In a filing for an initial public offering today (Feb. 15), luxury outerwear brand Canada Goose made the following statement about the company’s efforts to foster diversity: “The nominating and governance committee values diversity of abilities, experience, perspective, education, gender, background, race, and national origin.”
The same paragraph, though, ended with a mea culpa that failing to fulfill that same commitment: “At closing of this offering, none of the members of our board of directors will be women.”
It’s a surprising admission from the Toronto-based company to have to make in 2017 and stands in contrast to the statements and actions of Justin Trudeau, its country’s prime minister.
After taking office and forming a cabinet with equal numbers of men and women, Trudeau was asked why having gender balance was important. The prime minister’s response: “Because it’s 2015.”
Despite its failure at attaining gender diversity on its board of directors, Canada Goose does have a relatively balanced senior management team: four of the 13 senior managers are women, which doesn’t seem that great, except in comparison to data collected by Rosenzweig & Company, an international executive recruitment firm, that found just 42 of the 526 named executives at those Canada’s top 100 companies were women.
Canada Goose has applied for listing on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange. Companies listed on the latter are required to annually report gender diversity statistics.
