Good morning and thank you, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and committee members.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that the land I'm speaking from is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.
I am the chair of the Conference for Advanced Life Underwriting. You might wonder what that means. We basically represent a big section of the financial services industry. We're the only professional association dedicated to leadership and advanced planning solutions and advocacy to promote the financial health of Canadians. Our more than 600 members represent the top tier of insurance and financial advisers, as well as accounting, tax, legal and actuarial experts.
Ours has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, but this is changing. We've seen an increase in the number of female advisers, up to about 18% from 11% to 13% eight years ago, depending on which section of the industry you look at. While we have some way to go, women clearly are on a fast track for leadership in our industry. My appointment this year as the third female chair of our organization in almost 30 years provides some additional encouragement for this, as do the other three female directors on our board.
We are concerned about the advancement of women in financial services overall. You'll hear a lot of evidence about the outsized impacts of the pandemic on women, but it's the many women, whether they're clients or people trying to get into the financial services industry, who start in retail, hospitality and health care who have been most affected.
Because of the sections of industry that women tend to work in, this means they've had to continue to work amid health risks for themselves and their families so that the rest of us can have access to essential services. Added to the reality is that women take on the lion's share of child care, home-schooling and elder care needs, all of which have obviously soared during the pandemic.
There's no question that women have been the hardest hit, especially those who have precarious employment and/or are low-income earners. They have the least ability to cushion the impacts and make adjustments to ride out the pandemic.
At the same time, it's important to recognize the impact that COVID-19 is having on the advancement of women across the economy. A recent study we conducted with CALU found that our female members have had a significantly greater impact on their businesses than our male members. These women are among the most senior and successful advisers in Canada, yet they too are affected by a gender imbalance that sees child care, home-schooling and elder care fall disproportionately on their shoulders. That's true for people in our industry as well as for our female clients.
We're a big proponent of educating women on investing and on the creation of successful businesses. We would like to see a lot more women create new successful businesses that allow them to fulfill their potential to create, innovate and drive economic growth. That's also true for our youth. We want to make sure that we not only take care of women as we try to survive this pandemic and succeed through it, but also remember that we have a second generation of female youth we would like to train, grow and nurture so they can be a big part of the business economy.
Everybody is noticing the cost of child care. It's a key hindrance to enabling a woman's advancement. The same is true for elder care. A national seniors strategy is something that has been on our agenda for quite some time. We feel that addressing elder care would free a big section of the female economy to be able to work and contribute.