Good morning.
Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for the invitation to be part of this important discussion around gender parity.
My name is Julia Ouellette. I am the board Chair of MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada. I've served in this role for six years.
MOCA aims to define the role of the 21st-century museum, in that we want above all to be welcoming and relevant, a reflection of the diversity, complexity, and plurality of the world in which we live.
We are a mid-sized institution with an annual operating budget of $6 million and a full-time salaried staff of 20. We are currently in transition from 13,000 square feet in our home on Queen Street West to a new 55,000-square-foot home in the lower Junction community within MP Dzerowicz's Davenport riding, just west of the downtown core. Our institution is scaling up dramatically and will have its international grand opening in September 2018.
This growth has serious implications for management and board. When radically stretching an institutional facility, its budget, organizational structure, human and management resources, a strong board, and staff leadership are essential for success.
MOCA does not have a traditional gender parity issue. Both its board and senior staff are predominantly women.
I'll speak about the board first.
Ours includes 17 directors, 10 of whom are women. We all recognize that the best decisions are made when people with different perspectives weigh in on the conversation. In building our board, we opted for a skills-based approach with a view to ensuring that required expertise would be around the table, while also considering a suite of diversity factors.
Our governance committee analyzes the board according to this matrix, identifies gaps, and then looks for and carefully considers skilled individuals to fill them.
How or why has this led MOCA primarily to attract highly competent women?
We believe the answer lies in our mission and values: inclusion and welcome, community focus, strong youth engagement, and putting artists at the centre of what we do.
Contemporary art considers the vital issues of our time. It is progressive by definition. This is compelling to, and resonates with, women.
Has gender imbalance hurt us to this point? I don't think so. Could it hurt us down the road? Possibly.
Long-term sustainability is a board priority. Over 75% of MOCA's annual budget is raised from private sources, including donations, sponsorships, memberships, and special fundraising events.
How does MOCA access pools of capital in our community to fund our institution?
Much of wealth is controlled by men, both privately and corporately. We all understand the history. The shift of wealth will take time, as women become bigger earners in the workforce and assume more leadership positions in corporate Canada. Women are not yet equal influencers when it comes to directing funding and wealth. A board that is skewed toward women may suffer because of this. A study to understand the impact that board parity has on fundraising would be meaningful.
Furthermore, I wonder whether there is any correlation between the size of institutional budget and the number of men versus women on the board. Is there a trend? This would also be interesting data to capture in a study.
Finally, as it relates to boards, I would like to make a comment regarding age.
One of the roles MOCA sees for itself in advancing women in the not-for-profit boardroom is that of mentor. We are proud of the fact that our board is multi-generational. From those in their twenties to those in their sixties, we have representation. As such, our more experienced board members serve as role models and mentors to less-experienced, younger members, making them sought-after candidates for other institutions.
For the younger generation, reaching gender parity is imperative, and its value is obvious. Governance practice, including board development, are very strategic and deliberate processes. Our next generation needs to be mentored in this area. To reach gender parity, we need to teach the next generation how to do it. It won't just happen.
Government funding that supports the mentorship of the next generation of senior volunteers would be valuable. This is also important because boards of directors oversee recruitments for the top jobs.
This brings me to my thoughts regarding leadership and senior management. MOCA's CEO and four directors of programs, finance and administration, development, and marketing and communication are all women. How did that happen? We simply chose the applicants best qualified for the positions. We require a strong and highly competent senior team, and ours just happens to be exclusively made up of women.
MOCA's board recently hired both its CEO and director of programs. I secretly hoped we would find women to fill both these positions. Why? Because there's a shortage of leading female voices in the visual arts space in Canada at the higher levels of management and at the large institutions.
That said, visual arts organizations are generally trending toward staff gender parity. This is particularly apparent at the senior management level. One can hope, but not assume, that these next-in-charge women are the likely future CEOs and executive directors. While this is encouraging, there is work to be done to close the opportunity gap for these women.
The recruiters from the executive search firm retained by MOCA for our CEO recruitment believe that the pool of female talent is growing, but that systemic barriers still limit them in getting the top jobs.
I encourage the committee to review the U.S.-based Association of Art Museum Directors' 2014 and 2017 studies entitled “The Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships” and “The Ongoing Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships”. They do a fantastic job of benchmarking gender parity and related pay-scale discrepancies against institutional mandate and budget size, while outlining interesting details regarding the systemic barriers mentioned by MOCA's headhunter, and commenting on the leadership style of men versus women.
Capacity-building, leadership training, and mentorship opportunities for those who show promise are essential if we are to see a gender balance at the highest levels of management. Unfortunately, small and mid-sized organizations lack the funds to support this kind of talent incubation.
Government support would go a long way. I recommend that the government consider focusing funding opportunities at small and mid-sized organizations that play an important role in incubating talent for the majors.
With regard to both of our recent senior hires, the successful candidates brought international experience to the table. Our CEO hails from Toronto, but spent 20-plus years working primarily in the U.K. and U.S. Our director of programs was born in the U.K. and worked in Turkey and the Middle East for a dozen years. We recognized that they would add a unique perspective to our program, and would clearly benefit our institution and the arts industry.
When we look at a cross-section of five of the largest visual arts institutions across the country, only one is led by a Canadian. The four international leaders include two females and two males. So, while there is gender parity there, Canadians are not favoured. How can we change that and help Canadian women prepare for the top jobs?
When homegrown talent participates in international training programs—the Getty Leadership Institute for museum leaders is a good example—it boosts their career opportunities in Canada and beyond. While the risk is that we might lose some of our best and brightest future leaders to other parts of the world, the upside is that some will continue to work in Canada.
Leadership, mentorship, and continuing education programs should be embedded into institutions across the country. Universities would do well to expand and put more emphasis on cultural leadership within their curriculums. These are the channels for developing deep talent pools from which to draw our future leaders. Government encouragement and funding support can also help.
A question I ask myself is whether women are recusing themselves from the most senior leadership positions, and if so, why? Is carrying the bulk of family responsibilities, compounded with institutional leadership, deemed too much? If this is the cause, the solutions are complex societal ones and beyond the scope of cultural institutions alone.
Change happens over time and is often slow to evolve. If we look back at the profile of cultural institutions 10 or 15 years ago, there were so few women leaders. Today, those same institutions have changed, and we know that women are stepping into creative and executive leadership positions, as well as board roles, in a way they never have before.
Conversations like the one we are having today have a positive impact on gender parity, as will initiatives to support talented women. If we work together—board, management, and governments—I feel confident that we will continue to move in the right direction and that in the near future we will achieve gender parity within Canadian cultural organizations.
Thank you.