B.C.’s top companies fall short on gender diversity: report

Adine Mees, CEO of the Minerva Foundation at the foundation’s release of the report..

B.C.’s boards and C-suites compare well to their global counterparts on the number of women in management positions, but still fall far from gender parity

How does B.C.’s private sector fare when it comes to women in leadership positions? Not particularly well, according to a report from the Vancouver-based Minerva Foundation that examined the gender composition of the boards and C-suites of 28 of B.C.’s biggest companies. 

Four companies—BC Hydro, HSBC Bank Canada, Providence Health Care and WorksafeBC—have female CEOs. WorksafeBC had the highest number of women on its board of any B.C. Company at 63 per cent (5 out of eight). One-third had policies that encouraged the promotion of women into senior leadership positions. Meanwhile, 14 per cent of the companies surveyed had no women in their C-suite, while 25 per cent had just one. None of the 28 companies had a woman of aboriginal descent on their boards. 

Here’s a ranking of the top performers, based on the percentage of women in senior management positions:

Pacific Blue Cross—71%
BC Hydro—63%
BC Lottery—63%
HSBC Bank of Canada—58%

WorksafeBC—50% 

And then where women accounted for less than 10 per cent of senior positions:

PMC-Sierra—9%
West Fraser Timber—8%
Univar Canada—0%
Lions Gate Entertainment—0%
MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates—0%
Ledcor Group—0%