Lisa Vogt had five teenagers at home when she was named managing partner at the Vancouver office of McCarthy Tétrault, one of Canada’s leading national law firms. The new job meant more hours and travel, but Vogt says her husband, a doctor, shared the parenting duties and they were able to hire outside help to support their decision to juggle work and family. That her husband’s medical practice was three blocks from their home also worked in their favour.
“So when the high school calls and says your son was playing softball and he took a ball to the throat and he stopped breathing – which did happen once – my husband could call me and say, ‘This has happened. I’m on it,’” Vogt recalls. Thankfully, their son wasn’t seriously injured.
Female leaders like Vogt are often called upon to share their success stories, including the details of the superhuman logistical efforts required to reach and maintain their positions of power.
Vogt doesn’t mind sharing, but agrees the same questions are rarely, if ever, posed to men in leadership roles. Yes, the family had a housekeeper for 25 years. Yes, she delegated domestic tasks like cleaning, laundry and cooking to another person. It reveals another important side to the story: “You can have it all, but you cannot do it all,” says Vogt, 61.
Female leaders still all too rare
Leaders like Vogt remain the exception in British Columbia’s business community. Studies in B.C. and across Canada show there are still few women in senior business leadership positions.
A 2015 report by the Minerva Foundation found that only four of 28 large B.C. corporations it surveyed were led by female CEOs. Two companies had no women on their executive team or the board of directors. There were no aboriginal women in the leadership ranks, among all of the companies surveyed. Nationally, the percentage of female company directors at Canada’s top 500 firms is just under 20 per cent.
“The numbers are abysmal,” says Jill Earthy, a Vancouver entrepreneur who has founded and sold two small businesses so far in her career. “We need to do something, and we need to do something drastic.”
Earthy, who co-founded the WEB Alliance, a collective of B.C. women’s business networks, says there’s no lack of talent. However, “at the current pace, we will not close the gender gap in this lifetime.”
It’s been more than a generation since large numbers of women entered the workforce and began climbing professional ranks. They encountered sexism, stereotypes and glass ceilings as many juggled work and family obligations.
Today, women comprise nearly 48 per cent of the Canadian labour force, up from 37 per cent in 1976.
But women still struggle to reach senior positions even though record numbers are graduating from law schools and MBA programs.
What’s really holding women back?
Some argue that employers must change the way they recruit, mentor and advance women, as well as rethink what makes a good leader.
Others believe an unconscious bias remains against professionals whose backgrounds, skills and attitudes don’t neatly align with those of senior executives. In 2016, that group is still largely white and male.
Vogt describes the bias as a “soft bigotry,” in which employers make wrong assumptions about what women want from their careers.
An employer, for example, may assume that a female professional recently back from a parental leave won’t want to travel or increase her workload. Sometimes, those assumptions are made without consulting the female employee.
“They’re not allowing women to decide,” says Vogt, who first became a partner in 1990 while eight months pregnant with her third child.
“We can’t be second-guessing women,” she says. “We need to provide them with the exact same opportunities and let them choose.”
More profit
There is a business case to increasing the number of women on corporate boards. Research by University of British Columbia finance professor Kai Li found that companies with a higher percentage of female directors perform better financially.
In one study, Li and co-researchers found that corporate boards that include more women are more likely to seek outside financial help during a takeover offer, reducing the risk of litigation from shareholders.
“They just do more background work to make sure that the company is making the right decision, so female directors are associated with stronger, better governance,” Li says.
Some believe Canada should follow the lead of certain European countries and impose gender quotas for the boards of listed companies. Regulators in Ontario have required firms listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange to make public the number of women on their boards and in executive officer positions. The mandatory “comply or explain” regulations were designed to give shareholders more information.
Seven provinces and two territories signed on to the initiative, but not B.C. or Alberta.
BC Securities Commission spokeswoman Pamela McDonald says B.C.’s biggest companies, such as Telus and Teck Resources, are already listed on Ontario’s stock exchange. The B.C. regulator did not want to add more costs to smaller companies by saddling them with extra reporting requirements.
The case for quotas
Earthy says she was opposed to quotas for years but has since changed her mind.
“To have more programs, whether it is quotas or comply and explain, it raises awareness and makes it a key priority for those boards to address, and we’re at a point where I think that is necessary,” she says.
Others think it’s better to encourage companies to change their own policies.
“I like the soft persuasion of targets – not quotas,” says Vogt.
However, she believes corporate employers must go beyond mentoring women to actively sponsor top female talent.
That means “someone is not just speaking to you but speaking about you,” Vogt says. “They’re around the boardroom table talking about you and providing opportunities for you.
“If anything now, women are over-mentored but under-sponsored,” she says.
Entrepreneurship a direct route to the top
Some women, like Earthy, have turned to entrepreneurship, where they have more control of the power levers.
“I think a lot of women are saying, ‘I could be more effective, I could have more of an impact if I create my own business, my own culture and be my own boss in this role,’ versus trying to fit into this [corporate] culture and this structure that isn’t working for me,” Earthy says.
Shannon Rogers left a law career 14 years ago to help found Global Relay Communications Inc., a Vancouver-based email archiving service that has become a global giant serving 22 of the world’s top 25 banks.
As president and general counsel, she feels a duty to promote women and set a different tone. For instance, in early 2015, at the firm’s leadership meeting, Rogers noticed she was the only woman in the room.
“I said, ‘This is ridiculous. I know all of you guys want more women, but somehow we’re not bringing in the women.’”
That year, the firm made a concerted effort to recruit more senior women.
“Men, they want to help give women the opportunity to lead, but sometimes they’re just not quite sure how to do it,” says Rogers, who believes part of her role is to help show them how.
Board makeup should reflect the market
Another bright spot for women in the B.C. corporate landscape is Vancouver-based HSBC Bank Canada, Canada’s seventh-largest bank, which has an equal number of men and women on its Canadian board. Sixty per cent of the bank’s executive committee is female, including its CEO and president, Sandra Stuart.
Beginning in 2011, Stuart says, HSBC began looking at the demographic data of the bank’s senior employees and board members. With diverse clients from around the globe, HSBC wanted to ensure its senior management team reflected its market.
It changed its recruiting and mentoring policies to attract and groom more women and people from different ethnic backgrounds.
Stuart, who joined British-based HSBC in 1982 and worked abroad for the bank in Brazil and the U.S., says corporate boards with a diverse makeup address issues more thoroughly.
There’s a “very robust thought and discussion,” she says. “So when you do take a decision, you feel you have analyzed it and you feel you have a lot of comfort that you had a lot of good thinking and expertise on it.”
Speak up, stand out
Stuart also believes women who want top-level corporate careers must make more noise at work, which includes speaking up about their goals and being ready to jump in when a big offer comes along. She sees this happening at HSBC.
“What I see is women actively looking at the opportunities in their organization, thinking about their career beyond the current role, preparing for their next role, building networks, events,” she says. “They are much more open about their careers and where they want to go. I love it.”
Men also play a role in ensuring that women excel, says Vogt. She notes some of the most collaborative professionals she’s encountered have been men who have spouses with busy careers.
“Guys whose wives work are tremendously supportive of women,” she says. “They want to succeed in business, but they are more resilient if things don’t work out. They will do something else because they have a safety net. When your whole ego isn’t in one basket, you tend to be more forgiving of others, more forgiving of yourself, a better listener.” Vogt forecasts the next generation of corporate professionals will be more at ease with sharing power, which should help to increase the number of women in leadership roles.
“Because more of our kids are coming from dual-income families, and that’s my hope for the future.”
