'No man in the history of the world has ever been called bossy,’ says expert citing barriers of ‘ideal workers’ — and why HR needs a stronger voice
New data from Statistics Canada (StatsCan) for the first quarter of 2026 points to an uncomfortable truth in Canadian organizations: women are approaching gender parity at every level, all the way up to senior management – but that’s where they bump up against a persistent glass ceiling.
StatsCan’s “Business conditions in Canada, first quarter of 2026” report shows that women currently account for 45.1 percent of “all other positions” in Canadian companies, and 46.9 percent of “all other management positions,” but just 40 percent of senior management roles.
One of the most powerful forces holding women back is how jobs are designed and evaluated, according to Erin Reid, professor of human resources and management at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business and Canada research chair in work, careers and organizations.
Reid traces one of the most powerful forces holding women back to how jobs are designed and evaluated.
“We tend to assume that men are ideal workers and we tend to assume that women are not,” she says.
“Many jobs in many organizations, especially white collar, middle-class professional organizations, tend to be designed around the assumption that the ideal worker, the person who will best be able to fulfill the role, will be the person who is the most available and the most committed.”
HR has ‘weaker voice’ for executive roles
Contributing to the issue of the persisting glass ceiling in Canada is t he high degree of discretion often exercised in executive hiring. Reid suggests that at the very top, hiring processes may also be less formalized and less influenced by HR.
With “casual discrimination” rarely voiced explicitly in those meetings, she says HR has work to do building more influence and accountability in upper-level hiring decisions.
“HR has a pretty strong voice on diversity issues at junior and middle-tier jobs, and perhaps a weaker view at the highest level, or a weaker voice,” Reid says.
“This is where HR needs to develop a stronger voice… you might at the end of it still hire the white guy who has been successful somewhere else, and that's fine. But in some cases, you won't, and that would be a way to start to diversify with who gets considered.
“But if people are not in the pool at all, it can't change.”
The goal for HR is applying diversity and inclusion practices that are well-established at lower levels of hiring, to hiring top brass. This includes pre-defining role characteristics and qualifications instead of targeting individuals and interviewing a diverse range of candidates.
Preconceived notions
In addition, senior searches often start with an individual name rather than a clear, competency-based profile, meaning selecting committees or individuals approach the hire with a preconceived notion of who they want to fill the role, Reid says.
When organizations fixate on a “saviour” candidate who looks like previous incumbents, they risk replicating the same demographic pattern.
“They might only interview one person, or they might go through the process of interviewing a slate of candidates but go in with a preference,” she says.
“If you go into a recruiting process for a senior role with an idea or a name in mind, you are likely to replicate it… to put that a different way, you are likely to hire another white man.”
For proof of this “homophily” effect in senior hiring, Reid points to Canada’s track history in electing prime ministers: “We have never elected someone who is not a white guy to be Prime Minister. We had Kim Campbell by default. So, our assumption about who makes a great leader, the visual is a white man, and that’s who has held most of those jobs.”
Committees, boards and how ‘fit’ is defined
Wendy Cukier, founder and director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Diversity Institute, also situates the issue in a long history of organizational expectations. Like Reid, she points to the classic idea of the “ideal worker” that persists in the upper reaches of organizational hierarchies.
Women, who are statistically responsible for more caregiving and home-based labour, are continually dogged by perceptions that this makes them less suitable for top leadership positions. On top of that, stereotypes have them stuck in a lose-lose situation.
“No man in the history of the world has ever been called bossy,” Cukier says.
“It’s so embedded in our culture that men are the bosses, and when women exhibit those characteristics, they are inconsistent with what we expect women to do.”
Cukier points out that boards do more than oversee strategy, they also shape the composition of executive teams, and board makeup can reinforce or shift patterns at the top. For HR and corporate leaders, that highlights the importance of board diversity, clear criteria for CEO roles and scrutiny of how “fit” is defined – especially when past leaders have shared a cookie-cutter profile.
“Some organizations have very explicit strategies for improving representation on their boards, and some don’t,” Cukier says.
“The only way, in my mind, that we can improve that is either through legislation or more stakeholder and investor activism … where organizations really think hard about corporate social responsibility.”
How informal mentorships can sideline women
Reid’s interviews with senior leaders has shed light on how even well-meaning mentorships can reinforce gaps when the main venues for relationship building feel more accessible for some than others.
“They will say, ‘I want to mentor both young women and young men,’ but I can take a younger man out to a bar or to a golf course, and it doesn’t look weird. Whereas, if I were to take a more junior woman out to one of those settings to mentor them, it’s more complicated’,” she says, stressing that it is in these spaces that insider knowledge is shared, informal endorsements are made and potential successors are groomed, so gaps there have real consequences for promotion.
Cukier adds that quantity of mentoring does not necessarily translate into access to power. In her view, the type of support matters.
“Women have too much mentoring and not enough sponsorship,” she says, explaining that traditional gendered mentorship systems have meant men are more likely to help other men navigate the “unspoken rules” in organizations.
What this means for women, Cukier explains, is that crucial relationship-building isn’t available, and they are instead focusing on performance and their actual jobs to secure advancement – unknowingly pursuing a dead end.
“They focus on performance and task as opposed to those informal networks and relationships that actually, at the end of the day, often matter as much or more than talent and accomplishments,” she says.
“Many organizations have, as a result, tried to establish more formal processes for identifying and supporting talented women, Black people, Indigenous people, and so on in the workplace. But there’s a big difference between mentoring and coaching, where you’re giving someone advice and sponsorship.”
