The Round-Up: Canada’s Highest Paid CEOs and Sheryl Sandberg’s 2016 Message
Lean In | January 6, 2016
Happy 2016!
We’re kicking off the year with a brand new feature on site – The Round-Up, covering news about women in business from Canada and beyond. Check back every Wednesday for updates (and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the latest Lean In Canada news and event details!).
— Canadian Business released its list of Canada’s Top 100 Highest Paid CEOs. Disappointingly, only two women were on the honour roll. A big congrats to Linmar chief executive Linda Hasenfratz (in 23rd spot) and President and CEO of TransAlta, Dawn L Farrell (clocking in at #92), for making the list. But in the future? We’d like to see more XX chromosomes closer to the top. (If that’s not motivation for the new year, we don’t know what is.)
— South of the border, the number of S&P 500 female CEOs actually decreased in 2015. Women at the helm of S&P 500 businesses fell from 25 in 2014 to 21 last year. Pavle Sabic, director of market development at S&P IQ offered some context, stating “The gender gap at the CEO level of S&P 500 companies is not closing. Growth rate for new female CEOs is only one percent every two years.”
— Worse news? Fortune reports it will take more than 40 years to reach gender parity on corporate boards in the US. Even if every empty board seat was filled with a female member, it would still take four decades to reach parity. On the positive side, female board members now make up 16% of seats, or double what it was in 1997.
— Canada has tied with Australia for second place in the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leadership Scorecard. Based on factors such as Business Environment, Gendered Access, and Potential Entrepreneur Leaders, the scorecard showcased just how great a country Canada is for women to start businesses. Our advice? Go forth and start it up!
— ICYMI: Facebook COO and Lean In founder and author Sheryl Sandberg offered her own inspiring words for the year ahead. We recommend you give it the “RBS” treatment—read, bookmark and share—if you haven’t done so already.
Hope you are all having a great start to the year! Have an article submission or an idea for a story? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter, join a circle and come tell us at a Lean In Canada event, or contact us at web@leanincanada.ca.
