More women representation is needed in Calgary’s technology and business sectors, local business owners say.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek and a group of women in technology met with U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Cohen in late October, where concerns about diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) were brought up. According to Gondek, DEIA is a formula for success and a company’s bottom line grows when it invests in those principles.

“Around the table, a lot of our local tech leaders, who are women, talked about the struggle to access venture capital. They talked about incubators and how they’re generally structured to be focused on the way we would do things years ago, and that they need to be doing incubators differently to recognize that there’s sometimes barriers for people to access that service because they’ve got child care or aging parents that they’ve got to think about,” Gondek said.

“If you look at a lot of our tech founders and a lot of entrepreneurs in our city, these are folks that either moved to Canada or growing up as second generation Canadians. They have cultural ties back to their mother nations, and they’re absolutely crushing it on our scene. They’ve got great ideas. They feel welcomed and embraced by our city. I think we need to really be taking investments in people very seriously.”

Gondek’s comments come after a Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) report published in June suggests that technology participation rate for working women has remained stagnant between 2016 and 2021. A little more than 2.1 per cent of all women working in Canada are engaged in tech work. Meanwhile, the tech participation rate for men working in Canada has risen by 0.8 percentage points in the same time period – from seven per cent in 2016 to 7.8 per cent in 2021.

The composition of the tech workforce has also “moved marginally towards equality,” the report read. In 2016, only 20 per cent of tech workers were women, compared with 22.1 per cent in 2023. This is significantly lower than the 49.4 per cent of all workers who are women, the report said, and it will take almost 100 years for the gap in the technology sector to close.

The report also suggests that the gender pay gap in Canada’s technology workforce has almost tripled since 2016. According to the latest census data, men in the Canadian tech sector earned $91,000 on average in 2021, compared with $71,400 on average for women. In 2016, men in the Canadian tech sector made $53,900 on average compared with the $39,500 average for women.

The rate of wage growth that women tech workers experienced over this period was also lower than compared to men for every percentile. Men in higher percentiles received hourly wage increases of $15 more than women received, the TMU report said.

Indigenous tech workers in Canada also earn on average $14,000 less than non-Indigenous tech workers annually, and Indigenous people are also 70 per cent less likely than non-Indigenous people to work in tech (1.4 per cent of employed Indigenous people are currently working in tech occupations).

“Highly-skilled tech occupations in Canada are among the most desirable—requiring significant levels of education to often get in the door, they offer substantially higher salaries than the average occupation in Canada. Given the benefits of working in these jobs, the lack of equality across demographic lines yields significant equity differences in Canada,” the report concludes.

“Canada’s efforts to date have been successful in targeting immigration specifically for technical occupations, which has meant that for immigrant Canadians, tech work is equitably distributed. However, for women and Indigenous Peoples, the story is starkly different. Both groups are significantly underrepresented in tech occupations, and even in tech roles they are both significantly underpaid compared to other workers

“However, the structural barriers facing these two groups are different. Enabling both women and Indigenous Peoples to equitably participate in and be compensated for tech work requires systemic changes that address each group’s unique barriers to entry.”

Women are underrepresented in business sector

Women are also underrepresented in the business sector. Women-owned businesses only accounted for around 17.7 per cent of all private sector businesses in Canada, according to the January 2023 Labour Force Survey. These businesses are also concentrated in service industries (health care, social assistance); professional, scientific and technical services; and retail.

Sarah Elder-Chamanara, owner of Madame Premier in Inglewood, said she wants to see more women-owned businesses in Calgary but the economy has made that a challenge. For Elder-Chamanara, consumer spending did not increase even though inflation decreased month-over-month and interest rates were cut earlier this year.

“When a small business closes, usually what steps into that void is a bigger business that is either most likely part of a chain or a franchise,” Elder-Chamanara told LiveWire Calgary.

“It’s alarming to me because everyone will say small businesses are the backbone of our economy. OK, that’s great as a talking point, but when it comes down to it, is that where you’re choosing to spend your money? The pandemic really changed the way that people spend their money online, and small businesses simply can’t compete with large businesses.”

Elder-Chamanara also said if she was a man she would have been treated differently and with more respect by some, especially since her business is political in nature. She told LWC that she is often asked if she can discount her goods and people get angry when she won’t.

“No one goes into a big box store and tries to haggle right at the counter. It’s just not done. You would never do it, because you know what the answer would be,” she said.

“So what people feel comfortable asking for and expecting from small businesses, and maybe even in a in a gendered way, right? That’s a design that I made. It’s my own original design. Every part of that process of making that button was done by hand, and unfortunately, if you don’t see the value in that then, then you know, maybe this isn’t the right time for you to make that purchase, but the way that we’re treated within the economy … It’s kind of a joke, to be honest.”

Elder-Chamanara also expressed frustrations about the expectations put on small businesses that are not financially and operationally feasible. For example, she said small businesses aren’t able to afford a large warehouse to distribute and store their goods. It is also a challenge to find ways to make small businesses stand out in their communities, she added.

“If you walk by the windows of any big box store, the windows are usually really well done at a professional level … And the money that people at corporations even just put into that one aspect of that alone is really significant,” Elder-Chamanara said.

“If you’re comfortable with the idea of essentially receiving everything you purchase from a massive warehouse somewhere outside of the city and things just magically on your doorstep, then you are contributing to the slow death of small businesses.”

Diversity data key in improving DEIA in the workforce: professor

More disaggregated demographic data will help identify any gaps in Canada’s workforce, studies show, but that data is lacking in the private sector. While federally regulated workplaces are required to collect and report certain demographic data under the Employment Equity Act, private companies are not required to provide that data.

In the United States, all private sector employers with 100 or more employees, as well as federal contractors with 50 or more employees meeting certain criteria, are required to collect and submit workforce demographic data to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This includes job category, sex, and race or ethnicity.

Catherine Heggerud, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, said the lack of demographic data from companies that are not federally regulated in Canada is due to the lack of a regulatory framework that is similar to the United States. She added that Canada has more stringent legislation around data sharing and collection of information.

“If I were creating policy, I’d want to know the data. Without sort of robust data, it’s hard to make good decisions,” Heggerud told LWC.

“I think there absolutely should be sort of a mandate … I don’t think there’s any imperative because data collection and reporting and tracking can be very expensive for an organization. It could be a restructuring of databases or types of things you’re collectiing, and who manages that data and how do they report it out.”

Heggurud said there are benefits to demographic data collection, especially if it is used to track how organizations are resourced especially in senior positions.

However, a Harvard Business Review article says hiring visible minorities and other traditionally underrepresented people does not automatically produce benefits like higher revenue. Companies must also be willing to reshape their power structure and business leaders must embrace a “broader vision of success that encompasses learning, innovation, creativity, flexibility, equity, and human dignity.”

Higgerud also said there must be privacy and data collection mandates attached to diversity data collection mandates.

“We need to almost have the training, if you will, to make sure organizations are using the data in the way it was designed … One is internal policy around who has access to the data internally. I think if we think about smaller organizations, they maybe don’t have the same rules. So, I think we need companies to have access to skills training to help them design and make sure they’re using their data ethically.” Heggerud said.

“Also the really big thing that is concerning for people in this day and age … How do you make sure the data is securely stored and what does that look like?”