Vancouver’s Westport Innovations (TSX:WPT) has named a new chairwoman to its board of directors as B.C. continues to trail the rest of the country in female boardroom representation.
The natural gas engine-maker announced August 15 Jill Bodkin had been given the top job in the boardroom, replacing John Beaulieu.
Beaulieu has served on Westport’s board 16 years and will remain there under the new title of chairman emeritus.
With Bodkin’s new title, Westport becomes one of the few companies in the province with a woman leading the boardroom.
Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (TSX:RBA) named Beverley Briscoe as its chairwoman in June, but the number of B.C. companies with female board members still lags behind the national average.
In a June 2014 study from Status of Women Canada, the federal government highlighted “predominantly male leadership networks that tend to choose candidates like themselves” as one of the main reasons why so few women serve as boardroom directors.
Among the 10 biggest publicly traded companies in B.C., only a dozen — or 10.5% — of the 114 boardroom positions were held by women as of March 2014.
That’s below the average of the 16% of boardroom seats women fill at Financial Post (FP) 500 companies throughout Canada, according to Ottawa’s June study.
The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) announced last fall it would recommend to its provincial government that publicly traded companies should disclose what they’re trying to do to increase the number of women in boardrooms.
The B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) hasn’t made similar recommendations to Victoria but a spokesman told Business in Vancouver the BCSC would monitor Ontario before making a final decision.
Meanwhile, in its June report, the Status of Women Canada called on corporations to boost female representation on public and private boards to 30% within five years.
