In 2023, women occupied 23.2 per cent of seats on boards of directors, increasing 0.5 percentage points compared to 2022 (22.7 per cent), according to a new report by Statistics Canada.
The report found half (50.3 per cent) of boards didn’t include any women directors in 2023. In addition, 25.8 per cent of boards had one woman director, while boards with two or more women directors accounted for 23.9 per cent of the total.
Educational services had the highest proportion of female directors with 35.3 per cent of board seats, an increase of 4.9 per cent from 2022. The utilities industry recorded the second-highest share at 34.1 per cent, followed by corporations in finance and insurance with 28.2 per cent. The agriculture industry had the lowest proportion of women directors, with only 8.8 per cent of board seats.
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As in previous years, women were most represented on the boards of directors of government businesses in 2023, representing 33.7 per cent of these positions. Publicly traded corporations followed, with women representing 32.9 per cent of director positions.
Additionally, women occupied 21.8 per cent of board seats at private enterprises. Private enterprises drove the overall share of women directors across corporation types, as their board seats made up almost 85 per cent of the dataset in 2023.
The majority (87.6 per cent) of publicly traded corporations had at least one female director, compared with 81.3 per cent of government business enterprise boards of directors and 47.1 per cent of private enterprise boards.
In 2023, women made up 26.6 per cent of officers across Canadian corporations, an increase of 0.9 percentage points over 2022 (25.7 per cent). They held 21.7 per cent of top officer positions and 32.8 per cent of other officer positions. Among “other” officer positions, women were most represented among auditors (53.9 per cent) and least represented among treasurers (28.4 per cent).
Read: Just a third of Canadian employers have boards with 40% women: report
Women in top officer roles were more likely to be executive vice-presidents (29.7 per cent) than to hold chief executive positions (16 per cent), including presidents, chief executive officers, chief financial officers and chief operating officers.
In addition to having the highest share of women directors, education services also had the highest proportion of women officers in 2023 (36.4 per cent). Meanwhile, the utilities industry had the second highest proportion of female officers (34.9 per cent), more than three times the level of the agriculture industry (11.5 per cent).
Women were most represented in officer positions within government businesses, where they accounted for 38.5 per cent in 2023. This share was notably higher than in publicly traded corporations (28.1 per cent) and private enterprises (26.5 per cent).