By Vivian Moreau
In blue jeans and red Nike shirt, Robin McIntyre looks less a corporate executive and more a soccer mom on casual Friday at Rogers Ottawa on Richmond Road.
McIntyre is a blend of both, as a mother of three school-age children and an engineer who’s worked her way up through the ranks to president of Canada’s largest cable communications company’s Ottawa division. McIntyre is part of a breed of women corporate executives that’s seen substantial growth since the Bejing declaration was adopted 10 years ago.
“We are filling the pipe with really skilled women, with a lot of future leaders,” says McIntyre. With women in six of its 15 senior management positions, the company’s office bucks national trends.
“Even six years ago it was unusual to find women in senior-level positions like vice-president,” says Penny Collenette, executive-in-residence at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of law’s school of management. But that’s slowly changing.
In a 2004 ranking of Canada’s most powerful women, Toronto-based Women’s Executive Network, an organization that supports corporate women advancement, identified 30 corporate women vice-presidents of the Financial Post’s 500 top-ranked companies in Canada.
“All of this is hopeful,” says Collenette, “but we’ve still got a long way to go.” Collenette notes that although women have made great strides in areas such as the Supreme Court of Canada, which has four female justices, some areas of the corporate world have been slow to promote women.
“Numbers do vary across industry,” says Susan Black, president of Catalyst Canada, a Toronto non-profit organization that tracks the number of Canadian corporate women. Black says Crown corporations have the best track record for advancing women to senior positions.
“Crown corporations are influenced by the government sector’s diversity of values,” says Black,“and the corporations look to incorporate diversity.”
But women at the highest levels, like chief executive officer and chairperson, are rare. In a 2003 census of FP500 companies, Catalyst Canada found only three women chairpersons and 13 CEOs.
“The business community has to understand that equitable diversity numbers is a business issue, says Black. She says it pays for companies to remove the glass ceiling.
“Companies that focus on diversity as a business issue do better than those that do not,” she says. Catalyst Canada found that FP500 companies with gender diversity at the top provided a 34 per cent higher return to shareholders than companies that did not diversify.
But movement up the corporate ladder demands a fixed vision, says McIntyre. “To be the best you can be, you have to figure out what you truly want,” she says.
Pressures beyond work can cloud that issue. McIntyre, who works 60-hour weeks and travels 50 per cent of the time, says there are subtle social pressures about balancing family and career life.
“My mom has said to me sometimes ‘You know, you don’t have to do this job.’ ”
“The real issue is deciding what to sacrifice and what to accept,” says Collenette. Women need to decide if and when they want to have children, and what kind of support system they need in place when they return to work.
“Many men are willing to share in child rearing now,” she says, “but until a system is invented when men can have children, women have to accept this dilemma.”
Collenette says women used to be perceived as “not wanting to mix it up,” combining family and a high-powered career. But she says priorities are shifting.
“In a macro-societal sense, women are rejecting the traditional corporate structure. Women are saying maybe that’s not the way. It needs to evolve to be less of a confrontational and more of a win-win situation.”
McIntyre says in addition to her husband, her career support network includes a group of like-minded women who meet once a month to discuss their progress.
“It’s a collegial gathering, providing professional feedback. When I talk about my plans, others will ask ‘Okay, what have you done about them since we last met?’ ”
Women approach networking differently, she says. “Women think that if you invite someone for dinner it’s because you want to be their friend. Some women see it as being kind of artificial, but men see it as part of their job, they do it all the time.”
Black agrees.
“One of the ways to ascend is to have a champion, someone who tells you about the unspoken rules,” says Black. “With few women at the highest levels, it’s difficult for the women at the senior executive levels. Role models are vital.” She says the situation will change as more women rise through the corporate ranks.
“There are slow, incremental changes that are taking place with gender diversity. But some companies are leaders and others are followers.”