabled or LGBTQ2S+ respectively. While it is true that in most companies there are women who identify as racialized people among senior managers or who are candidates for such positions, Indigenous, Black or LGBTQ2S+ women are not represented at all four levels of leadership in the majority of companies. According to the results of the 2016 census, 22%, 18.5%, 5%, 4% and 3.5% of the Canadian population identify themselves respectively as people living with one or more disabilities, racialized, indigenous , members of the LGBTQ2S+ or black community.
The Prosperity Project Annual Performance Report is the only dashboard in Canada that measures, using intersectional data, the progress of women executives at the largest companies (by revenue), including public and private companies, crown corporations and other organizations. Our Annual Performance Report paints a comprehensive and clear picture of the more than 21,000 female executives represented at all four levels of leadership (corporate director, executive officer, senior executive and senior executive candidate) who identify as white, racialized, indigenous, black, living with a disability or members of the LGBTQ2S+ community.
“There is no other study that gets to the heart of the matter by illustrating the situation of female executives in Canada today. While we are seeing progress in some sectors, such as Crown corporations, Canadian subsidiaries and co-operatives, the study demonstrates that the opportunities to initiate profound change remain significant, says Pamela Jeffery, founder of the Project Prosperity, a charity created at the start of the pandemic to make an explicit link between women and prosperity with a view to highlighting the economic importance of gender equality. We commend the participating CEOs and their organizations for their leadership, their 2 commitment to ensuring transparency and establishing a baseline against which to measure progress. The measured objectives are respected. »
The results are more positive for women who are senior executives or who are candidates for such positions in the companies surveyed. While women account for approximately one-third (34.2%) of company directors and just under one-third (29.2%) of senior executives, they represent 41.9% of senior executives and slightly more than half (54.8%) of candidates for senior management positions. This contrasts sharply with companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that reported diversity data as of July 31, 2021, where only 23.4% of corporate director positions and 18.2% of senior executives are held by women.
The Prosperity Project invited the CEOs of Canada’s 500 largest corporations (measured by revenue), including public corporations, private corporations, crown corporations, co-operatives and subsidiaries Canadian organizations of foreign-owned companies to play a leadership role in having their organizations participate in this groundbreaking research. The survey, available in French and English versions, was conducted in November with 82 organizations from the banking and insurance, retail, mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, transportation, construction, utilities, real estate, telecommunications and the arts. While the number of companies that responded to the survey on a voluntary basis to better portray the situation of women leaders in Canada has almost doubled this year compared to last year, we hope that even more companies will be mobilized to participate in the 2023 Annual Performance Report.
2022 Annual Performance Report
The 2022 Annual Performance Report features a summary of the Prosperity Project Expert Roundtable, which brought together a diverse group of leaders whose organizations are among its founding partners. Vanessa Lewerentz, Head of Inclusion at BMO Financial Group, Mary Sullivan, Head of Talent Management at CPP Investments, Paul Brink, President and CEO of Franco-Nevada, Silvia Gonzalez-Zamora, Partner and National Leader , Equity, Inclusion and Diversity at KPMG in Canada, Jos Schmitt, Co-Founder and CEO of the NEO Group of Companies, Gopal Bansal, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion at RBC, and Lara Zink, President and CEO from the leadership of Women in Capital Markets, provide an overview of best practices related to the use of personal data to achieve gender and non-gender diversity goals.
About “The Prosperity Project”
Led by volunteers, The Prosperity Project was conceived by a diverse group of 62 women leaders from across Canada at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As active participants in the foundational initiatives of Project Prosperity, our visionary women volunteer leaders are committed to bringing about positive change and improving the situation of women. These initiatives include an awareness campaign, modeled on the famous “Rosie the Riveter” campaign of the Second World War, for 3
promoting the participation and advancement of women in the workforce and a twinning program that matches registered charities with business expertise to build the in-house skills and expertise of these organizations.
The organization was founded and is led by Pamela Jeffery, founder of the Women’s Executive Network and the Canadian Board Diversity Council.
The partner organizations and sponsors of the 2022 Annual Performance Report are: KPMG in Canada (presenting sponsor), WCM (collaborating partner), BMO Financial Group (co-presenting partner), AGF Investments Inc., CPP Investments, Franco -Nevada, NEO, RBC and TELUS).
Visit the Prosperity Project website: www.canadianprosperityproject.ca.
Media Relations:
Lindsay Ranson
[email protected]
613 292-6630