Good morning, committee members. I am pleased to contribute to your study.
First, I would like to introduce myself to put my presentation in context.
I have been the General Director of Spira for nine years now. I have an MBA in international management and international development from Université Laval. I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Méduse Co-op, the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Pôle des entreprises d'économie sociale de la région de la Capitale-Nationale and Co-Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Table de concertation de l'industrie du cinéma et de la télévision de la Capitale-Nationale.
The day before yesterday and today, you have heard from a number of leading organizations and specialists about the impressive situation and about their reality. Spira is a medium-sized organization with a budget of $600,000. I'm pleased to present the reality of an organization like ours. These organizations aren't to be ignored. They are the majority and essential in the portrait of Canadian cultural organizations.
For its part, Spira is a cooperative devoted to independent cinema resulting from the 2015 merger of Vidéo Femmes and Spirafilm, two organizations that have existed for nearly 40 years. Its main mandate is to support the production and distribution of films, be they short films or feature films. The cooperative has about 150 members. Each year, it's involved in more than 60 films and reaches an audience of 400,000 people. Funded by arts councils, the cooperative is not-for-profit. Its revenues are about 75% of grants.
As a result of the merger, in order to maintain the mission of Vidéo Femmes, Spira was keen to put gender equity at the centre of its values. How does this translate concretely?
At Spira, 50% of the projects supported are carried out by women, and a concern for parity is present when our committees and collective projects are put together.
Spira's board of directors includes six artist members and three external members. Of these nine positions, at least four must be held by women, and this is mandatory.
Ten employees—five men and five women—make up the cooperative's team. Women have held the artistic director and general manager positions since 2009 and 2008, respectively.
Spira's board of directors has been gender-equal since 2012-13, and the quota has been in place since 2015-16.
It goes without saying that gender parity is a constant concern within the cooperative.
Spirafilm, of which I was the manager, was already concerned about gender parity. Our merger with Vidéo Femmes forced us to more formally implement procedures that would allow us to maintain gender equity.
Three years after the implementation of these measures, I realize that this reflection was necessary, because it is clear that it is unfortunately not yet natural to think about parity. Otherwise, we would not be here today. It is a reflex that is learned and develops.
The first measure adopted was the quota of women on Spira's board of directors. In fact, at least four of the nine positions must be held by a woman. However, conversely, the board of directors could not be made up only of women: at least three men must sit on it.
It goes without saying that we initially found it difficult to respect the minimum of four women. We had fears: what if we didn't find competent women? The former president of Vidéo Women had warned us that it would take effort.
Three years after the introduction of this quota, the mechanism has become natural and well-anchored in the actions of the board of directors. I will speak about it a little later, but education remains a major point for maintaining the importance of parity.
Efforts to reach parity are well marked, and we have tools and mechanisms in place.
The first method is the active search for candidates. We participate in recruitment activities such as “Tea time with the board”, an activity organized by the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Québec. We also called on the people in our network and told them about the profiles of the candidates we were looking for, the idea being not to wait until the AGM of members to have people interested in serving on the board.
We decided to put in place a skills matrix in an Excel table, which is the one proposed by the YWCA and includes not only objectives to be achieved in terms of parity, but also other criteria such as youth, skills and cultural diversity. In the coming weeks, a call for applications will be launched, and we will ensure that we have a large pool of candidates at the AGM.
One of the benefits of this skills matrix is to publicize needs and make a tool to attract women and show them that they have an opportunity to join a board of directors. This opens a door for them and tells them that they can join our board and that we need them.
Something else we have put in place is mentorship. Spira participates in the YWCA's mentorship program for young female administrators. Through the program, a young woman can train for a year by sitting on the board of directors. The idea could easily be adopted by a number of other boards, in organizations large or small.
We communicate the value of parity to members of the board and to staff. We do so in order for it to be easier to achieve and so that everyone can become its champion. At board meetings, and at the annual general meeting, we inform our members of all the efforts Spira makes to achieve parity. We also mention it occasionally on social media. Making our members and our public aware is a way for us to contribute to society, so that it can become more egalitarian.
We also know that achieving parity depends largely on the people in place. So it is critical for us that organizations include parity in their procedures, so that it will last.
I would like to draw your attention to another major issue linked to parity on boards, the issue of the presidency.
Having women on boards of directors is one thing, but it is another to have them take decision-making leadership positions.
At Spira, we recently realized that we had never had a female president. So, next June, we are going to establish parity with a co-presidency. This will allow us to put into practice a joint execution of powers and development of skills. Another method would be to establish alternating presidential mandates, so that the position would be occupied by a woman on a regular basis.
We believe that parity will be easier to achieve if we establish measures such as flexible schedules, the ability to bring children to meetings, and participating in meetings remotely, both for the board of directors and for the staff.
Still with a view to promoting parity, Spira has adopted gender-inclusive writing and lexical feminization.
I will now say a few words on the artistic leadership positions within cultural organizations.
We cannot ignore the difficult question of the low salaries in small organizations and the shortage of labour. It is a problem that limits our choice of candidates. We prefer the most competent candidates. However, where one of the two key management positions is already occupied by a man, we would consider applications from women with particular attention. I have been working in the arts for nine years now and I have noticed that, in small organizations, it is often women who occupy positions of artistic leadership, even of overall leadership, whereas in large organizations, the opposite is true. The workload is the same, but the salaries are lower.
In conclusion, I have the following recommendations for you.
Work with national organizations like the Independent Media Arts Alliance, so that they become champions and intermediaries.
Establish a program to train managers and provide mentorship for women, even in small and medium-sized organizations.
Increase funding to organizations so that they can provide suitable working conditions that may attract competent women to artistic leadership positions.
Encourage quotas. As an earlier speaker mentioned, in Norway and France, quotas have been imposed in public organizations, with positive results. In this country, SODEC, the NFB and Telefilm Canada have implemented measures of that kind, and the results seem very positive up to now.
Finally, we recommend that studies be conducted to determine the status of the situation and that the results be published.
Thank you very much. I hope that my comments will provide you with food for thought.