BC Business
In November, BCBusiness published its annual list of the most influential business people in B.C. A survey conducted in partnership with IE Market Research turned up nine names, all clearly deserving of recognition, and all men.
Other lists show similar results: look at the 100 biggest companies in the province (July 2006), and you might find one or two female CEOs. Check any national publication’s list of fastest-growing, most influential, top-paid or top-performing companies or individuals, and you’ll be left with the distinct impression that women barely exist in the world of Canadian business. Are women still bearing the brunt of workplace discrimination, 40 years after all the marching and bra-burning of the ’60s? Or is it that women just don’t pursue the corner office with the same hunger as their male counterparts? Or could it be that when we conduct these surveys, we’re asking the wrong questions? BCBusiness convened a panel of women who have grappled with these questions over the course of very successful – not to mention very influential – careers. Elizabeth Watson is a lawyer specializing in corporate governance. She was hired by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2001 to help break up the dominance of middle-aged white men on the boards of Crown corporations and on public commissions, tribunals and other governance bodies. Over the next four years, she was involved in recruiting close to 2,000 people. She is now an independent consultant working with boards of directors and recruiting for boards. Stephanie Sharp was formerly the managing director at Arthur Andersen LLP in Vancouver and is currently the principal at Ferax Consulting, where she assists on negotiations between public and private sectors, and on large outsourcing contracts. Anne Stewart is a partner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP in Vancouver, where she specializes in corporate commercial work and negotiating major contracts. She served on the board of B.C. Railway before its assets were sold, and started the Minerva Foundation’s Helping Women Work program, aimed at helping women get back to work after extended absences. BCBusiness: Anne, you make an interesting exception to male-dominated lists: I noticed on your biography that you are on the Lexpert list of top 100 lawyers. I believe you are in the top 25? Anne Stewart: No, that was a list of the top 25 women, so as with so many of those lists, there’s still felt to be a need to have special awards for women, largely for the reasons that you found when you were doing your survey. BCB: That says something in itself – that women have to have their own category, that they can’t cut it, that they won’t rank with the men. AS: Or that they just might not have the same public profile. I was head of an association of women in finance 11 years ago and I was shocked at the number of women who would come to events and say, “I can’t believe how talented these women are; I had no idea these women were out there.” And now 11 years later, I get the same thing at Women Leading Change [luncheon presentations]. BCB: That must be discouraging – no progress in 11 years. AS: No, there has been progress. One of the reasons we continue to hear these kinds of remarks is because men have been way better at networking. A lot of them have gone into organizations that were primarily men and have piggybacked on the networking opportunities of their mentors. I know I started with a determination to be the best lawyer I could be, not the best woman lawyer. So for a while I was not involved in women’s organizations because I didn’t want to believe they were necessary. Then I realized one day that it still wasn’t working; as much as in my heart I wanted it to work, there was still a difference. So now I’ve spent 11 years with the Association of Women in Finance; the Minerva Foundation has been around since 1999, and all of us here today are involved in a number of women’s organizations. We are starting to build good networks. The changes that we have made over the last 10 years are absolutely remarkable: you go to functions now and we know each other. Elizabeth Watson: Mentoring is also very important. Men-to-men mentoring is much more natural and accepted. It’s not because men don’t want to mentor women, but it doesn’t happen as naturally because the topics of conversation other than business generally are not the same. And also, if the guy and the woman are hanging out together, people in the office start talking. Stephanie Sharp: In my experience, it wasn’t natural. Maybe they’d take you along on a business deal, and you’d be watching them in action and then you’d be back in the office and talking about details of the deal. But it wasn’t the natural, “Hey, let’s go over to the club and have lunch.” And then, while you’re there, you’ve met six other people who have come over to say hi. BCB: Okay, so there is progress. Through networking and mentoring, women have more influence in the business community. But this has been a hot topic since women’s lib in the ’60s and ’70s – that was 30 or 40 years ago. When are we going to see results? AS: It hasn’t been 30 or 40 years in the business community. I graduated in 1975 and started practising law in 1976, and there were not a lot of women other than in family litigation. EW: If you talk about the progress, I’ve talked before about a 1943 hiring guide from a transportation company, saying that when you hire women, try and get ones that are married because they are usually more content than the others, and try and get one that’s a little more plump because she won’t be so busy dating. That was 60 years ago, so it seems like glacial progress, but we are moving in the right direction. BCB: Has Vancouver been slow, compared to Toronto? AS: I think we’ve been faster. You mentioned the top 25 lawyers, well, that article was a few years ago, and they did a survey of all the law firms and the number of female lawyers in the firms. The number of female partners in Vancouver was much higher and I was really happy because Blake’s Vancouver office was off the map in terms of female lawyers and female partners. [Fasken Martineau partner] Sue Paish was another winner here, but the Vancouver firms were definitely on par or better. EW: And I think central Canada is more establishment. I can remember as a young lawyer meeting a senior business person here in town and the first thing he asked me was what did my father do. BCB: So you think there is more of an openness to it here? AS: If you were in Toronto and you didn’t go to Upper Canada College, and you didn’t grow up in Toronto, well, forget it. Whereas here, most of us weren’t born here, we all came here and we’ve built up our own networks. It’s still not all that common to find someone who was born in Vancouver and grew up in Vancouver and had, you know, family connections. Most of us came in from somewhere else and built them up. The percentage of that in Toronto would be, I think, way higher than Vancouver: people that grew up there and their father was in business and now they’re in business, and their uncle and aunt and everybody’s still there with this network. BCB: If there needs to be associations to promote women and to get their names out there for boards, it begs the question: do women need extra help to get equal footing? SS: That’s the case right now, I think. AS: I think there was a time when there really weren’t as many women who were qualified for the position. But we’re now at the point where we do have lots of women with the qualifications and the ability to do these things, so it’s definitely time for them to get in there and get their chance. BCB: How do you think that happens? AS: I think that Liz took the biggest first step that’s probably happened in this country. She had a list of all men, basically, when she first got that list of positions she was called on to fill. She consciously went out to get a list that was diverse, and made a concerted effort to get these boards balanced. And that worked. She was involved in a lot of the appointees on B.C. Rail and it was a fantastic working board: we had diverse representation geographically, we had diverse representation from skill sets, we had men and we had women. When men on those boards see what the women contribute, then when they’re on their next board hopefully they will take that knowledge with them. BCB: Is there a glass ceiling, or is it women themselves who are making the choice not to pursue the top jobs? EW: There will be a range of women, as there is a range of men, who don’t care about a corner office. The problem is that there are women who want to be there and they’re not able to be. BCB: What about the suggestion that the CEO position requires a more aggressive style, and that women typically don’t have that? EW: We’re pretty good multi-taskers, and if you look at the things a CEO has to be keeping an eye on, a lot of different departments and a lot of different people reporting to him, we’re pretty good at handling 12 different things at once. I think we’re in a pretty good position talent-wise to be doing the job. It’s really got to do with establishment choosing establishment. BCB: Are quotas the solution? AS: No, I think just getting more women in at lower levels, getting them the opportunity to work up through an organization, so that they can make some of those relationships. EW: I was recently talking to a CEO who works locally. She said that when she was in the federal government they had an affirmative action program, and she felt she was given an opportunity that she would not otherwise have had. She was moved to a senior position and now she’s had a senior position since then. SS: That’s essentially what you did with the boards. Isn’t it the same thing? EW: We never approached it as a quota system, but on a board, it does make sense that you should try to have at least three women, because it’s tough for one person to make change alone when you’re isolated. You can be strong and tough, but you’re going to be afraid to speak out with seven or eight guys around. It’s not that they’re trying to be intimidating, but there is a culture; there’s a dynamic there. BCB: Okay, so networking groups are a positive step. It’s helpful, but it doesn’t seem to be resulting in more women in senior executive positions. EW: You’ve got to look down below the CEOs. SS: There are a lot more CFOs. EW: There are a lot more women in senior executive positions than there used to be. You’ve got to look at your VP level. The other thing is that women tend to get put into staff positions: they’re the head of HR, not running the oil refinery. When it comes to choosing the CEO, it’s usually from operations. We see women in communications, government relations, marketing. And we’re seeing a lot of smart women in finance. But if you look at a corporate setting, you’ll see women on the staff side, and that’s not where the CEOs come from. BCB: Will we be having this same discussion in another 10 years? When will we actually see some of the results of this networking, these grassroots efforts? EW: Well, I’m hopeful that we’ll see more positive results, because I think at a board level there is somewhat of a perfect storm happening in demographics in that we’ve got a lot of men in senior positions retiring, so we’ve got more positions becoming available. We’ve got a lot of women in professional and business schools, so we’ve got lots of good candidates coming up, and we’ve got women being very powerful in the economy so they are going to hopefully wield some influence there. And on the board side, we’ve got governance requirements that are seeking or promoting diversity, and women are an obvious kind of diversity. So I think we will see change. SS: I’d be interested in seeing another survey, in going out and asking what proportion of women would want to be CEO versus men, for example, and then look at the proportion that are getting there. And measure that over time, because that ratio is probably telling. AS: I think we have come a lot farther than may be apparent by the surveys. Maybe we don’t have a lot of female CEOs, but we’ve got a lot more women positioning themselves for those positions, who are getting the experience, getting known. So, I think we’ve done just fine and I think you’re going to see some changes soon.