Sarah Kaplan and Jane Griffith discuss in the Globe and Mail their study showing the lack of LGBTQ+ board directors
Pride Month is a time to celebrate the many steps taken toward achieving LGBTQ+ inclusion, while at the same time considering the numerous barriers to economic, health and social well-being that the community still faces.
Among those barriers is the “lavender ceiling” blocking LGBTQ+ people’s path toward corporate leadership and board directorships, positions that hold the reins of power in the Canadian economy. As the Ontario Securities Commission and other securities regulators contemplate expanding diversity disclosure regulations from just looking at women to include other dimensions of diversity such as LGBTQ+ representation, it is worth taking stock of how many members of the community are represented on corporate boards.
Because no comprehensive data exist on the demographics of Canadian corporate board members, the Institute for Gender and the Economy in partnership with LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors Canada undertook a study to identify all of the 9,396 corporate directors of 1,110 companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange (those subject to diversity disclosure regulations for women on boards) from 2015-2022. We then painstakingly searched newspapers, biographies, the internet and other public sources for any mention of each director’s affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community.
The depressing – but perhaps not surprising – result: we only could identify nine total board members across all years (and seven in 2022) who publicly identified as being part of the community. That’s just 0.15 per cent of total board members. Given that between 4.4 per cent and 9 per cent of the Canadian population are LGBTQ+, this number is shockingly low. Of note, these were all lesbians and gay men. We did not identify any transgender, bisexual or two-spirit board directors. Even more disappointing, corporate Canada does worse than the U.S.’s already poor performance, where LGBTQ+ people make up 0.7 per cent of Fortune 500 and 1.2 per cent of NASDAQ-listed company boards.
Of note, we imagine that this number many not fully count all of the members of the LGBTQ+ community on boards because some people will have chosen not to disclose their identity publicly. While this may mean that our analysis undercounts true representation, it does focus attention on why people at the very top of corporate leadership might not feel comfortable disclosing their true identities. As Bob Quartermain said after he came out after 40 years in the mining industry and having served on multiple corporate boards, it was “a challenging commentary when you’ve actually spent much of your life in the closet.”
By excluding LGBTQ+ people from board leadership, unintentionally or not, boards are missing out on opportunities to be higher performing. Diverse boards have been shown to exercise more effective risk management, engage in deeper analysis, avoid group think and address environmental, social and governance issues with greater acuity.
What can Corporate Canada do to make progress? Read the rest of the op ed here:
