Companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those without women members.Jacob Wackerhausen
Men have become a bigger focus in the quest to advance women's careers in Canadian capital markets.
Toronto-based industry group Women in Capital Markets is calling on companies to commit to including men – from junior to senior roles – in the discussion about how to hire, retain and develop talented women in the industry.
Engaging men is important to erode the idea that women will get "special privileges," and enforce that the real issue is getting the best talent for your organization, said Jennifer Reynolds, chief executive of Women in Capital Markets, which hosted its annual awards event in Toronto on Wednesday.
This cultural change is especially important in management.
"This is about getting more women to apply, making the industry look attractive," Ms. Reynolds said, adding that the financial crisis did the industry no favours in projecting the opportunities and business culture to outsiders. Capital markets needs to fight with other industries for talent too, and "there's a perception problem," she said.
Ms. Reynolds wants the Street to commit to a measure of success when it comes to advancing women, and define how it can be achieved.
But some of the top supporters of women's careers resist putting numbers on the initiative.
"We're not about numbers in terms of targets… because then I think you disengage too many people around the organization, and you want everyone engaged," said Robbie Pryde, head of equities at TD Securities, who won WCM's award for male leadership on Wednesday. "It's about fairness, equality and 'may the best candidate win,' whether it's hiring or promotion," Mr. Pryde said.
Two of WCM's awards went to female winners. Jennifer Ocampo-King, vice-president of prime brokerage at TD Securities, won the rising star award, and the leadership award went to Anne Marie O'Donovan, chief administration officer of global banking and markets at Scotiabank.
Richard Nesbitt, who served as chief operating office at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce until recently, is trying to champion the issue through research.
Mr. Nesbitt had a reputation for being one of the toughest bosses on Bay Street when he ran CIBC's securities business, and now he's focusing that energy on studying the case for the advancement of women in senior management roles at the Rotman School of Management. Mr. Nesbitt won WCM's visionary award this year.
"I think we're at the beginning stages of a fairly substantial change… the natural forces of the market will start to take over," Mr. Nesbitt said. "Twenty five years ago when I first started, I think the feeling was women could do certain roles, but not all roles. I think the feeling now is women can do everything."
Mr. Nesbitt acknowledges that there's already a lot of research indicating that a diverse management team is good for business, but said that boards don't really believe the data when you talk to them. He thinks that putting the research together in the right way – alongside the OSC's transparency initiative – will begin to force more executives and shareholders to realize that they should promote women into positions of power to gain a competitive advantage.