Women have made strides climbing the ladder in Corporate Canada, but those who grab the brass ring and get the top jobs or sit in boardrooms are still few and far between, some of the trailblazers say.
"If you look at the dramatic progress in the last generation, it's kind of mind-boggling," says Sherry Cooper, chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. "By the same token, there is still a long way to go."
Few women have been able to rise to the top of major Canadian companies "unless they happen to be heir to the throne," Ms. Cooper says. "If your husband is very wealthy or your dad owned the company, you might have had a shot. We have yet to see a woman bank chairman."
But she contends that Canadian women will eventually gain more power in executive suites without family connections, just as their American peers, such as Carly Fiorina, chairman and chief executive officer at Hewlett-Packard Co., have done.
Ms. Cooper is one of 100 women being honoured in Toronto tomorrow at the Canada's Most Powerful Women Summit, sponsored by the Women's Executive Network, and the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business.
According a study by Toronto research firm Catalyst Canada, women hold only 14 per cent of corporate officer positions in Canada's largest 500 companies -- up two percentage points from 1999. Its 2001 study found that women held only 9.8 per cent of board seats.
Ms. Cooper, also executive vice-president at Bank of Montreal, says women often don't make it to the top because of difficulties balancing work and family life.
"I know that I paid a price," says Ms. Cooper, who has a 23-year-old son. "I missed some of his events [when he was growing up] and it was awful. There were plenty of times when I felt very badly about it."
While Ottawa changed the rules in 2001 to allow Canadian women to take up to one year off with maternity benefits after giving birth, that "extraordinary" option is not in the cards for women in senior posts, Ms. Cooper argues. "You can't hold a CEO job open for one year."
In fact, the one-year leave (which can be shared with a spouse) could be a "disservice to women," she suggests. "I know in business, people will shun hiring young women if they have an equivalent male candidate because they are worried about the year maternity leave."
Alberta Cefis, Bank of Nova Scotia's executive vice-president of retail lending, says it has been refreshing to see women break out of stereotypical "staff roles" such as public affairs or human resources, and move into "line jobs" with profit-and-loss accountability and responsibility for shareholder value.
But Ms. Cefis, who began her career 23 years ago and is also president and CEO of Scotia Mortgage Corp. argues that there is still "somewhat of a glass ceiling." Progress is "slow," she said, with relatively few women becoming CEOs, considering they represent half of the world's population and are a growing part of the labour force with higher levels of education.
One problem is that women often don't promote themselves and make their aspirations known to the decision makers, who are invariably male, she adds. "[Women]tend to be very team-oriented and don't tend to push as hard as men, and let the results speak for themselves . . . That is not enough at times."
Ms. Cefis, married with no children, says women who reach the executive ranks often have to forgo the mommy track. "Something has to give," she says, referring to her job, which requires a great deal of travel. "I wasn't going to have kids to leave them home with a nanny."
Catherine Swift, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says a promising trend is that the number of women owning their own businesses is "growing like crazy," and that is helping to change attitudes.
But she says part of that growth is fuelled by women who have left firms after reaching the "glass ceiling." Women have come a long way since she began working 30 years ago, but "it's not nirvana yet."
"When you look at the senior ranks of the corporate world, you see it male-dominated by far, and it's the tendency of any club not to want to extend invitations outside their own membership. So that old boys' network still exists for sure."
Judith Maxwell, president and founder of Canadian Policy Research Networks, says women have been able to rise more easily in the public than in the corporate sector because governments have developed strategies of "mentoring, coaching and picking high fliers" in order to promote them to senior posts, she says.
"Twenty years ago, to my knowledge, there was no such thing as women deputy ministers" in Ottawa, but women are getting closer to the day when they will have half of those jobs, she says.
Ms. Maxwell, a member of the board of Montreal-based BCE Inc., says the discrimination against women in corporations has been receding, but that's happening more slowly at the board level.
"You still see boards bragging they have one, two or three women, but there is no discussion of having 50 per cent of women as members," she says.
Katherine Vyse, senior vice-president of investor relations and corporate communications at Toronto-based Brascan Corp., agrees there are not enough women on boards, but figures that will change as they continue to rise through the ranks with the necessary business backgrounds like accounting or finance.
While there has been "huge progress" by women over the past 20 years in the corporate world, she agrees that there is often a price to pay. "It did affect my 13-year marriage," says Ms. Vyse, who is divorced and often works long hours, including Sundays.
Kathleen Sendall, senior vice-president of the North American natural gas unit at Calgary-based Petro-Canada, says women have made significant strides since she graduated in the late 1970s with a mechanical engineering degree -- something few women did then.
But Ms. Sendall, who has two children in their late teens, recalls that juggling work and family was a "delicate balance," and she hired a nanny after taking five to six weeks off after having each child.
She says she is looking forward to the day when there is a critical mass of women in the top jobs in the country. "We should get to the point where we no longer have to have lists, for example, of powerful women in the country because we will have lots of them."
GAIL
COOK-BENNETT
Gail Cook-Bennett, chairwoman of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, never dreamed of being a pioneer paving the way for women on the boards of Corporate Canada.
Unbeknownst to her, a group of female executives at insurer Manulife Financial Corp. felt it was time to nominate a female board member in 1978, and its then-chief executive officer Syd Jackson agreed.
He approached Ms. Cook-Bennett -- then executive vice-president of the C.D. Howe Research Institute -- to sit on Manulife's board after meeting her at a business function.
"It was a total surprise when I was invited to join," she recalls.
Back then, she says, the few women sitting on boards -- particularly in family businesses -- tended to be daughters or spouses, and there was a lack of a formal process used for seeking candidates.
But she was not one to decorate the boardroom table, and reportedly was instrumental in launching a review process that led to the resignation of former Manulife CEO Tom Di Giacomo in 1993.
Her Manulife appointment -- she is still on this board -- has led to other nominations. She also sits on the boards of Petro-Canada and Transcontinental Inc.
Women, she says, still have not made major gains in corporate boardrooms, but the aging of the current crop of directors -- many in their late 50s and older -- could present opportunities in the future.
Ms. Cook-Bennett was appointed in 1998 as chair of the CPP Investment Board but only agreed to do so after getting assurance from then federal Finance Minister Paul Martin that there would be no political interference.
Born in Ottawa, Ms. Cook-Bennett did a stint as an economics professor at the University of Toronto after earning a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan. But Ms. Cook-Bennett, who has a 20-year-old son and three step-children, never believed in being a "superwoman."
After her son was born in 1982, she chose to consult and to sit on boards instead of taking a full-time job. "That was my choice and I embraced that choice."
BECKY
McKINNON
Becky McKinnon was only an occasional coffee drinker in the 1970s when she took on a part-time accounting job at Timothy's Coffees of the World Inc.
"I would have a coffee a couple of days a week, but it was not part of my daily routine," recalls Ms. McKinnon, the 57-year-old president of the Toronto-based gourmet coffee chain. "I really became a convert when I started working, tasted the coffee and went 'wow.' "
It was the beginning of a consumer trend toward specialty coffees in North America, and she was hooked. Her part-time job in 1978 evolved into full-time work, and she eventually became vice-president of administration with a one-third stake in Timothy's.
By 1985, she and husband Ian -- a stockbroker at the time -- ended up by buying out friend and controlling shareholder Tim Snelgrove, founder of the chain, which had grown to 20 outlets.
Since then, Timothy's strategy of slow internal growth and acquisitions has boosted annual sales to $90-million from its 230 specialty coffee and bakery-café outlets, which are mostly franchised.
Backed by U.S.-based venture capital funds, which now own just over 40 per cent of her firm, Ms. McKinnon says Timothy's has embarked on expansion program that has included buying the Calgary-based Grabbajabba coffee chain in 2000, and Toronto-based Mmmuffins Corp. a year later.
Ms. McKinnon says Timothy's could go public one day if it needed money to fund another acquisition, but "right now, we don't have a compelling need for capital."
Born in Philadelphia and a history graduate of Boston's Wellesley College, Ms. McKinnon says running a business was the furthest thing from her mind when she got married in 1969. For the next decade, she stayed at home to have her three daughters.
Asked about succession plans, she says her middle daughter, Michelle, 30, who has worked at Timothy's during summers and after school, joined the business in September. "I think she is going to be a significant contributor going forward."
GAIL
STEPHENS
Gail Stephens, chief executive officer of BC Pension Corp., chuckles at some of her experiences as a woman landing a plum job in the public sector.
Until last May, she was Winnipeg's top bureaucrat, appointed in 1998 as the first female manager of a major Canadian city.
During her first conference of managers of big North American cities, attended by about 25 men and herself, Ms. Stephens was approached by a woman who asked if she came to the meetings often. Ms. Stephens replied: "No, it's my first."
The woman then asked: "Which city does your husband run?"
Times have changed, and women now are the top bosses in three major Canadian cities, including her successor in Winnipeg, the 50-year-old executive says. "It was probably the biggest challenge of a lifetime -- 8,500 employees and a $1.2-billion budget. I hired the police chief and the fire chief, and they reported to me."
But that job, dealing with everything from debt reduction to assorted crises, meant being on call 24 hours a day, and it "wasn't one that I could do forever," says Ms. Stephens, who is credited with leaving behind a rejuvenated city bureaucracy.
Ms. Stephens says she never had a career plan, let alone thoughts about breaking the glass ceiling at city hall. In fact, she spent the first decade of her working life as an elementary school teacher. When her two sons started school, she longed for a more flexible job.
Ms. Stephens, then living in Snow Lake, Man., spent more than five years getting her certified general accounting designation by correspondence, and graduated as a gold medallist for Manitoba.
After working as a self-employed accountant for five years, she did a couple of stints as a controller with private companies and key administrative jobs with the Manitoba government. She was then hired as city auditor for Winnipeg before being appointed as the city's top boss.
Despite her ground-breaking career, however, she describes her biggest achievement as having raised her two sons, now aged 23 and 25. "Those two kids are probably what I am most proud of."
SUZANNE
BLANCHET
Suzanne Blanchet, president and chief executive officer of Cascades Inc.'s tissue group, recalls that, early in her career, she was often not taken seriously in the male-dominated forestry industry.
As the general manager negotiating the purchase of equipment, she would ask lots of questions, but male suppliers invariably would reply to a young male engineer who accompanied her.
"It makes you have a thicker skin," says the 46-year-old executive of the Kingsey Falls, Que.-based Cascades tissue group. "For sure, it's a man's world."
But Ms. Blanchet says gender never held her back at Cascades, which she describes as having an "open-minded" culture fostered by the Lemaire brothers, who control the paper products company.
In 1995, after Cascades acquired control of Montreal-based Perkins Paper Ltd. and rolled its tissue mills into that firm, she was appointed executive vice-president with the task of turning around the money-losing publicly traded company.
Within a year, Perkins was in the black, and posted a record profit in 1997. That was the year she was promoted to president, and became the first Canadian woman to head a paper company.
Born in Tingwyck in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, Ms. Blanchet says she never set her sights on becoming a CEO of any company. She joined Cascades as an accounting clerk after college in 1978, and the next year, she was promoted to controller of the tissue group.
She often spent time in the mill, educating herself on the workings of the paper-making industry, while devoting evenings to taking accounting courses at the Université du Québec. In 2001, Perkins became a unit of Cascades after it bought out minority shareholders in that company and two other subsidiaries in order to boost its stock price.
Ms. Blanchet says its hasn't been easy balancing work and being a mom to her two children because she works 50 to 55 hours a week, and spends half of her time travelling. "My husband quite his job as a social worker seven years ago to be with them."
Cascades
The top 100
Senior Executives in Major Canadian Corporations
Deborah Alexander, executive vice-president of general counsel and secretary, Bank of Nova Scotia
Diane Bean, senior vice-president, Manulife Financial Corp.
Suzanne Blanchet, president and chief executive officer, Cascades Tissue Group Inc.
Cynthia Carroll, president, Alcan primary metal group, Alcan Inc.
Alberta Cefis, executive vice-president of retail lending services, Scotiabank; president and CEO Scotia Mortgage Corp.
Sylvia Chrominska, executive vice-president of human resources, Scotiabank
Linda Cook, president and CEO, Shell Canada Ltd.
Sherry Cooper, executive vice-president, Bank of Montreal; chief economist, BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.
Patricia Curadeau-Grou, senior vice-president and chief risk management, National Bank of Canada
Jill Denham, vice-chairwoman of retail markets, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
Gisèle Desrochers, senior vice-president of human resources and operations, National Bank of Canada
Mary Anne Drummond, senior vice-president of people resources, McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Ltd.
Bonnie DuPont, group vice-president, corporate resources, Enbridge Inc.
Janice Fukakusa, executive vice-president, finance, Royal Bank of Canada
Lynda Kitamura, vice-president of finance and administration and chief financial officer, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.
Suzanne Labarge, vice-chairwoman and chief risk officer, RBC
Sue Lee, senior vice-president of human resources and communications, Suncor Energy Inc.
Monique Leroux, president of Desjardins Financial Corp. and CEO of the subsidiaries, Desjardins Financial Corp.
Karen Maidment, executive vice-president and chief financial officer, BMO
Elizabeth Gay Mitchell, executive vice-president, RBC
Peggy Mulligan, executive vice-president, Scotiabank
Rose Patten, executive vice-president of human resources and head of the office of strategic management, BMO
Sarah Raiss, executive vice-president, TransCanada Corp.
Nancy Reid, chief financial officer, EDS Canada Inc.
Drude Rimell, executive vice-president of corporate services, EnCana Corp.
Kathleen Sendall, senior vice-president, North American Gas, Petro-Canada
Jacqueline Sheppard, executive vice-president of corporate and legal and corporate secretary, Talisman Energy Inc.
Belinda Stronach, president and CEO, Magna International Inc.
Joyce Sumara, chief information officer, General Motors of Canada Ltd.
Katherine Vyse, senior vice-president, investor relations and corporate communications, Brascan Corp.
Karen Weaver, senior vice-president of operations services and CFO, Brookfield Properties Corp.
Senior administrators in the public sector
Margaret Bloodworth, deputy minister, National Defence
Marilyn Bruner, former president and CEO, St. Joseph's Health Centre
Maria David-Evans, deputy minister, Alberta Learning
Brenda Eaton, deputy minister to the Premier, British Columbia
Shelley Ewart-Johnson, deputy minister, Human Resources and Employment, Alberta
Deborah Fry, clerk of the Executive Council and secretary to cabinet, Newfoundland and Labrador
Lorna Marsden, president and vice-chancellor, York University
Heather Munroe-Blum, principal and vice-chancellor, McGill University
Martha Piper, president and vice-chancellor, University of British Columbia
Judy Rogers, city manager, Vancouver
Judy Samuelson, cabinet secretary, clerk of the Executive Council, Saskatchewan
Gail Stephens, chief executive officer, British Columbia Pension Corp.
Lise Verreault, présidente-directrice générale, Régie régionale de la Santé et des services sociaux du Bas-Saint-Laurent
Sheila Weatherill, president and CEO, Capital Health
Glenda Yeates, deputy minister, Saskatchewan Department of Health
Successful Entrepreneurs
Nancy Adamo, president and CEO, Hockley Valley Resort
Jeannette Arsenault, co-owner, Cavendish Figurines Ltd.
Caryl Baker, president, Caryl Baker Visage
Shannon Bowen-Smed, president and CEO, Bowen Workforce Solutions Inc.
Deanna Bucko, vice-president, Mastronardi Produce Ltd.
Linda Maria Collier, president and CEO, TRI-AD International
Arlene Dickinson, president and owner, Venture Communications Ltd.
Rossana Di Zio Magnotta, president and co-founder, Magnotta Corp.
Michelle Gardner, president, On-Site Camp Services Inc.
Janis Grantham, president and COO, Eagle Professional Resources Inc.
Muriel Jasek, president, AJJA Information Technology Consultants Inc.
Beth Kelly, owner/operator, Aquila Tours Inc.
Rebecca MacDonald, chairwoman and CEO, Energy Savings Income Fund
Wendy McDonald, chairwoman, BC Bearing Engineers Ltd.
Becky McKinnon, president, Timothy's Coffees of the World Inc.
Elaine Minacs, president and CEO, Minacs Worldwide Inc.
Susan Niczowski, president, Summerfresh Salads Inc.
Madeleine Paquin, president and CEO, Logistec Corp.
Gloria Parsons, president, Chancellor Park Inc./Progress Homes Inc.
Manishi Sagar, president and CEO, Kinderville Group
Marilyn Sheftel, dealer principal, Silverhill Acura
Lesley Southwick-Trask, president, Southwick-Trask Productions Inc.
Rita Tsang, president and CEO, Tour East Holidays (Canada) Inc.
Cora Tsouflidou, president and founder, Franchises Cora Inc.
Trailblazers
Louise Arbour, honourable justice, Supreme Court of Canada
Jalynn Bennett, corporate director, Jalynn H. Bennett & Associates Ltd.
Roberta Bondar, astronaut
Rita Burak, president and CEO, Network Executive Team Management Consultants Inc.
Kim Campbell, former prime minister
Adrienne Clarkson, Governor-General and commander-in-chief of Canada
Gail Cook-Bennett, corporate director, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
Sheila Copps, Minister of Canadian Heritage
Janet Ecker, former minister of finance, Ontario
Sandra Ellen Oxner, judge
Heather Forester Smith, chief justice, Superior Court of Justice for Ontario
Sheila Fraser, Auditor-General of Canada
Myra Freeman, Lieutenant-Governor, Nova Scotia
Nancy Hughes Anthony, president and CEO, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
Mobina Jaffer, senator
Roberta Jamieson, chief, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory
Noni MacDonald, dean, faculty of medicine, Dalhousie Medical School
Judith Maxwell, president and founder, Canadian Policy Research Networks
Beverly McLachlin, chief justice of Canada, Supreme Court of Canada
Mary Mogford, corporate director
Margaret Norrie McCain, Lieutenant-Governor, New Brunswick
Margot Northey, former dean, Queen's School of Business, Queen's University
Dee Parkinson-Marcoux, corporate director
Vivienne Poy, senator
Guylaine Saucier, corporate director
Christine Silverberg, president, CES & Associates
Barbara Stymiest, president and CEO, TSX Group
Catherine Swift, president and CEO, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
Carole Taylor, chairwoman, CBC
Pamela Wallin, consul-general to New York, Consulate General of Canada