Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning everyone.
I'm Caroline Codsi. I'm the founder and chief equity officer at Women in Governance. Our core is around supporting corporate Canada to close the gender gap in the workplace. Unlike RFAQ, we don't work directly with entrepreneurs. We work with large corporations that want to bring women to the top of the house.
We have more than a million people working for parity-certified organizations. All the largest banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, etc., in all the different industries, including a lot of government bodies as well, have been certified by our organization in both Canada and the U.S.
To dive into the focus of today's conversation, first of all, I'm truly honoured to be invited to testify here today. I will speak as a female entrepreneur myself. Women in Governance is going to be 15 years old in 2025. It's not quite as old as RFAQ, but we've been around and we've done a lot. We've also seen the negative impact in terms of achieving social equity when it comes to looking at how women are able to advance versus men.
Research from the BDC reveals that levelling the playing field for women entrepreneurs could inject an additional $150 billion into the Canadian economy over the next decade.
Despite what we see in terms of talent and tenacity, women still own less than 16% of Canadian businesses. Even though we do a lot of work at Women in Governance to support women through governance training and mentoring, etc., I think it's a stark indication that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done.
It's not all on women's shoulders. There are structural barriers and funding disparities that have always existed and that we still see today. Women entrepreneurs, especially those who are in early-stage ventures, encounter deeply ingrained structural barriers. Funding is among the most significant hurdles that women face.
According to the Brookfield Institute, I believe, women entrepreneurs not only receive less venture capital than their male counterparts, but they also face a higher likelihood of being forced to rely on personal debt. That's a scenario that impedes scalable growth and sustainable success. This funding gap is even more pronounced in traditionally male-dominated sectors like technology and science, where gender bias often results in a lack of confidence in women entrepreneurs. These are sectors with immense potential for innovation and economic growth. Women remain drastically underfunded and undervalued. That obviously stifles their capacity to drive progress and to contribute to a diverse economy.
Government programs are crucial, obviously, but they are not sufficient to close these gaps. Although grants and resources have been made available, I'm not sure all women entrepreneurs even know where to turn. I can speak for myself. I find it very complicated to navigate the different government bodies to know where exactly the pockets of money are and what is required. I think it would be helpful to make it easier to find. Some women are really good at working with organizations that specialize in helping them find the funding, but I think it needs to be more accessible. I think that women also need more training, better networking and more mentoring; this is critical to their success. A holistic approach is really important.
We need to address the unique challenges that women face. It's different from what men go through. The EDC, or Export Development Canada, reports that only 11% of Canadian exporters are women. That reveals the limited reach of existing initiatives. In 2024, it makes no sense to me.
Obviously, we have the invisible burden of caregiving. Quebec is a leading province in terms of offering affordable child care. It's fantastic that the federal government has followed up and it's now available across Canada, but I think this still largely falls on the women. McKinsey and Company has documented how this dual responsibility—the need to manage both your household duties and professional ambitions—disproportionately limits women's ability to scale their businesses, especially during critical growth periods when a lot of women are at that age when they still have young children at home. Without access to long-term and consistent support, women are often forced to make difficult choices between their personal lives and professional aspirations. It's a dilemma that not many men have to face, and that hampers economic advancement on a macro scale.
We need to strengthen the collaboration between the government and financial institutions and train the people who make the decisions on validating funding for women. They need to go through unconscious bias training to understand how to speak to women who are looking for financing. We need to raise awareness in these financial institutions, which play a critical role in either enabling or hindering entrepreneurial growth.
We need to support women in high-growth industries like technology, AI and renewable energy, where women remain vastly under-represented. Government-backed initiatives could target these sectors and provide these women with the resources and the confidence they need to enter, grow and lead within these fields—