There is something very wrong with the Top 40 Under 40 list. The annual list celebrates the top forty Canadian business leaders who are thirty-nine and under. While I think that it is terribly important to support and to promote Canadian business there is a disturbing trend concerning the representation of women or rather, the lack of female representation. Over the past ten years there has been only one list that has had more than nine women and a several years that have clocked in with under five. 2009 had a whopping five women to celebrate. Five women to the thirty-five men.
There are several reasons as to why female representation is so low year after year: maybe women aren't being nominated or they are and the advisory board (twenty-two men, three women) don't acknowledge them or maybe there just aren't very many women who meet the requirements. But are any of these reasons acceptable? No matter which way you slice it, the results are the same: we all, men and women alike, lose when representation at any level is so incredibly unbalanced.
If just over half of our population is comprised of women but they only make up a teeny percentage of a leadership list when do we as a society begin asking why and more so, begin taking steps to ensure that everybody has the same opportunities? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say to young women that they can accomplish anything and mean it? Besides, the one thing we do know is that women are just as smart and just as capable of becoming great leaders.
http://www.top40award-canada.org/about/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/managing/top-40-under-40-2009/top-40-under-40-awards-celebrate-canadian-leaders/article1590908/
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