In my last post, I shared a few highlights of the people and places I encountered last week in Vancouver. As I mentioned, the official purpose of my trip was a lecture on corporate board diversity, part of my continuing ethnographic research on the topic undertaken with Lissa Broome and John Conley.
Like many other countries, including the U.S., there has been an increasing public focus on corporate board diversity in Canada in recent years. As shown in the chart below, courtesy of Catalyst, the percentage of board seats held by women in the FP 500 is only slightly less than the percentage held by women in the Fortune 500. But – just as in the U.S. -- some Canadians believe the percentage should be higher.
For example, Bill S-238, which was recently introduced in the Senate, would mandate gender parity on boards. But I was told while visiting that it is a private senator's bill which has been tabled at first reading and has not been referred to committee since it was tabled – I take it that means it has little chance of passing. (HT: Aaron Dhir and Ron Davis)
One thing, though, that I find interesting about the bill is the preamble, featured at the bottom of this post. Other than the brief allusion to the talent pool, it relies on social justifications for board diversity, rather than the performance-based arguments that are typical in the U.S. This makes more sense, in my opinion, given our limited current knowledge about the impact of board diversity on firm performance, a topic that I’ve discussed at length in
prior Lounge posts. (A list of links can be found here, and the announcement for an upcoming conference on the topic is here).
Tomorrow, I’ll conclude this series of posts about my trip with the real highlight: a Bowen Island outing with UBC Law faculty Janis Sarra and Ron Davis.
Image above: the Vancouver cherry blossoms, as seen from my iphone.
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