Breaking new ground

Women thriving in diverse working environments

By Ann Gibbon, Special to the Vancouver Sun February 21, 2009

Maureen Daschuk vividly remembers the rainy spring day in Vancouver when, as director of Telus’s construction team for B.C. and Alberta, she received a call that a cable line had been accidentally severed in the city.

A nearby hospital and some businesses were affected. As the head of the team that builds the telecommunications company’s infrastructure, she had to inspect and work on the situation at once.

There was just one problem, she recalls. She had just flown in from a business meeting in Edmonton, dressed in skirt and high heels. She had no steel-toed boots, hard hat or other field gear with her. Not that she let it stop her: she simply stomped through the mud to inspect the cable—in her heels.

Her field staff, all men, thought it a sight to behold. “They were laughing and joking in a good-spirited way,” she says. “They were saying, ‘I never expected I’d live long enough to see the day my boss would show up in high heels.’”

While she had to discard the muddied shoes, Daschuk, 46, has retained the incident as a reminder of how times have changed at Telus. She heads a 175-member team that has been traditionally male-dominated. “So I’m breaking new ground,” she says.

Today, 40 per cent of Telus’s staff is female and 25 per cent of its most senior executive positions are held by women. The company has been selected as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers in 2009 in rankings by Mediacorp.

With programs such as networking, mentoring, telecommuting, topped-up maternity benefits and a lump sum of $500 for employees to spend to achieve more work-life balance, Telus has created an environment that helps women advance and work in different areas of the company, says Daschuk, who moved to her current position from a financial position at Telus.

At Canadian Pacific Railway, Cathy Moher, yard manager in Sudbury, Ont., has found similar opportunities. “There is no end to the possibilities you can achieve with CP,” says the mother of two. With a father who was a CP railway conductor, and a grandfather who was a dispatcher/telegrapher—he’d relay messages to train crews telling them where to clear opposing trains—“I knew the railway.” What she didn’t know two decades ago was the range of opportunities she would experience with the company.

She began as an operator—a liaison between rail-traffic controllers/dispatchers and conductors and engineers, ensuring train documents were delivered—in Schreiber, Ont., in 1989. She has been in her current job for almost three years overseeing six managers, 38 train-crew employees and 15 mechanical employees. Prior to that, the 45-year-old worked in various jobs, including six years as a terminal co-ordinator in Saratoga, New York, overseeing mostly male workers older than herself. She was initially viewed with suspicion, but over time her staff got used to the idea of a female boss.

Now at CP, cited for 2009 as one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers, 10 per cent of the 16,000-strong workforce (including its U.S. operations) is female. Of the 1,200 women working at CP in Canada, 200 are in field operations. And in the executive ranks, 50 per cent are women, far ahead of the national average.

CP offers $1,000 scholarships (totalling $10,000 a year) to women pursuing a career as a railway conductor at partner colleges.

In 2007, some CP women employees launched a networking program called Women on Track. The program facilitates mentoring, communication, learning and connecting with women across the railway’s network, along with and charitable community work.

Research has demonstrated a strong business case for gender diversity and for programs that permit women to get ahead—particularly in leadership positions. Catalyst, a U.S.-based organization that researches women’s advancement in the workplace, has done numerous studies that point to a strong correlation between gender diversity at an organization and its financial performance.

A 2004 Catalyst study of Fortune 500 companies found those with the highest representation of women in top management positions performed better financially than those with the lowest women’s representation. Return on equity (ROE), was 35 per cent higher and total return to shareholders (defined as capital gains plus dividends) was one third higher.

Deborah Gillis, who leads the Canadian office of Catalyst, says when organizations promote a diverse working environment, “the research shows employees report stronger career satisfaction. They believe they have a stronger chance to advance and feel they can fully contribute.” That means better staff retention and more productivity and profitability within an organization, which is particularly important in these times of economic hardship, she says.

Constable Judith Russell, of the Toronto Police Service, which ranks among Mediacorp’s Best Diversity Employers, says the TPS has plenty of programs to encourage diversity in the workplace. But it’s an ongoing challenge, she admits. “As women, we face the expectation all the time that you’re expected to keep up with men, and sometimes if they feel you can’t, you may feel a bit isolated.”

Russell, 35, who works in the Employment Unit Recruiting Section (having moved over from front-line policing) would always like to see more women in the service, but says strides have been made. One of four deputy police chiefs is female, and that position ranks second only to the chief of police.

In 2006, almost half of new hires by the service were identified as members of “diversity” groups, including women.

It’s just common sense to have women in the workplace, whether out in the field, on the front lines, or, significantly, in decision-making positions, says Gillis. Women represent half the Canadian labour force and control 80 cents of every consumer dollar. So why not give them that kind of say in the workplace?

“If you want to serve the market,” she says, “you want to hire the market.”