Canadian HR Reporter

January 27, 2014 NEWS CANADIAN HR REPORTER 3 Female MBAs seeing less pay, lower job levels and fewer key career opportunities: Survey Women also facing 'unconscious bias, men-dominated workforce, say recent studies ' BY SARAH DOBSON WOMEN MBA grads are being short-changed, according to a report by Catalyst Canada. Highpotential Canadian women earn $8,167 less than men in their first post-MBA jobs, start out at a lower job level (72 per cent of women versus 58 per cent of men) and are offered fewer career-accelerating work experiences and international postings. At its most basic, we're valuing women and men differently, according to Alex Johnston, executive director at Catalyst Canada in Toronto, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding opportunities for women in business. "We're looking at people with similar qualifications, similar work experience going into their MBA, similar industries, so it's not 'Oh, one's going into HR and one's going into corporate finance.' We're really putting similar people beside each other." But the results are not that surprising, since men earn more than women in every job class, according to Kate McInturff, senior researcher and director of Making Women Count at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Ottawa, citing Statistics Canada reports. "There's no job class in which you see women earning more than men, on average. And that is true for core working age women and men, 25 to 55, and it's true with or without a university degree," she said. "(The gap is) persistent and it increases, so the women who are graduating with MBAs right now, unfortunately, are going to look forward to that pay gap increasing as they continue in their careers." The two areas that are important in terms of career advancement for MBAs are the different kinds of files they are given and international assignments, said Johnston. But men (29 per cent) are significantly more likely than women (19 per cent) to get these assignments, found Catalyst. "We have a gap there, so fewer Canadians generally are going elsewhere for periods of their career and that's something that we need to understand because that gets at our competitiveness," she said. "Fewer women are going but, when we drill down, we find that fewer women are being offered the opportunity." It looks like more men than women are given opportunities for expat assignments, said Sheryl Boswell, director of marketing at Monster Canada in Toronto, citing the customers on her job site. Employers seem unwilling to test those waters, she said. "There's that bias that women are there to look after children and now with elders, so if (employers) gave those opportunities to women, it may backfire, and I think that's a wrong perception. Women work very hard and are more than capable of balancing both, so they need to be given that chance." Employers should be very deliberate about having effective talent management and helping people move from one position to another, said Johnston. "Those are the kinds of things that make a significant difference in people deciding to take on a promotion and deciding against it. So not simply offering it (but) offering it with the sup- port around it to make the person feel that they're likely going to be successful." Bias cited in study by Conference Board of Canada Part of the problem could be persistent, unconscious doubt about the ability of young women to take on leadership roles, which permeates conventional talent management practices, according to a Conference Board of Canada report. "We've talked a lot about systemic bias and people making biased judgments overtly but the reality is that good people can make bad decisions — we all have a lance and a set of experiences that we draw on to make those countless decisions and judgments we make in a day," said Ruth Wright, director of leadership and human resources research at the Conference Board of Canada in Ottawa. "A psychologist would term that 'cognitive shortcuts' — we use these, in this fast-paced world, to make judgments and make decisions and we have to pause and we USE > pg. 9

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