Glass ceiling getting thicker in Canada
MARK BRENNAE, Canwest News Service
Published: February 18, 2008

That thud you may have heard from Bay St. and other centres of Canadian enterprise is the sound of women hitting their heads on the invisible but ever-thickening glass ceiling.

According to the results of a survey released recently, 16 per cent fewer women held top corporate jobs in Canada at the end of last year than in the previous year.

"This drop is disheartening and makes you wonder if anything is really going to change over the next 10 years, or even longer," said Jay Rosenzweig, managing partner of Rosenzweig & Co., which released its third annual Report on Women at the Top Levels of Corporate Canada.

"From a big-picture perspective, it's clear the 'glass ceiling' is alive and well."

The study's results showed only 31 women occupying such top officer jobs as CEO and CFO, in Canada's 100 largest publicly-traded companies. That's a dismal 5.8 per cent of the high-ranking workforce. Last year, there were 37 women in those positions, or 6.9 per cent.

How many men occupied the remaining plumb positions last year? How about 504?

As to why, Rosenzweig said there are "subtle attitudes at work that continue in the workplace." A feeling, he said, still exists among too many power brokers that women "can't handle a project because (they) have a couple of kids at home."

"There remains this old boys' club," Rosenzweig said.

"I don't think this old boys' club has died."

Fran Donaldson, president of the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, agrees.

"A lot of the organizations are still run by and large by people who are used to a male image of leadership," she said.

And that leadership consists of men wanting other men in high office to make the so-called "tough decisions." Donaldson contended it's not the tough decisions, but the "right decisions" that ought to be made.

"We still tend to associate good leadership with those male qualities of being tough and strong where, in fact, being nurturing and inclusive and collaborative is just as effective, if not more."

Donaldson said banking, accounting and the law are three fields that, generally speaking, have the highest and thickest glass ceilings.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008