PLODDING PARITY PROGRESS
Diversity Disclosure Tracks Evolving Hierarchies in Public Companies WOMEN A R E s om ewh a t mo r e conspicuous i n com mercia l rea l e s t a t e’s e x e c u t i v e s u i t e s a n d boardrooms than is the average for Canadian companies that disclose such information to regulators and unit/ shareholders. A recently released report on diversity disclosure practices in public companies, from Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP, draws findings from 629 companies that revealed the gender breakdowns of their boards and 575 companies that enumerated women executive officers as of July 31, 2021.
Results show that women are gaining presence in these top echelons, but are still very much the minority. “The Canadian public company boards continue to add more women directors at a steady pace. The rate at which women are being appointed this year reached its highest level yet, with women filling 39.1% of the newly created or vacated board seats, a significant increase compared to a rate of 35% last year,” observe the report’s authors, Andrew MacDougall, John Valley and Jennifer Jeffrey. “Women are making very little progress at the executive officer level. The
28 October/November 2021 | Canadian Property Management
proportion of women executive officers increased slightly to 18.2% from 17% last year, but is largely unchanged since 2015 (when it was 15%), and only 10.7% of TSX-listed companies have targets for women executive officers (largely unchanged from last year).” This is the seventh year that TSX-listed companies have provided numbers aligned with the “comply or explain” rule. It requires venture issuers to report whether they have written policies, procedures and targets for bringing women onto boards and into executive officer roles or to explain why they do not.
