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When it comes to putting women on company boards, Canada has two solitudes: the resource sector and everyone else.
Despite years of high-profile pressure to bolster the representation of women on boards – including new diversity disclosure rules from regulators taking effect Dec. 31 – Canada’s resource companies remain far behind the curve. Women fill just 7.8 per cent of seats on the boards of energy companies in Canada and 11 per cent in mining and forestry firms.
In most other sectors – including financial services, utilities, telecommunications, health care and consumer staples – women now account for between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of corporate directors, a proportion that has been growing rapidly as companies respond to calls from regulators, shareholders and advocacy groups for greater diversity in senior roles.
Calgary-based corporate director Stella Thompson, a retired Petro-Canada executive, says the slow pace of improvement on board diversity in the energy sector is becoming an embarrassment for women in Alberta’s oil patch.
“There are lots of capable women to help with boards,” she says. “You don’t necessarily have to be the CEO of an oil company – you need a few of those, but you don’t need all of them.”
Not all resource companies are dragging their feet, and some of the largest firms have made major strides to add multiple women to the boards. But they remain a minority, and the slow pace of change means the sector is falling behind as other industries move more quickly to embrace diversity.
A review of Canada’s largest 251 companies in the S&P/TSX composite index as of Oct. 21 shows 55 per cent of energy companies have no women on their boards, and 42 per cent of mining and forestry companies have no women, compared with just 16 per cent of all other firms in the index.
Ms. Thompson believes no men in Calgary’s tight-knit energy community are against the idea of diversity, but it has not become a priority for many, either.
They are accustomed to filling boards with colleagues who previously worked together or were joint-venture partners, or helped form start-up companies, she says. They often belong to the city’s top three private clubs and even live in the same exclusive neighbourhoods in Calgary.
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