The Latest Rosenzweig Report Finds More Canadian Women In Leadership

The number of women in leadership positions at Canada’s 100 largest publicly-traded corporations has reached a record high in the past year, with women representing 12.52% of paid C-level executives, according to the Rosenzweig Report.

For twenty years, the Rosenzweig Report on Women at the Top Levels of Corporate Canada has tracked the presence of women in leadership roles, revealing both progress and challenges. This year’s 20th Annual Rosenzweig Report found 66 female Named Executive Officers (NEOs) at Canada’s 100 largest corporations.

More Women In Executive Positions

The report defines NEOs as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), and other paid C-level executives who are explicitly named in the corporation’s management circulars. In short, these are the individuals who make the strategic and financial planning decisions for their organizations. Out of 527 such executives at Canada’s top 100 corporations, 66 executives are women and 461 are men — making the percentage of women at the C-level 12.52%, up from 11.90% last year and the highest since the beginning of the Rosenzweig Report.

In fact, when the Rosenzweig Report first ran in 2006, women accounted for only 4.6% of NEOs. While women have gained more of a share in leadership roles over the past two decades, the percentage remains far short of the Rosenzweig Report’s aspirational benchmark of 30%, which experts quoted in the report suggest is still decades away.

Other Findings

The report also found that while most corporations that include female representation at the C-level have only one woman in a leadership position, several had more. Three large companies had three women NEOs each, and eight large corporations had two NEOs each. At least 10 of the 66 women NEOs this year are BIPOC, though the report’s authors note that the exact number could be higher, as not all executives self-identify.

When looking at the 100 largest corporations by revenue, women NEOs were rarest in the top quartile of organizations, with only 11 women NEOs at the 25 Canadian corporations with the highest revenue. Additionally, three out of the 66 women NEOs are Chief Executive Officers (CEOs).

One other finding of note is that this year — for the first time — 19 women NEOs were new to the Rosenzweig Report, meaning that these 19 women did not hold executive positions last year. This indicates that women are seeing more upward movement through the ranks of corporate hierarchies than in past years.

About The Rosenzweig Report

The Rosenzweig Report is produced by Rosenzweig & Company, a Canadian executive recruitment firm led by founder and CEO Jay Rosenzweig. Since its founding in 2004, Rosenzweig & Company has been focused on widening the executive search pool and exploring new and previously untapped talent pools for C-level executives. Rosenzweig’s philosophy is that excellence can be found in many places and that Canada’s leading corporations are strengthened when they move beyond recycling names from traditional networks to searching more broadly for top talent.

Commenting on this year’s findings, Jay Rosenzweig offers, “We don’t publish this report to celebrate small wins; we do it to remind the world how far we still have to go.” To exceed the proposed Rosenzweig benchmark of 30% representation, top Canadian corporations would need at least 150 women NEOs, an increase of 95 from today.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.