2011 saw mixed success in the progress of women. The excitement of seeing women as premier in four Canadian jurisdictions was balanced by the fact that the number of women at senior levels in Canadian businesses remains very low. But at least last year left plenty of room for improvement in 2012, so let’s get started!

Women in Charge? There’s Some Progress…

Canada’s political leadership includes more women than ever. Women are now premiers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut, Alberta, and British Columbia, and the 2011 federal election saw a record number of women elected to Parliament. Internationally, women like International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are examples of women stepping up to the top jobs. But will the progress of women in public life be repeated in the private sector?

READ: “Women in Charge, in Canada and Abroad” by Nicholas Van Praet, Financial Post, December 26, 2011.

…And Some Progress is Still Needed

A study published in early 2012 indicates that only one woman is on the list of the 100 highest paid Canadian CEOs. Maybe we can at least double or triple this number in 2012?

READ: “Only One Woman Among 100 Highest Paid CEOs in Canada” by Dana Flavelle, The Star, January 2, 2012.

Hope Springs Eternal!

Catalyst President and CEO Ilene Lang is one of the people who are hopeful that 2012 will see a growth in the number of women in senior business leadership positions. Will women’s issues emerge in the U.S. election debate?

READ: “High Hopes 2012 Will Be a Good Year for Women” by Luista Lopez Terregrosa, New York Times, January 10, 2012.

Will Networking Help?

Your network of friends and associates can have a powerful impact on your career. I have a job I love because someone saw an opportunity, thought of me, and made the suggestion. Other women have equally positive stories, but do we need to become more strategic in our networking?

READ: “The Serendipitous Side of Networking” by Leah Eichler, The Globe and Mail, January 6, 2012.

Among the highlights of The Catalyst Canada Honours are the remarks by the champions themselves. And, in the ensuing days and weeks, these words of inspiration, and the glimpses they provide of personal struggle and achievement, are what I remember and ponder.

The Human Resources/Diversity Leader Champion, Michael Bach, shared his personal passion and belief that privilege brings the responsibility to make a difference. His challenge to the audience was to take bold, possibly unpopular actions and positions to impact the status quo. Michael asked us to consider why change is taking so long, and then left each of us with a personal challenge.

Watch Michael Bach at The Catalyst Canada Honours:

Among the highlights of The Catalyst Canada Honours are the remarks by the champions themselves. And, in the ensuing days and weeks, these words of inspiration, and the glimpses they provide of personal struggle and achievement, are what I remember and ponder.

The 2011 Business Leader Champion, Jennifer Tory, has devoted much of her career to developing people, both directly and through her advocacy for sponsorship and the advancement of women. She has brought the same commitment to acting as a catalyst for change and diversity to her work with community organizations. Her remarks challenged the audience to find talent in their organizations by looking broadly, deeply, and often.

Watch Jennifer Tory at The Catalyst Canada Honours dinner:

One of the highlights of The Catalyst Canada Honours is the remarks by the champions themselves. And, in the ensuing days and weeks, it is the words of inspiration, and the glimpses of personal struggle and achievement, that I remember and ponder.

The 2011 Company/Firm Leader Champion, Monique F. Leroux, has experienced plenty of challenges and successes in her career. She has made a difference in the careers of individual women, and influenced the creation of opportunities for many women. She has “sent the elevator back down” for others as she has advanced in her own career. Monique shared with us some of the ways her parents encouraged her success and helped establish her commitment to action…. and then she issued a challenge.

Watch Monique at The Catalyst Canada Honours dinner:

The Catalyst Canada Honours celebrates champions who have made diversity and advancement of women a hallmark of their careers. In this week’s CanCon, Emily Pomeroy, chair of the 2012 nominating committee, shares some reasons that you should consider nominating a champion you know, or applying yourself to be a 2012 Catalyst Canada Honours champion!

There seems to be a lot of frustration around inequality in the world today.

- Occupy movement protesters are frustrated with social and economic inequality.
- Food banks are frustrated with decreased donations and increased demand.
- Individuals are frustrated by unemployment challenges.
- Here at Catalyst, we’re pretty frustrated with the low representation of women in senior leadership.

I don’t know about you, but I end up feeling overwhelmed by these issues and don’t know how I could possibly do anything to make a dent in such large and systemic problems.

The answer, I think, is to do something. Take one step to improve one person’s life.

What if, tomorrow, you woke up and changed a woman’s career trajectory by championing her at work. What if you:

- Recommended her work to colleagues and clients?
- Invited her to present at your next senior leadership meeting?
- Connected her to your network?
- Advocated for her promotion during succession planning?

Catalyst knows that many people are doing great things to champion women. We speak with them every day. It’s probably you, or maybe one of your colleagues. If that’s the case, Catalyst wants to recognize and celebrate those efforts. Apply for The Catalyst Canada Honours 2012.

Last month, Catalyst honoured three more individuals who are exceptional champions of women’s advancement at a gala dinner with over 600 guests. Next year, we want to honour you.

So there is something you can do. It’s manageable, attainable, and you can start now.

The Catalyst Canada Honours dinner was in every way a celebration of champions. The stars of the evening, of course, were the three champions: Michael Bach, Jennifer Tory, and Monique Leroux.

But setting the tone for the evening was the challenge for each of us to be a champion of change in the workplace.

As I prepared my own remarks for the event, I recalled stories I had heard recently from two different women. Anne Drinkwater, President & CEO of BP Canada, told of an advocate who had spoken up for her when others were suggesting that a leadership role in Indonesia was just too tough for a woman. Her sponsor was successful in opening the door for her and changed the course of her career.

In India, I met Sasha Sanyal from Genpact. Like many women, she was the one questioning her readiness for a bigger role in the company, while her sponsor expressed his confidence in her ability and assured her of his support. Today, she has built a successful career with the help of this active, supportive advocate and sponsor.

Over and over, we hear from successful business people about a life-changing intervention by one person who believed in them and encouraged them to believe in themselves. Sponsorship is emerging as the critical factor in career advancement. The advocacy of a powerful member of the corporate leadership can determine who is taken seriously as a leader, who gets plum assignments, who gets promoted, and who gets better compensation.

Businesses have made great strides in establishing mentoring programs for women, but when it comes to sponsorship, with its power to change career trajectories, women still are not on the radar.

But that can change.

Last night, I challenged each of our dinner guests to change someone’s life by becoming a sponsor, speaking up on behalf of someone who has earned the opportunity to prove herself, and supporting her to success.

Today, I’m extending that challenge to Catalyst Canada friends and supporters across the country. Think about the people who changed your life with their confidence and advocacy, and honour them by finding someone who has earned your sponsorship.

On a closing note, if anyone has any doubt about the power of individuals to change society, October 18th was also Persons Day. In 1929, as the result of determined effort by five persistent women, Canadian women were finally deemed to be persons with the right to sit in the Canadian Senate. They changed the lives of every woman who followed.

You may not change the country, but your sponsorship will change someone’s personal story forever. And that’s a legacy to celebrate.

As baby boomers retire over the next 15 years, the Canadian economy is relying on a steady stream of immigrants to replace them in the labour force. In fact, Statscan predicts that one out of every three Canadian workers in 2026 will have been born in another country.

That’s right. Fifteen years from now, one-third of the labour force will be immigrants, and many of them will be visible minorities. Businesses that have considered diversity as a “nice to do” for the HR department will be losing the battle to hang onto and attract talented employees to their competition, companies that are taking action today to integrate newcomers into their workforces.

A Catalyst survey team found that many visible minority respondents perceived that workplace barriers, such as lack of fairness in career advancement processes, an absence of role models, inequality in performance standards, and fewer high-visibility assignments, made advancement more difficult for them than for their white/Caucasian colleagues. In addition, visible minorities reported fewer developmental opportunities.

Given these perceptions, it’s no surprise that a smaller percentage of visible minority respondents believed senior management of their organization was committed to cultural diversity.

Employees report greater career satisfaction and organizational commitment—known to be related to greater productivity and profitability—when they feel their organizations’ career advancement processes are fair. And an important predictor of that sense of fairness was the perception that their senior leaders were committed to diversity.

The message? Canadian business leaders not only need to do a better job of encouraging the emergence of talented employees, they need to expand responsibility for diversity beyond the HR department, and link it to broad corporate objectives with a champion from the most senior ranks. TD Bank’s President and CEO Ed Clark demonstrates TD’s commitment to talent development by personally mentoring promising employees—which might explain why he was an inaugural Catalyst Canada Honours Champion, and Canadian CEO of the year for 2010!

Look around your workplace. Where does it fit on the diversity scale—and what can you do to nudge it higher?

In a new twist on the old statistic that women influence 80% of purchasing decisions, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews recently informed a gathering that 80% of government spending in Ontario is controlled by 11 female cabinet ministers. Who knew?

While our colleagues south of the border have been marking “women in politics” month this August, women in politics have been making their mark in Canada. Women occupy the premier’s office in two provinces and one territory, and women party leaders in five other jurisdictions are eyeing the top job.

Lisa Raitt, the federal Minister of Labour, is holding roundtable discussions across the country, and in Ontario, female cabinet ministers are facilitating conversations about the role of women in government.

It was at one of those events that the Minister of Health shared the 80% statistic with us. And then she asked two critical questions: Do women in decision-making roles make a difference to the policy agenda of a government? Do they actually make different policy?

That women do things differently was obvious from the beginning when the Minister of Health shared a picture from her daughter’s wedding and spoke fondly of a grandson who cried through the first half of the event and slept through the second. Not the usual Ministerial talking point!

But it was the information that she shared about some of the government’s priorities that offered the most compelling insights. She noted that the women in the cabinet have championed the following initiatives:

- Investments in full-day kindergarten for three- and four-year-old children.

- A poverty reduction strategy.

- Expanded access to breast cancer screening for high-risk women.

- Long-term care options that will allow seniors to remain in their homes.

These initiatives will make the province and individuals who live here stronger and better able to manage their lives and achieve their potential. In fact, they are very much like the corporate programs to remove barriers and encourage participation by every employee that Catalyst often shares with members.

Her response to questions about why we need more women in government and the importance of women supporting each other may provide an insight to the effectiveness of the women in the Ontario government.

“We are strongest when decision-making reflects the communities that we serve,” she said, and, “Women who have achieved success have a responsibility to send the elevator back down.”

Words to make government—and business—work better!

The end of June can mean only one thing—graduation. For young women in the west, the future brims with promise of achievement and success.

This year, that season of personal hopefulness coincides with the “Arab Spring” movement to overcome political oppression and achieve individual freedoms. For young women in many nations, 2011 could be the year their dreams of self-determination come true.

Or not. In the past, democratic movements didn’t always include women’s rights, or those of minorities. In Canada, democracy didn’t acknowledge women as “persons” with the right to sit in the Senate until 1921. And it took the social upheaval of the 1960s to integrate education systems in the southern United States.

But I’m hopeful that women’s voices will be heard in today’s emerging democracies. One reason is the young women who participated in the G(irls)20 Summit last year in Toronto, and those who will participate in the second Summit in Paris later this year.

These are smart, confident young women with strong views on social and economic development. Their debates in Paris will allow them to test and broaden their opinions. The international experience will teach them how to  advocate for the changes they know will improve their own society.

I believe that these “Girls,” and the millions of other articulate young women like them, have the ideas, the energy, and the strength to change the world. Although it’s too late to become a delegate, there’s still a day for you to participate in setting the agenda for the 2011 (Girls)20 Summit. Go to the website today, cast your vote, and add your comments—help to change the world!