Below is an excerpt from ISS Corporate Solution’s recently released article “Gender Diversity in Canadian Corporations: Rise in Board Seats for Women Hides Scant Progress in Leadership Roles”. The full report is available on the ISS Corporate Solutions online library.
Gender diversity on boards and among board leadership positions brings financial and non-financial benefits that go beyond a company’s ESG performance. Canada, like many other countries, has seen women make gains both in terms of total board seats and the percentages they represent on boards.
But that only tells part of the story. ISS Corporate Solutions research shows that those numerical gains are not matched by increases in women holding leadership roles such as the heads of compensation, audit and nominating committees, while female CEOs remain few and far between.
To shed light on the situation, we looked at Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) Composite companies for the period 2020-2023. This index of about 220 companies represents roughly 70% of the total market capitalization of the TSX and tends to set the standards for governance practices across the country.
Authored by:
Sandra Herrera Lopez, Ph.D., Vice President, ESG Content & Data Analytics, ISS Corporate Solutions
