Heidi Worthington recently participated as a panelist for a virtual discussion to support The Invisible Rules: What’s Really Holding Women Back in Business (And How to Fix it). The panel also featured Michelle Banik (Corporate Director and former Chief People Officer, OMERS), and Sonia Baxendale (President & CEO, Global Risk Institute in Financial Services (GRI)), in addition to the authors, Holly Catalfamo and Paul Harrietha.

As we know by now, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on women in the workplace. The results were entirely predictable given the big biases and barriers that women (and other marginalized groups) have—and continue to face—in corporate Canada.

As Catalfamo and Harrietha note, “in corporate Canada you see this scenario play out all the time: Highly qualified and ambitious women enter the workforce all charged up and ready to change the world, only to be disappointed as they watch male colleagues pass them on the climb up the corporate ladder. Then they drop out. It's no surprise, then, that women today occupy only 10 per cent of the highest paying jobs in corporate Canada.”

The panelists spoke about their own experiences with gender inequality in the workplace as well as how we can pursue gender equity in a post-COVID world.

We have a long way to go to achieving gender equity in corporate Canada, but sessions like these are a step in the right direction. As we emerge from the pandemic, individuals and organizations have a unique opportunity to reimagine the workplace ─ and to adopt simple, pragmatic, and long-overdue policies and strategies that promise to make gender equity a reality.