Aspiring women business leaders are not doing a good enough job of networking with male executives and mentors, say participants in a recent panel discussion designed to better open the boardroom to both sexes.

Sue Paish, president and CEO of the national Pharmasave drugstore chain, said many women who seek board positions sit in their offices waiting to get noticed - but they will not.

"These kinds of presentations are great," Paish told the predominantly female audience at the Vancouver gathering, titled Women on Board. "But I think we are talking to the wrong audience, because my guess is that (some of) the (mostly male) chairs of finance and audit committees, etc., probably ... are here, but a lot are not. We have to figure out how to get to the right audience with a loud enough message."

Paish is the chairwoman and founder of the Vancouver Board of Trade's Women's Leadership Circle, which staged the Women On Board event aboard a cruise ship.

File photo by Bayne Stanley, Business Edge
Pharmasave CEO Sue Paish looks to get message to right audience.

The underlying message is companies sail smoother when more women rise above C-level, or executive positions.

According to a Catalyst Census of Women report released in June, 13 per cent of leading Canadian company board seats were occupied by women - a rise of only about three percentage points since 2001, when 9.8 per cent had women directors.

"We're really calling for change to happen, for CEOs, chairs of nominating committees, chairs of the board, to look beyond the C-suite for potential candidates to the board," said Deborah Gillis, Catalyst's Toronto-based vice-president for North America. "We really see this as a lost opportunity for Canadian businesses to take advantage of the diverse perspectives of women, who really have the opportunity to contribute a perspective of clients, customers and shareholders and stakeholders."

Founded in 1962, Catalyst is an organization that strives to increase opportunities for both women and businesses through its research. Its members include 400 international companies, business schools and associations, including Google, KPMG Canada, Magna International, Nike and Kraft Foods.

Traditionally, said Gillis, the path to the boardroom has been through the CEO position. But there is only a small pool of Canadian women CEOs, and Catalyst encourages companies to draw from a broader pool of candidates in corporate-officer positions to fill skills gaps.

"The more women directors there are in the present, the more women corporate officers there will be in the future," Gillis told the audience, adding female directors become important role models and mentors. "For a board to have an impact on diversity, we need to set the tone at the top."

But Paish, also a Vancouver Board of Trade vice-chairwoman, suggested some women's perceptions about the so-called "old boys club" are ill-founded. The Pharmasave boss said aspiring women must set goals, develop networks that include men, and engage with communities to "get known and get trusted."

Paish, the former head of Fasken Martineau Dumoulin LLP who is active in several mentorship programs and is the lone woman on four other company boards, noted her strongest mentors have been men.

She said potential female directors must understand that advancing the organization's aims - not their personal interests - should be their aim. She adds she is willing to help other women obtain board seats, but only if they can earn them.

According to the Catalyst study, women occupied 527 of 4,061 board seats last year, compared to 431 of 4,421 board seats in 2001. Crown corporations, with 30 per cent, had the highest percentage of female directors.

Female directors, 56 of whom were interviewed as part of the study, attributed that finding to the government's mandate to enhance gender diversity.

The study also found most women directors sit on several boards. On average, Canadian-owned companies had more women executives (13.7 per cent) than foreign-owned firms (9.3 per cent).

Since the study was released, Catalyst has been stressing the business benefits of having more women on boards. Gillis said the top companies with women directors had 53 per cent higher returns on equity, 42 per cent more sales and 66 per cent more investment capital.

Entertainment firms had the highest percentage of women directors last year, as they occupied about 30 per cent of 21 available seats. Credit unions, which often bill themselves as champions of diversity, were second (24.3 per cent) and multi-media (22 per cent), food distribution (21.4 per cent) and property and casualty insurance firms (21.1 per cent) rounded out the top five.

Ironically, environmental firms were considered the worst offenders, because none of the 21 firms studied had a woman director, although many prominent environmentalists are females. Gold-mining companies (4.6 per cent) were the second-worst offenders while metal-mining and agricultural companies (5.4 per cent) tied for third. The mining-related results contradict that industry's strong push in recent years to hire more women professionals.

Kim Baird, chief of the Tsawwassen First Nation, who was appointed to the board of BC Hydro in April, says Ottawa should introduce legislation requiring companies to appoint a certain percentage of female directors.

She said countries with quota systems - like Norway, which requires 40 per cent of corporate directors to be women - are the only ones in which female board members are on the rise.

"If we as a society don't address these issues, they'll never be addressed," said Baird.

Women in general have become complacent, she adds. "Many women, especially younger women, thought the gender equality fight was fought and won."

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)