Just 14 per cent of leaders in Greater Toronto Area visible minorities
While more than one-fifth (21.9 per cent) of organizations in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have high levels of representation of visible minorities (more than 20 per cent), more than one-half (56.6 per cent) lack that representation in leadership roles.
Just 14 per cent of leaders in GTA are visible minorities (relative to 49.5 per cent of the population studied), up marginally from 13.5 per cent last year, according to a research report released by Ryerson University's Diversity Institute on behalf of DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project, an initiative of Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance.
"This year, we dug deeper and our results show that the sector averages mask a big gap between leaders and laggards," said Wendy Cukier, associate dean at the Ted Rogers School of Management, who co-authored the report and founded the Diversity Institute.
Previous research has shown a link between diversity in leadership and prosperity. Diverse leadership fuels organizational performance, expands access to global talent pools and new markets and is linked to innovation. DiverseCity Counts: A Snapshot of Diverse Leadership in the Greater Toronto Area tracks 3,348 leaders across the corporate, public, elected, education and non-profit sectors.
Government agencies took the lead spot with education (top last year) in second place; the corporate sector remained at the bottom. City of Toronto public agencies demonstrated the best results overall with 33 per cent visible minority representation in leadership roles, found the report.
"The good news is that we're moving in the right direction and improved results are within reach," said Ratna Omidvar, president of Maytree, who is co-chairing the DiverseCity Project. "The Counts report gives us a roadmap to reap the benefits of diverse leadership."
