Miles travelled, miles yet to go

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This article was published 26/01/2018 (2879 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The veil of secrecy regarding sexual harassment may have been lifted with the recent intense media coverage of bad behaviour by high-profile men, but gender disparity in the workplace remains entrenched.

If you asked the 1,500 (mostly) women who attended Friday’s SHEday event at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg, sexual harassment is just one of the array of injustices responsible for the sexual bias that exists in our society.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quoted from a recent McKinsey report that estimates narrowing the gender gap in Canada could add $150 billion to the economy by 2026.

There are countless studies showing gender parity is good business.

Still, research by the World Economic Forum found that it will take 217 years to close the global economic gender gap.

So it’s not surprising that there are still countless stories of the idiotic way the patriarchal structure of society — especially in the world of business — continues to conspire to keep women down.

The organizers of SHEday were specifically focused on holding an event that would inspire and provide support to encourage leadership among women in business, and to not dwell on sexual harassment.

Marina James, CEO of the Winnipeg Realtors Association, who along with Mary Jane Loustel came up with the concept for SHEday five years ago, said, “We recognized that women needed to build confidence and come together to support each other, and we wanted to focus on broadening women’s inclusion in the economy.”

Along with Sandra Altner, the longtime CEO of the Women’s Enterprise Centre, which organizes the event, they attracted more than 80 corporate sponsors — including RBC, Pinnacle, CN and Bell MTS.

That allowed them to keep ticket prices at $65 to maintain another key element of their mandate — that it be as inclusive as possible.

“We want this to be an event that even women who don’t have big pots of cash for professional development will be able to attend,” James said.

Loustel, a longtime senior executive with IBM, said, “Since we started talking about this event five years ago, the whole conversation around inclusion — women, Indigenous women, women of colour — has become a global conversation. It is really quite exciting for us.”

The event has quintupled in size since the first one in 2014 — “We couldn’t be more delighted,” Altner said — and while there was some talk a couple of years ago about building a franchise and holding events in other cities, organizers figured they would keep it at home and make it accessible to even more women in Manitoba.

The theme of the day-long conference was to get local and national business leaders, some more senior and successful than others, to share their knowledge and stories to help others navigate the challenging waters.

Catherine Metrycki, the 28-year-old owner of the online flower store startup, Callia, was there to be around other strong women business leaders, “to hear their stories and reflect on them.”

It would be hard to imagine a more promising startup, led by a more competent and passionate entrepreneur than Metrycki.

Her online company delivers bouquets-in-a-box and is operating in Winnipeg and in cities across the West.

She’s been operating not quite two years, so maybe it’s too early to say whether it’s destined for long-term success, but its market traction is very promising.

Metrycki started her career in marketing at a large packaged goods company in Toronto, where she said gender was never an issue.

She’s been pleased at how open and welcoming the Winnipeg community is to women entrepreneurs.

She raised an initial round of equity capital from angel investors this past summer that was well received.

But regardless of how excellent her business prospects were, her status as a soon-to-be married, young, female business owner was enough to turn off at least one man from investing.

“Ninety-five per cent of our angel investors are male, and I had one man who was not interested unless I had got a co-founder because, he said, ‘It’s likely that in the next year or two, you are going to get married and have a family, and I am not interested in supporting a mom-preneur,’” she said.

“That was a bit of a wake-up call for me. The community is so great, but there are still stories that events like this need to help overcome.”

Rochelle Squires, the province’s minister responsible for the status of women, along with a few other portfolios, was at SHEday with department colleagues, not to bring the standard “greetings on behalf of the Premier,” but as an act of solidarity.

Squires, a former journalist, has seen her share of sexism in the workplace.

“There was an incident where I had annoyed an advertiser (because of something she’d written) and the advertiser was adamant ‘that bimbo ought to be fired,’” she said.

“I have faced all kinds of challenges based on gender in my career. It takes fortitude, camaraderie. That’s why events like this are so important — so that women can say to one another we are not alone.”

Senior executives from RBC and CN spoke about how they climbed the corporate ladder to heights that are now not so uncommon for women, even though they still make up only 20 per cent of Canadian corporate boards.

But the numbers are growing.

Bonnie Procyshyn, a 30-something senior manager at Ernst & Young in Winnipeg, said the partners and team she works with are mostly women.

“Having a strong female presence (in the workplace) is really important for me,” she said.

She acknowledged that her generation has fewer hassles than women who’ve come before her, “but we still have challenges, regardless of where you are.”

There’s no denying it any more, that’s just bad for business.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca