January 9, 2007 

Taking Charge

Dianne Rinehart, Hamilton Spectactor 

Women are giving up on Corporate Canada to create their own businesses and jobs.
Sometimes it’s about family. But mostly it’s about running their own ship.

Explain yourself, Corporate Canada.

If you’re not sexist, insensitive and woefully ignorant about what it takes to retain your most talented female employees, why are they – according to statistics and studies – leaving in droves?

Is it to go off and “suckle something” or “because they’re crap” as Neil French, the creative director of WPP Group, told a group of Toronto ad execs last year?

Actually, not. According to surveys, it’s to avoid men like him (and corporate attitudes that echo his views) and to start their own businesses – i.e.: to make money for themselves. “They’re getting fed up with all the crap in large organizations,” Elspeth Murray, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Queen’s School of Business,points out succinctly. So fed up they’d rather take on the more torturous work life of an entrepreneur: “The grief you endure in a large organization is nowhere near what you go through setting up a small business,” Murray explains.

But it’s clearly better than being belittled. Isik Zeytinoglu, a professor of Management and Industrial Relations at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, agrees, and cites a study by Catalyst, a research
and advisory organization working with businesses to expand opportunities for women at work, that found top corporate
women leave because “men still have certain attitudes to women in organizations.”

So women are taking their ball and going home, not to “suckle” babies, but to nurture businesses — in mind-boggling numbers. CIBC Small Business reported last year that, while statistics indicate the number of employed women has been steadily climbing, “the number of self-employed women has been rising even faster” — 60 per cent faster, in fact, than male-launched businesses. It’s not because of economic necessity such as layoffs, says CIBC, but because of choice.

Indeed, the authors of A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom, point to U.S. research conducted by the Centre for Work-Life Policy that found 37 per cent of highly qualified women left voluntary because of dissatisfaction or lack of opportunity, rather than family responsibilities — and, the Financial Times noted, “none of the women who worked in business wants to return to their former companies.” Ouch.

And if you think they’re launching nice little kitchen-based operations so they can suckle babies in their spare time, think again. CIBC reports the number of femaleowned businesses with employees rose by 40 per cent during the past 15 years, while the number of male-owned businesses with employees remain virtually unchanged.

And the percentage of women entrepreneurs has gone up in every category — manufacturing, logging, transportation, business services — between 1990 and 2003, says Prof. Murray.

In other words, they’re taking over male territories — and big business is missing the warning signals. “People tend to think that women are leaving organizations and starting up their own businesses because they want to spend more time with their family,” says Zeytinoglu. “That may be what they say. But it’s the easiest way to say why they are leaving when in reality it’s because they can’t stand it anymore,” she says. “They don’t want to say: ‘I don’t want to work with
these people anymore,’” because they may plan to pitch contracts to former employers, she explains.

“For me it’s the control thing,” says Murray. “(Women have) so many demands to juggle: aging parents, young kids, dual careers. If someone’s going to force you to sit at your desk ... you might as well pack those hours in for yourself,” she says.

Anne Day, who launched her own women’s networking business, Company of Women, three years ago, says women often consult her about launching a business as their maternity leave is ending, not because they want to take it easy —“If you want your business to succeed you have to put in as many hours as it takes,” says Day — but because they just don’t want to go back to the corporations they left behind.

That’s no surprise if you consider:

Last year, the Economist reported there has been little change in numbers found bythe U.S. government 10 years ago that women had almost half of American’s jobs and more than half of the master’s degrees being awarded, but that 95 per cent of senior managers were men.

According to Catalyst, a study of Fortune 500 companies found women held only 3.6 per cent of the corporate officers positions in 2005 and only 9.4 per cent of clout titles (those higher than vice-president). Further, women led only eight of the Fortune 500, and none of the Fortune 100. In fact, women held only 6.4 per cent of top earner positions — and fully 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies reported no women as top earners.

And if making it to the boardroom is incentive to stay the corporate course, women won’t be encouraged by Catalyst Canada’s findings: only 12 per cent of seats on Canadian boards are held by women.

Not that “suckling” babies and other home demands aren’t taking a toll on women. But women can multitask if they have support and flexible arrangements — as they so clearly demonstrate with the high success rate of their businesses. (Yup, higherthen men’s.)

Still, corporations seem determined to ignore the supports and incentives necessary for women, even as they create never-ending rewards to retain top male performers — think golf memberships, company cars and incentive ski trips.
At this stage, it seems a little sexist to expect a corporate VP is going to have a wife at home taking care of children and the home, so that he can work late. But that’s what corporate policies seem to not only expect, but also demand.
Consider this: Female corporate climbers are working longer hours at the office, according to Statistics Canada — but still doing twice as much of the housework and childcare as their male partners.

Why then isn’t Corporate Canada stepping in to change attitudes that dramatically affect its bottom line by creating child-care centres at the office, encouraging male employees to take half the child-care leave available to free up their wives to return to the office (they’re just as productive, right?) and not frowning when men leave the office early to pick up kids or cook dinner.

Is it because they believe male employees are more valuable than females? That’s the message women take away from current policies

Nor are many corporations making themselves attractive to women by offering them the flex time they can get with their own businesses — working from home, say, after the babies are in bed — though statistics on the success of women-owned businesses indicate this works.

And that is definitely costing companies their well-trained female employees. A Statistics Canada study released this
spring described women as the “new engine of growth” and reported that of the 164,000 new jobs held by women in 2005, 74 per cent went to women over the age of 45 — women whose children were mostly grown.

So could corporations hang onto top female employees if they invested in childcare centres at the office?
An earlier Ontario tax incentive that corporations could access if they created childcare spaces didn’t get one claim. Not one, according to the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.

One woman quoted in a news story on the female “growth engine,” noted most women in their 20s opt to stay home because day care is expensive. And guess what, the federal government’s $1,200-a-year per child tax credit, minus the tax hit — which can reduce it to less than $400 — isn’t going to pay for day care or create the 625,000 planned child care spaces the new program nixed. So where was Corporate Canada in the lead up to the implementation of the Conservative policy? Screaming bloody blue murder on behalf of its female employees and its bottom line? Or making jokes about why women leave corporations for baby making over a golf game with Neil French?

But Corporate Canada, consider this: Though women still do twice as much housework as men, Statistics Canada reported men are slowly starting to increase the amount of time they too spend on day care. In the end, something is going to have to give — either now, to prevent the loss of top-female performers or later, to deal with a complete meltdown of society.

In the end, if it’s just money that talks, consider this: Catalyst research on the Fortune 500 companies found those with the highest percentages of women corporate officers yielded, on average, a 35.1 per cent higher return on equity and 34 per cent higher total return to shareholders than those with the lowest percentages of women corporate officers.

“Companies that proactively and successfully harness all their talent will sustain significant advantages over competitors
that don’t,” says Catalyst President Ilene Lang.
And a recent book studying top management of companies, found the companies “are missing out in terms of both competition and governance by having so little female talent and perspective at the top.”

So corporate bigwigs, how about ditching those golf clubs and cigars, picking up a “suckling” baby once in a while — and promoting the hands that most likely feed you each night?After all, you believe in women’s equality,don’t you? Don’t you?