Our biggest companies are appointing more women to board roles, but representation of visible minorities remains limited
According to a new study, America’s largest firms are beating their counterparts in the Great White North when it comes to diversity at the director level.
Data compiled by ISS Corporate Solutions looked at the makeup of boards of directors of companies listed on the S&P 500 compared to the S&P/TSX Composite Index to get a sense of where the most gains are being made in terms of diversity.
Where Canada excels is in gender diversity: 33.7 per cent of all Canadian directors are women, compared to 32.3 per cent of American directors. That reflects a lot of progress ― in 2020, Canadian women only held about 28 per cent of board seats.
Where Canada falls behind is in terms of racial diversity. For all our national attachments to multiculturalism and diversity, racial and ethnic minorities made up only 14.1 per cent of directorships ― nine points behind the U.S., where 23.6 per cent of seats were held by minorities.
Some have looked at the state of diversity overall and questioned whether high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are actually producing the material changes they set out to.
“By focusing on structural issues, we are not saying that DEI programs should ignore individuals’ unconscious biases,” wrote Andrea Kramer and Alton Harris in Fast Company. “Of course, these biases must be recognized and countered, but this needs to be done other than through anti-bias training.”
Still, the Canadian lead at ISS Corporate Solutions Chan Pedris is ultimately hopeful that Canadian companies are improving, and that transparency regulations will accelerate that.
It was only in 2020 that publicly traded companies in Canada were required to disclose diversity statistics under the Canada Business Corporations Act, and it will take some time for that impact to be fully felt. “The numbers themselves will see a significant pick-up from 2023 onwards, since the CBCA made the disclosure requirements,” Pedris said.
Content written by Kieran Delamont for Worklife, a partnership between Ahria Consulting and London Inc. To view this content in newsletter form, click here.