Okay. I'll give my presentation in French.
I'm happy to answer questions in English.
Women in Governance is a non-for-profit organization founded in 2010. The goal is to help women develop their leadership, enhance their career and access board seats. Alarming statistics inspired the creation of this organization. Women constitute only 5% of CEOs of FP500 companies and only 15.9% of board members. It's quite abysmal.
If you've already heard that women constitute 20% of board members, I want to specify that these are TSX 60 figures, meaning the figures for the 60 largest companies in the country. The figure doesn't represent the situation in our society as a whole.
While women constitute 47.3% of the workforce, only 5.3% of them are business leaders. That's the situation, in our country, in 2017.
Among all the G7 countries, Canada has one of the highest participation rates of women in the workforce. Although the wage gap has been reduced, Statistics Canada data from January 2017 shows that the average hourly wage of women, in all employment categories combined, is 16% lower than the average hourly wage of men. Moreover, women continue to bear a greater share of the burden of unpaid work.
In Quebec, we've made fairly dramatic progress in recent years. The participation rates of women aged 25 to 54 are around 86%, a record high. Since 2000, this rate has jumped by almost nine percentage points, one of the most spectacular increases in Canada.
Let's compare Quebec to the four most populated provinces in Canada. It currently ranks first in terms of the number of jobs held by women, whereas 16 years ago, it lagged behind in this area. Quebec's family policy has certainly played a role in this progress. Women in Governance encourages the government to support measures that help more women participate in the Canadian economy.
Research shows that there's no shortage of qualified women ready to hold senior management positions. They're educated and prepared. That's not the issue. A lack of self-confidence and assurance is sometimes an issue. At Women in Governance, we've been addressing this issue through our mentoring program. However, women lack sponsors, meaning men or women who can not only act as their mentors, but also help them by recommending them, speaking about them, and directing them to decision-making bodies. The likelihood of obtaining this type of sponsor is supposedly 46% higher for men than for women, which is a significant difference. Also, the business world doesn't sufficiently support work-life balance. This continues to be a women's area, and constitutes a gap.
We're emphasizing the need to implement strategies to help women join not only decision-making bodies, but all levels of a company.
We also maintain that quotas must be set. Why? It's not enough to simply disclose objectives. All the country's financial market authorities have implemented the “comply or explain” principle. The principle has been in effect for two or three years, and the results are, at minimum, lukewarm. However, certain countries that have set official quotas obtain good results.
In Quebec, under the Charest government, legislation on women's parity in stated-owned enterprises was passed, and the objective was very quickly achieved.
At Women in Governance, we've decided to create parity certification. It's a bit like the ISO. It measures what companies have implemented to achieve parity, not only in decision-making bodies, but at all hierarchical levels. The idea is to have a talent pool when there's a desire to promote women to senior management positions.
We held a public consultation with McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm, and the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés, the equivalent of the HRPA in Ontario. We're talking about human resources specialists here. The consultation involved checking the whole questionnaire and making sure it was strong enough.
We want to award parity certification to companies. Companies that stand out will be honoured at our gala on September 12, at the Palais des congrès. It's our way of focusing on the subject. For the first year, the certification will be awarded only to companies that have 400 or more employees. For the second year, we intend to apply this initiative to SMEs, given that Quebec has many of them. For the second year, we also intend to establish the certification outside Quebec.
I also want to provide a brief global perspective.
In Canada, we encourage companies to disclose their objectives. For example, Bill C-25 really focuses on the disclosure of objectives. However, things aren't really changing in Canada. Only objectives set internally are disclosed. Only 9% of Canadian companies have set clear objectives. In comparison, in Australia, 82% of ASX 200 companies have clear objectives. The percentage of women on boards rose from 19.4% in 2012 to 23.4% in 2016.
Am I speaking too fast? I have so much to share. I have seven minutes, and I could spend the whole day.