A Benchmarking Study of Women’s Leadership in Canada

Deloitte  – Jan 15, 2013

PROGRESS IN INCHES – MILES TO GO

Women in Canada continue to be underrepresented in senior leadership across
the private, public and nonprofit sectors. Because gender equality was enshrined
constitutionally in 1985, a widespread assumption exists that Canadian women’s
equality continues to improve steadily and therefore measures to advance women
are no longer necessary. Cross-sectoral data, however, confirm persistent patterns of
women’s underrepresentation in top leadership positions and, in fact, reveal that
advancement results as well as the strategies used to address this gender gap have
stalled in many fields.

Although significant research exists on the subject of Canadian women and senior
leadership, such studies tend to examine barriers and evaluate best practices in single
sectors. Inspired by The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s
Leadership (2009) in the U.S., this report revisits the issue of women’s leadership by
offering a broad snapshot of Canadian women’s leadership across the private, public
and nonprofit sectors. The study offers a scan of the existing literature, a comprehensive
quantitative overview of women in senior leadership, and qualitative evidence from the
public sector in which women have made progress in achieving leadership positions and
the mining sector in which significantly less progress has been achieved.

Our findings reveal marked variations in women’s representation in senior leadership
roles across sectors, the persistence in the workplace of gendered expectations about
leadership and generational shifts in ideas about leadership and work/family integration.
These results indicate a need for new, multi-pronged strategies to end women’s
underrepresentation in senior leadership. The report also proposes an agenda for future
research in the field. Read full article>>