Nearly one in five board directors at Canada firms are female: StatsCan

female directors
female directors

Statistics Canada says women fill 19.4 per cent of the seats on corporate boards of directors across public, government and private organizations, but more than half of all boards were composed entirely of men.

The report released today is based on 2016 data and looks at gender diversity in the boardroom among companies of all types.

Its analysis found that 28 per cent of the boards had just one woman and 15.2 per cent had more than one woman, but 56.8 per cent of the boards had no women.

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Government business enterprises had the highest share of women on corporate boards at 28.8 per cent, followed by public corporations at 20.5 per cent, while private corporations had just 17.4 per cent.

Women were most prevalent on boards in the finance sector at 22.5 per cent, while the construction sector had the lowest share at 12.8 per cent.

Canadian-controlled entities had the highest share of women on boards at 21.3 per cent, followed by those controlled by entities in France at 17.5 per cent and the United Kingdom at 17.1 per cent.

The agency’s report was based on 2016 data collected through the Corporations Returns Act from 12,762 corporations, among which 44,658 directors were identified as members of a board.

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