Maternity-apparel company founder Olivia Glauberzon says she had to 'lean out' of her career as a senior manager in the financial sector because strict 9-to-5 hours were impossible to manage with young kids at home.Handout
Women are still seriously underrepresented among managers and entrepreneurs, and the problem in Canada is worse than in the United States and many other developed countries, according to a new report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
The report, called Barely Breaking Ground and published on Tuesday, analyzes Statistics Canada data to measure the gaps women face in wages and in their representation among managers and business owners.
The analysis shows women made up 48 per cent of the work force in 2023 but only 35 per cent of managers – and in either case, their wages were, on average, 88 per cent of what men earned.
“I was just shocked in terms of how little progress we’ve made across the board,” said Marwa Abdou, senior research director at the chamber and co-author of the report.
As well, only 21 per cent of board seats were filled by women and 19 per cent of entrepreneurs were female. Ms. Abdou said the low representation across all categories shows how systemic the problem is.
“It’s not just one glass ceiling, it’s not just one broken rung, it’s across the pipeline,” she said.
Entrepreneur Olivia Glauberzon said the data rang true to her, as a former senior manager in the financial sector who now runs a maternity-apparel company called AFTER9.
She said she had to “lean out” of her Bay Street career because strict 9-to-5 hours were impossible to manage with young kids at home – a situation she said many mothers face.
“I need the flexibility to peace out from 3 to 6 p.m. while I take care of my family and do all the family things, and then I’m happy to hop back on from 8 to 1 a.m., no problem, after bedtime,” she said. “But no traditional role is going to let you do that.”
She said she has been through highs and lows seeking financing as a female entrepreneur. On the plus side was a successful pitch to Chris and Helene Hadfield at the Elevate Festival in Toronto in October, as well as an appearance on CBC’s Dragons’ Den in November, where she didn’t get funding but did gain valuable experience and connections.
On the negative side, though, was a recent encounter at a trade show where an administrator for a fund she had applied to gave her a surprise kiss on the side of her head. She said the incident was unprofessional and cast a shadow over her interactions with the prospective investor.
“When you experience inappropriate behaviour of any kind, you don’t know if a fund is taking your pitch seriously, and as a founder, you don’t want your financing to be related to anything other than your numbers,” Ms. Glauberzon said.
The report also includes data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that show Canada was 16th out of 32 developed countries in its share of women among management, at 35.6 per cent in 2022. That is above the OECD average of 33.7 per cent, but behind countries such as Latvia (45.9 per cent), the United States (41 per cent) and France (39.9 per cent).
The chamber suggests companies can improve their representation through, among other things, better tracking of retention and promotion of diverse employees and holding senior leaders accountable by tying their performance reviews to advancing diversity goals.
A separate paper, published Monday by Katherine Judge, senior economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, found that the wage gap between women and men has shrunk only a small amount between 2012 and 2024 – from 15 per cent to 13 per cent.
That’s somewhat surprising, given that female participation in the work force has increased over the period, and women have made significant progress in obtaining university degrees in subjects such as math and engineering that are connected to high-earning professions.
The story, however, is more complicated when you look under the surface of the data, Ms. Judge wrote. Women are gaining employment share in high-wage professions that have large existing gender pay gaps, while losing employment share in professions with smaller gender pay gaps.
“That seems to suggest that the flattening out in progress on the pay gap isn’t a reversal of progress, but is due to the dispersion of women into fields that are still dominated by men where the starting point for wage gaps was higher,” Ms. Judge wrote.
These high-paid professions, such as financial services and engineering, also tend to feature executive pay that is considerably higher than for other employees. The fact that female representation at the top levels of management is still lacking means that the wage-gap figures remain large, even when women are moving into better-paying industries.
“It will take some time before women make their way into these [top management] roles more,” Ms. Judge said in an interview.
“The generation coming up has had better access to subsidized child care and has also generally obtained higher education than men, so you just need time for that to filter through into the C-suite.”
Chris Hannay
Mark Rendell