In 1994, a group of women at Toronto-Dominion Bank approached senior executives with a complaint: Why did women make up just 8 per cent of senior managers when the vast majority of the bank's staff were female?
Their complaints led to an internal task force, a new diversity initiative and a dramatic change in TD's management ranks. By 2008, senior management at the bank was 34-per-cent women and middle management was 47-per-cent female.
As part of the program, TD created nonbinding targets to steer diversity of all types in senior ranks. Targets are not favouritism, chief executive officer Ed Clark said, but a pragmatic way of ensuring there is "a true meritocracy" that allows the best people to advance.
"In any business organization, what you measure is what you do," he said in an interview.
"If I say I'm in favour of making more money rather than less money, but I never know how much money I make, then the organization doesn't respond. So … if we think this is making progress, we need to have indicators of whether we're making progress."
Creating targets for women remains a controversial business practice in Canada, with many critics - including senior women - arguing that this can undermine women's success by making them appear to be token hires.
But a growing list of leading companies are nonetheless willing to walk into the minefield of sensitivities and declare a firm commitment to advancing women. Many are facing increasingly uncomfortable questions about why women are under-represented in leadership roles when they swell the ranks below the management level.
Women now comprise almost 48 per cent of Canada's work force, and have become the majority of its university graduates. But they represent just 13.9 per cent of corporate officers at 232 publicly traded companies studied by research firm Catalyst. And women account for only 2 per cent of CEOs at Canada's 1,000 largest public companies.
Financial-services firms in particular have created diversity programs to target women, visible minorities and other groups for advancement. They say elements of their programs, such as management-development training and funding education for high-potential employees, are the biggest keys to success, but they also defend targets as a way to push change forward.
Bank of Montreal CEO Bill Downe says he does not believe his bank could have increased the number of women in executive roles to 35 per cent by 2009 from 9 per cent in 1990 without setting goals and developing a strategy.
"The natural human inclination is to fill a role the easiest way possible, and the easiest possible way is within your own network," he said in an interview.
"So unless you have a discipline that says, 'I have to broaden the candidate list beyond my friends,' the chances are it's going to look like your neighbourhood."
Old arguments to justify the lack of women in senior roles don't hold water any more.
After decades of waiting, Catalyst vice-president Deborah Gillis is no longer confident that women will just naturally rise to the top CEO jobs as they fill the workplace pipeline.
"When the numbers didn't change, we got into a whole series of comments around, 'Well, it's because women opt out. They don't have the same aspirations that men have,' " Ms. Gillis said.
She now rejects that suggestion, too. She says a Catalyst survey tracked business students in the early years of their careers and found the same proportion of men and women aspired to be CEOs. But it also found that the women entered the work force in lower positions with lower pay than the male students, and never caught up. They also lowered their aspirations as their careers advanced.
"We know there are systemic barriers in the cultures of organizations that make it more difficult for women, and that's the question we need to focus on," Ms. Gillis says.
These systemic barriers include the subtle network of support men can find in the work environment, which helps to manoeuvre internal politics and meet top decision-makers. Women also face lingering biases about not being as suited to power as men - that they aren't tough enough, or bold enough, or ambitious enough.
While barriers are not easily broken, one pragmatic solution being pursued by some employers is the development of more systemic hiring and promotion processes that prize talent and success above vaguer factors such as comfort and familiarity.
Marilyn McLaren, CEO of Manitoba Public Insurance Corp., says she believes rigorous hiring practices are a key reason women have excelled in the government sector compared to the private sector.
"It's a very structured process," she says of MPIC's hiring practices. "I think when you use processes like that, the most capable people have ample opportunity to bubble to the top."
Some organizations have targets in all but name through the design and intent of the internal programs.
Atlantic Lottery Corp. doesn't discuss targets, but it is striving to have its employee and management ranks match the region's work force broadly, CEO Michelle Carinci said.
"I'm so careful how we talk about it, because you don't want it to be a numbers game," she said.
"I position it within the company so that it's treated in a very positive vein that we should reflect what our labour force is today. Whether that's ethnic, gender, whatever that is, we should be a reflection of that.Which means in and of itself, you would have double digits, of course, of women in senior management."
Annette Verschuren said she does not believe in setting targets for women because there are better ways to achieve the same outcome. The CEO of Home Depot Canada said targets can be "a negative" for women and foster resentment.
But with diversity a key goal for the company, she routinely urges her top managers to hire and promote diverse candidates. There is a clear expectation that women and visible minorities will be identified early and groomed for senior roles.
"Amongst my leadership team of eight, I review on a quarterly basis the diversity in their teams," Ms. Verschuren says.
Mr. Clark said TD's strategy has been to create a broad diversity initiative, involving women, minorities, disabled workers and gay and lesbian employees. The broad focus helps ensure the program is seen as promoting fairness rather than creating quotas that favour one group of employees.
"So you end up saying this isn't about quotas or favouritism, it's about making a true meritocracy rather than a false meritocracy. This is really about just making people the best," he said.
Canada may even see a woman CEO of a major bank - although Mr. Clark estimates it could take two decades.
Mr. Downe at BMO believes a female bank CEO is "inevitable." He believes banks no longer have tradition-bound boards that would not select a woman for the job.
"Whether the next CEO to be appointed will be a woman or not, I think isn't a matter of attitudes," he said.