Morsa Images
When Dr. Fahima Dossa decided to become an oncology surgeon, one of her mentors in medical school said to her, “I hope you know that means you’ll be treating breast cancer.”
At the time, Dr. Dossa took the comment as practical advice. Most surgeons rely on referrals, so she might as well be prepared. But after pausing her general surgery residency at the University of Toronto to do a PhD, she began looking at gender bias in her field. As Dr. Dossa compared the earnings of men and women surgeons – and talked to others about their experiences – she started to feel differently about that comment.
“We pride ourselves on the idea that the proportion of women in medicine and in surgery is increasing,” says Dr. Dossa, who’s now in her final year of residency, which she will follow up with a fellowship in surgical oncology. “But what we fail to recognize is that we still have occupational segregation in medicine.”
Read more about how women surgeons are kept out of high-paying, prestigious roles in medicine.
Janet Bannister launches Staircase Ventures with pledge to fund – and nurture – tech founders
One of Canada’s best-known startup financiers, Janet Bannister, has struck out on her own, launching a venture capital firm that makes a clever play on her name and promises high-touch support for founders.
Ms. Bannister’s Staircase Ventures has raised $22-million for its first fund, with a goal of reaching $30-million. Investors include Royal Bank of Canada, wealthy individuals and family offices. Some backers will also advise Staircase portfolio companies, including PointClickCare Inc. co-founder Mike Wessinger and former Shopify Inc. chief product officer Craig Miller.
Staircase will look for the same types of deals Ms. Bannister did at Real. The firm will initially invest $500,000 to $2-million in 10 to 12 Canadian software startups with early customers and “product-market fit.”
Read more about Staircase Ventures’ “humane approach to business.”
Not a single large, public Canadian firm has closed the gender pay gap, study finds
Canada’s largest companies are lagging the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to many key measures of gender equality in the workplace.
That’s according to a recent study of publicly listed companies with a market capitalization of at least US$2-billion across the world’s 23 largest economies. Not a single Canadian organization has closed the gender pay gap in the six years Amsterdam-based gender research firm Equileap has conducted the annual study. Only one has achieved at least 40-per-cent female representation at every level, and just 19 per cent publish gender pay data. The study also found that among Canada’s largest companies there are more chief executive officers named Michael than female CEOs.
Read the full article.
In case you missed it
P.E.I., B.C. are taking big steps toward making wage transparency the norm – should other provinces be next?
Can you imagine a job market where you always know the salary range before you put your hat in the ring?
While salary transparency on job postings isn’t standard practice across Canada, some provinces have recently taken big steps toward making it mandatory: P.E.I. passed legislation this summer requiring salaries be included on all public job postings and B.C. is hosting consultations looking at implementing similar laws. (This comes on the heels of wage transparency measures enacted in 2021 requiring federally-regulated private sector employers to report salary data in a way that shows aggregated wage gap information.)
These moves are being applauded by workplace equity organizations, who say including salaries on job postings is a vital tool to attract young workers and narrow the gender pay gap in Canada.
Read the full article.
Do you have ‘diversity fatigue’? People doing DEI work often face frustration, isolation
Early in 2022, Jen Anthony began noticing a pattern emerging among the clients she was helping with their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“Everybody still really wants to do the work – but they’re stuck,” says Ms. Anthony, senior vice-president and DEI communications practice lead at Toronto-based communications agency FleishmanHillard HighRoad.
“[People are] still excited about the possibilities, but they’re frustrated by a lack of progress,” she says.
What Ms. Anthony is describing is “diversity fatigue.” The term was coined in the 1990s to describe the stress companies complained about as they diversified their hiring practices. Since then – and particularly in a post-2020 working world, when events like the Black Lives Matter protests prompted many companies to re-double their DEI efforts – the term has morphed to encompass the feelings of frustration, isolation and even demoralization that people doing the daily work of building more equitable workspaces experience.
Read the full article.
Ask Women and Work
Question: I manage a small, young team in a creative industry. My company recently came back into the office full-time after working remote, then hybrid, through the pandemic. My team is happy to be back in office – in fact, sometimes a little too happy! They are all outgoing personalities who love to chat. Our work requires a lot of collaboration, but the constant chatter and fun is becoming distracting and hampering their ability to get the work done. How can I direct my team to better focus and execute without crushing their spirits or being a killjoy?
We asked Stephanie Brownlow, founder and brand director of Toronto-based creative consultancy Carry Corp., to tackle this one:
Well, Confused Boss, I totally get it. I can completely identify with the delicate dynamics of a close-knit team.
We all want to speak freely (and joyfully), fostering trust and energetic collaboration with our colleagues. When we have a secure environment like this, we feel most open to expressing our creative ideas and throwing things at the wall, which makes for fresh and exciting work.
Of course, that work needs to get done, and the hope in a workspace like yours is to achieve a balance. Team dynamics ebb and flow with time, and it sounds like you’re in that particular moment when everyone is gelling in a great way.
However, the purpose of a workspace is to work, not to hang, and it’s your job as the boss to create a comfortable environment for each individual to do their job.
I think it can be beneficial to shift our perspective to this: As leaders, it is our responsibility to help our team to do their best work. Once you recognize that this is in everyone’s best interest, ideas on how to balance the workspace energy will flow more freely – relieving the guilt of being a “killjoy.”
People often connect when they first come into the office, as they grab a coffee and catch up on the night or the weekend before. Perhaps after lunch, you could establish a “headphone zone”: a two-hour window where the team keeps sound at a minimum to allow for focused work. Collaborative meetings happen before or after this window, and if you really need to speak, conversations move to the lunchroom.
I also wonder if allowing individuals to return to hybrid work for a day or two a week would help the cause, too. When I’m free of teammate distractions, I can find alone time at home to move through my tasks, and I save collaborative meetings for when I’m in the office. This helps the balance of chatter distraction and keeps me motivated for office days. I look forward to when I can be social and catch up with the team rather than feeling office-averse.
Best of luck – it sounds like you’ve created a workplace culture that your team really enjoys. And isn’t that what we hope for?
Submit your own questions to Ask Women and Work by e-mailing us at GWC@globeandmail.com.
Content from The Globe’s weekly Women and Work newsletter, part of The Globe’s Women’s Collective. To subscribe, click here.