value of women's business leadership events questioned

8/13/2019 Value of women's business leadership events questioned

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This article from Business in Vancouver September 23-29, 2008;issue 987

Value of women's businessleadership events questioned

Debate heats up as a series of upcoming functionspromises to provide opportunity for women tonetwork, find mentorsGlen Korstrom

The popularity of women's leadership events is at an all-time high, buttheir contribution to corporate success has sparked debate in the B.C.

business community.

Some successful male entrepreneurs question the value of women's groupssuch as the Vancouver Board of Trade Women's Leadership Circle, the

Women's Executive Network and the Women's Leadership Forum.

Would you ever see similar events for men? said Lululemon AthleticaInc. founder Chip Wilson. If you don't see them for men, then, it's e ither amarketing ploy or I think it's not the right thing to do.

They're just spending time at women's events and they're not rising theway they need to or are not making the connections they need to.

Wilson hired Christine Day to be Lululemon's CEO earlier this year. Hesaid it makes sense for Lululemon, which has female directors, to have

women on its board because the company sells a product aimed at women.

Wilson added that women are fundamentally different from men andtherefore add a distinct perspective to corporate boards. One of the biggeststrengths women have, Wilson believes, is intuition.

But he believes hiring women based on gender alone sends the wrong

message.Gender becomes important if you want intuition on your board asopposed to fact finding. That is, I think, the separation between men and

women just like [there is a difference between] Ethiopians and Jamaicansin running, Wilson said. Jamaicans win the 100-metre run, and all theEthiopians win the 10,000 metres. If anyone tries to say there isn't adifference, they'd be wrong.


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Wilson is scheduled to speak at a September 23 Women On Board forum atthe Four Seasons Hotel.

Some other upcoming women's leadership events include:

a September 23 Women's Executive Network breakfast at the Terminal

City Club;the September 29 and 30 Women's Leadership Forum at the VancouverConvention and Exhibition Centre;

an October 16 Vancouver Board of Trade Women's Leadership Circleevent at the Renaissance Vancouver Hotel Harbourside; and

Lululemon Athletica Inc. CEO Christine Day speaking November 12 at aWomen of Influence luncheon at the Sutton Place Hotel.

The events coincide with Business in Vancouver's call for nominations forthe newspaper's 2009 Influential Women In Business awards

(www.biv.com/iwib). The deadline for nominations is November 28.Vancouver Coastal Health Authority CEO Ida Goodreau said she hopespeople who share Wilson's assessment are wrong.

For many women, especially younger women, their role models haven'tbeen as clearwhen they go into an industry.

Goodreau said women's leadership events provide an opportunity tonetwork, discuss issues, get advice and meet women in leadershippositions.

Recent studies show little growth in the number of women in boardrooms.

That might be bad news for ambitious women, but studies show it's alsonot good for corporations' bottom lines.

Research from Calgary-based Catalyst Inc. found that having a femaledirector boosts corporate financial performance.

Deborah Gillis, Catalyst's vice-president for North America, told Businessin Vancouver that her study divided Fortune 500 companies into fourquartiles depending on how many women were in their boardrooms.

Gillis found that companies in the quartile with the most women directorshad:

a 53%higher return on equity;a 42% higher return on sales; and

a 66% return on invested capital.

She said the link between female board directors and corporateperformance held across Standard and Poor's industry sectors.

It's good common business sense, said Gillis, who discussed her study at


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a September 19 Women's Leadership Circle event. [With women oncorporate boards], there's a difference in the quality of discussion thathappens around the table, the kind of issues that get raised and thequestions that get asked.

But few companies are acting on this common business sense.

Vancouver's Patrick O'Callighan and Associates noted last year that only47% of Canadian corporate boards had one female director in 2006 while amere 6% of those boards had two female directors. That's up marginallyfrom 1997 when 46% of corporate boards had one female director and 2%of corporate boards had two female directors.

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value of women's business leadership events questioned

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