A portrait of women in the boardroom pre-pandemic

Just under half of Canadians working today are women. However, despite decades of gains in the workplace, less than one-fifth of those gathered around a table at a board of directors meeting at a large corporation in 2018 were women directors (18.3%) or officers (17.1%).

Women accounted for over 5,000 of the 28,000 directors or officers in a boardroom in Canada in 2018. Women executives (6.2%) were more than two times less likely than men (16.1%) to be in top decision-making roles, such as president of a corporation.

Although women remain underrepresented in the boardroom of Canada’s largest corporations, some progress was observed among publicly traded corporations and corporations operating in the utilities sector from 2016 to 2018, where women accounted for about one-fourth of members on boards of directors. Nationally, women directors were more likely than men directors to have completed a bachelor’s degree.

Meanwhile, several initiatives have been implemented that may see more women coming on board in the years ahead. A recent survey, conducted in 2022, also shows that women account for half of all middle and junior managers of businesses across Canada.

Quebec (19.0%) had the largest share of women sitting on boards of directors, while British Columbia had the lowest share (16.1%).

Just under 1 in 10 women executives belonged to a visible minority group, while representing about one-fifth of the overall population of working women, and 1% were Indigenous. Over two-thirds of visible minority women executives worked in the financial sector.

Visible minority women (46 years old) and men (49 years old) were on average the youngest people sitting on a board of a large corporation in 2016. By way of comparison, non-visible minority women board members were, on average, 52 years old, and non-visible minority men were, on average, 55 years old.

Visible minority women (40.2 hours vs. 38.1 hours) and visible minority men (43.2 hours vs. 41.7 hours) also worked longer hours on average than their non-visible minority counterparts.

Almost four-fifths of non-visible minority women executives were married or in a common law relationship in 2016, and almost half did not have children (46.7%). By way of comparison, 7 in 10 visible-minority women executives were married or in a common law relationship in 2016, and just over one-third had no children (36.2%). 

Overall, approximately one-third of women executives (36.4%) had two or more children.

New data on women on boards will be released in May 2022.