Celebrating Women's Leadership

This month, I have been reflecting on what it means to be a women + leader + racialized in the world we live in today. The world continues to be in turmoil and challenges abound, multiplying the burdens of leadership—being responsible for the impact of every word and decision on those you serve, while living with the real and perceived power-distance inherent in leadership roles, which leads to isolation at the top. How do women leaders who are continually grappling with the glass ceiling, sustain the courage to lead? And if the inequity of the glass ceiling, metaphorically referring to the barriers to career advancement for women isn’t enough, there is the glass cliff—that phenomenon where the racialized woman or other person from an underrepresented group is given an impossible leadership job in times of crisis and complexity, with increased odds of failure. Many see these glass cliff opportunities as their only chance at advancement and must weigh the risk of falling over the cliff against the hope that they might make the jump into the senior leadership ranks to stay. How do racialized women leaders, who say yes to leadership roles in the face of a glass cliff, find success?

There are no easy answers to these questions and where there are some answers, they likely vary by context and complexity. But one thing I do in search of inspiration is actively remember where we have come from and where we are now as a source of inspiration for the future.

I looked back at the timeline of women’s rights and women trailblazers in Canadian history for a view of what has been. This timeline is by no means complete, but I was struck again by how much is taken for granted reality today that hasn’t always been so, in terms of women’s constitutional, labour and human rights in Canada.

• 1916 – Women in Manitoba became the first in Canada to win the right to vote
• 1918 – Some women were granted the right to vote in federal elections
• 1929 – Women were declared persons
• 1960 – All Canadian women given the right to vote including First Nations women previously denied this right.
• 1971 – The Canadian Labour Code amended to prohibit discrimination on grounds of sex and marital status, the principle of equal pay for equal work and the provision of maternity leave.
• 1977 – The Canadian Human Rights Act passes forbidding discrimination on grounds of sex and equal pay for equal work for women.
• 2001 – Canadian Human Rights Commission recommends a pay equity system and task force to address pay equity was appointed.

There has no doubt been progress and at the same time, there is a journey still ahead. In the 20+ years since Canada formally started tackling pay equity, for example, the pay gap decreased by 7.7 percentage points between 1998 and 2021. However, we know that even with women’s participant in the labour force in Canada continually increasing (now at 76.5%), the gender pay gap persists with women making 89 cents for every dollar for men and racialized women making even less, in the range of 55 – 60% of what white men make. So, what are the inspirations to be a women + leader + racialized in the face of all this?

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