This year’s Rosenzweig Report – our 18th – marks advancement for women in corporate Canada. For the first time, women hold more than 10 percent of the country’s top corporate positions. While this number may still seem disturbingly low – which it is – it nonetheless represents a milestone.

There is some good news: the number of women in corporate leadership roles has approximately doubled over the past 17 years. But unfortunately we began from a very low base. Today the total number of women leaders is still under 10 per cent. So, yes, the numbers are higher, but they do not even begin to approach equality.

By any measure, the past year has been a challenging one, given the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic disruption. This has been especially true for women generally and for women identifying as Black, Indigenous, or as People of Colour (BIPOC) in particular. In Canada, women exited the workforce in far higher numbers than their male counterparts, according to a recent RBC research paper...

In 2020, based on our latest survey of top corporate jobs in Canada, women continue to face serious obstacles to advancement in business. Indeed, we found a year-over-year decline in the number of named female executives at Canada’s 100 largest public companies, dropping from 9.6% to 7.99%.

In 2019, based on our latest survey of top corporate jobs in Canada, we must report that women continue to be held back. Yes, there has been some overall progress, but it has been incremental at best.

Our latest report indicates there are clearly still significant challenges in terms of achieving more acceptable levels of female participation in the C-Suite. But we are cautiously optimistic that real progress is within reach, if the right strategies are employed and if people of good will – men as well as women – strive to make it happen.

Forging gender equity has been far more elusive than many think, despite male leaders – in business and politics – who are working diligently on the side of gender equity. This is not simply a women’s issue; it’s everybody’s issue. Everyone has a stake.

For 11 years, we’ve been tracking the number of women in leadership roles at Canada’s 100 largest publicly-traded corporations and equality remains a pipedream. Where Trudeau’s cabinet is 50-50 men and women, the top executives of Canada’s 100 largest publicly-traded companies are 92 percent male and a paltry 8 percent female, a slight drop this year over last year’s results.

At no time during the past decade have we been more hopeful, more excited, more energized about the fact that real and lasting change is coming when it comes to gender equality in business.