Thank you.
Opera.ca is the national association for opera in Canada, representing 14 professional producing companies from coast to coast, as well as affiliates, businesses, and individuals. We appreciate the opportunity to speak to this committee on the issue of gender parity and applaud this committee for studying this important issue.
Gender parity is an issue the opera sector takes as seriously as the government, and we have enacted several initiatives to effect change in this area that are aligned with many of our recommendations. I'm going to read our recommendations first, and then I'm going to tell you a bit about what they mean and how Opera.ca is responding to them.
Our first recommendation is that the Department of Canadian Heritage commission gender and diversity analysis research to better understand the scope and the depth of the problem, and share these findings. In the opera sector, collectively, we have not yet achieved gender parity among senior leaders and boards. In opera, I should say, general directors are the top leadership, and not often the artistic directors. Current parity figures for general directors is at 43%. Because we're a small sector, that equates to six women. With the exception of one, these women all lead the smallest organizations. Gender parity on opera company boards in Canada is, on average, 46%, or 90 out of 200 positions.
These figures are improvements in the past three years, as the opera sector has undergone many recent leadership transitions that have improved our parity. Three out of eight senior leadership appointments in the past three years have gone to women. We have also gathered data on parity in the sector that reaches beyond senior leadership and the board, to areas such as conductors and stage directors, where there is much work to be done in achieving parity. This is very important because this committee is studying the administrative and the governance side of things and we're also looking at the artistic leadership.
Future research will include parity statistics in all leadership positions of an opera company, to fully understand the depth of the problem. Research is essential, not only for understanding the problem, but as a key step in establishing a baseline so we can measure improvements over time, and to establish explicit gender parity outcomes or expectations.
Our second recommendation is to work with sector organizations and national arts service organizations in establishing realistic and achievable targets and timelines for achieving gender parity, if adopting a quota model or Norwegian approach. As a membership association representing the opera sector, we are focused on change in gender parity and are in the process of not only declaring change initiatives, but also establishing targets and timelines for the sector that can be agreed upon by member companies. We're doing this because we understand the importance of having action plans, targets, and timelines behind declarations of change.
However, as a membership-based association, we focus on incentivizing change as we lack levers for mandating it, but understand that the Department of Canadian Heritage, as a funder, might choose a quota approach. This recommendation requests that if a quota model is being considered, the Department of Canadian Heritage work with sector organizations in establishing realistic, achievable targets, given the fact that organizations have differing board length terms and employment contracts.
Our third recommendation is to provide funding for human resource programs that address perceived barriers to female leadership advancement, with a focus on mentorship and second-in-charge positions. The recent controversy over top jobs in arts and culture in Canada going to non-Canadians—and there was an article just in the past few months in The Globe and Mail about this—is exacerbated by the fact that these appointments have mostly gone to non-Canadian white men. One widespread rationale for this is the perception that there is a lack of qualified Canadians for these senior positions and, by extension, a lack of qualified women. Some hypothesize that the talent pool in Canada is too small, and others lament the lack of second-in-charge positions. That's a career path issue leading to these leadership positions. There is also evidence growing around gender bias with respect to what a leader looks like, which is predominantly male. That was an article in The New York Times in March.
In her recent “Canadian Performing Arts Leadership Audit”, part of a final major research paper for her MBA studies, consultant Jeanne LeSage noted that survey responses to suggestions for the sector to select, develop, and train the next generation of leaders include high scores for mentoring and second-in-charge positions.
Targeting both the perception that a leader is male and the lack of mentorship in second-in-charge positions, Opera.ca is developing a women's networking and job-shadowing program. It matches female leaders in the field with female protégées, who gain experience at a leader's side in a second-in-command capacity. Through this program, we also hope to reinforce and normalize the perception of women as leaders. This is just one kind of investment in human resources that we think could generate meaningful change in gender parity.
I have one last recommendation, which is to partner with service organizations in providing professional development and support for board governance-training in subjects like gender bias, inclusive practices, equity diversity, and accessibility training.
Despite our intentions and our efforts, we recognize that associations don't make hiring decisions—boards of directors do. Unconscious biases may exist in hiring practices. In the opera sector, boards themselves have not achieved parity. To incentivize change and address implicit and unconscious bias in hiring practices, our organization is introducing a new governance series in equity and inclusion for opera board members. This series will focus on the concept of corporate responsibility, or CR, a broadened definition of corporate governance that includes accountability to a range of stakeholders including employees, volunteers, government, and community. It will specifically study how gender and diversity on boards contribute to greater CR. This program is an example of how an investment in board training could help achieve gender parity.
As a last note, I would say that this investment could be combined with the recent announcement of training in the creation of harassment-free workplaces in the arts and culture sector.
Thank you.