This past Friday, CBC Radio’s The Current featured a panel discussion on the lack of women on corporate boards in Canada. Arlene Dickinson kicked off the conversation by sharing parts of an interview I had given ahead of time. In those clips, I recapped the bleak numbers—only 14% of corporate board seats in Canada are held by women and almost half of public companies on the FP500 have no women directors at all.

The three panelists—a Canadian Senator, an American business professor, and the former CEO of a Calgary credit union—all strongly agreed that we need more women on boards. They shared well-established research as well as their personal experiences that having diverse perspectives around the table leads to better outcomes for businesses.

But they disagreed on how to get there. Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette has proposed legislation mandating quotas to increase the representation of women on boards in response to the lack of progress companies have made on their own. Amy Dittmar, Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, reviewed Norway’s experience with similar legislation, which has led to just over 40% of Norwegian board seats being held by women. She noted that there had been concerns regarding the availability of qualified women board directors, and she argued that with only 16.9% of corporate officer positions held by women in Canada, the same concerns will probably be voiced here as well. She also mentioned a “modest change” that the United States took through the SEC to spur the inclusion of women on boards by implementing the mandatory disclosure of boards’ diversity considerations. Dave Gregory, former CEO of First Calgary Credit Union, said that rather than imposing quotas on companies, we should focus our energy on communicating the bottom-line benefits of diversity so companies will be compelled to make change on their own.

Had I been part of the discussion, I would have reminded the debating panelists that we have a shared goal—getting more women on corporate boards. While the strategies we could use to get there may vary, the key is that we do get there. Quotas are one proven strategy, but I welcome any innovative ideas to make change.

Let’s not waste time and energy arguing about the best ways to get there—let’s get the journey started. We welcome any and all ideas to increase the representation of women on boards. If we want to have impact, we’re going to have to work together to reach our common goal.

Tags: boards, business, collaboration, diversity, equal opportunities, leadership, women

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 18th, 2011 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.