more women than ever are serving on corporate boards in Canada but that progress is moving at a glacial pace according to a new report by the Canadian board diversity Council it found that women make up 19. 5 percent of board members of Canada's biggest companies that's up from 17 percent in 2014 the rise follows the introduction of a new comply or explain policy one year ago it forces publicly traded companies to report the number of high-ranking women they have and clarified their diversity policies the diversity Council calls this year's increase encouraging but if the change in gender diversity continues at this pace gender parity is still 13 years away of Canada's 500 largest companies 109 have all-male boards according to the diversity council he told us the names of some of those companies among them the financial holding company Fairfax Financial Forex products company can four and e/l Financial the parent of insurer Empire life in a recent interview of in a recent review rather of how the comply or explained policy is working only 7% of those companies surveyed set a target for women on boards of the companies without a target 66% said they chose not to because quote candidates are selected based on merit the founder of the diversity Council said in an interview don't tell me there are no women with the skills to be on executive teams and boards of directors in 2015 because the rest of the world is proving us wrong well a related story here the global gender pay gap also appears to be years away from closing 118 years to be exact the World Economic Forum believes it will take until 21 33 for the pay gap between men and women to finally be eliminated meanwhile there's nearly a quarter of a billion more women in the workforce today than 10 years ago yet around the world women's average annual pay today equals men's pay a decade ago pamela Jeffery is the founder of the Canadian board diversity Council she joins us now that was quite an emotional quote from you do you know when you said it I did feel emotional because I look across the pond at London and the UK and it's very interesting because the UK is our fourth largest trading partner and five years ago Bruce they had 12. 5% of their board seats on their largest 100 companies held by women and now they have 26.
2 percent they exceeded the target they've set for themselves with complier explained they're showing it can be done without quotas we're not in favor of quotas but we want to see further action Canada has slipped to 15 the u. s.
