When International Women’s Day arrives on Saturday, Christa Hill won’t be at any of the many celebrations marking the occasion.
The Calgary-based co-founder of tech education company Tacit Edge is abstaining from the March 8 gatherings because she finds they often create a “veneer” that falsely makes attendees feel corporate Canada is working together to improve conditions for women.
“When we get up on a stage and we tell people what we’ve done, it gives this false sense of accomplishment in the room that the problem is solved and it’s in hand, but it’s not,” she said.
“It is incredibly volatile. This wheel can roll back anytime.”
Hill and many others in the tech industry backing away from the events this year say their choice isn’t meant to give the impression that women shouldn’t be celebrated. In fact, they think the opposite: women should be supported more.
They maintain diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts should be year-round and touch every level of corporate Canada rather than be hived off as “performative,” annual celebrations hosted and attended by women instead of the people most able to make change.
If the country sticks with this pattern, they fear it won’t just be stalled progress they’re coping with but an outright regression.
Stoking that risk is a dramatic pullback in DEI efforts across North America after U.S. President Donald Trump spent his first days in office ordering all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff put on paid leave and eventually laid off.
Wall Street heavyweights including Goldman Sachs, Google and McDonald’s, which had long been urged to address the lack of diversity in their ranks, promotions processes and the gender wage gap took Trump’s move as a sign they could back away from some of those efforts.
Meanwhile, Ottawa-based e-commerce giant Shopify Inc. scrubbed pages associated with its diversity and inclusion programs from its website. The company did not respond to requests for comment about potential cuts but many staff previously working on those programs have LinkedIn profiles noting they are no longer with Shopify.
For April Hicke, co-founder of women’s tech collective and talent organization Toast, such developments reaffirmed her company’s decision to stop appearing at International Women’s Day events and give staff the Friday before off to “celebrate themselves.”
In a typical year, more than half of Toast’s travel funds are spent in March on sending staff to Women’s Day events, where they’re often not paid to speak on panels in front of predominantly female audiences.
“Unfortunately, spending our money, spending our time and bending over backwards for these things is not actually driving systemic change,” said Hicke.
“The only way we’re going to be able to drive systemic change is by bringing (men) into the conversation.”
She thinks men need to be involved because they dominate leadership positions in most industries and tend to be paid better.
A report from the Dais, a public policy organization at Toronto Metropolitan University, has said the gender pay gap in Canada’s tech sector almost tripled between 2016 and 2021, with the average salary of a woman in the industry amounting to about $20,000 less than her male counterpart.
“What’s the point of these Women’s Day events when you’re paying us less now than you were years ago?” questioned Laura Gabor, who founded inclusivity organization What in the Tech? and runs air purification company Ecologicca.
“I would much rather not have any International Women’s Day events and I would much rather even not have it acknowledged, but have systemic changes in companies where the wage gap for women doesn’t continue to increase in tech.”
She likened companies that host Women’s Day events but don’t support female staff with equal pay or working conditions to workplaces that throw pizza parties but don’t offer salary increases.
“It feels very superficial and it feels very performative,” she said.
Gabor’s frustration with the state of DEI in Canada has grown so much in recent months that she decided to release an open letter in February to try to get people to take the lack of action — and the threat of progress slipping away — more seriously. It has now garnered almost 1,100 signatures.
The note warns that if Canada abandons DEI now, “we risk handing even more power to a small, homogenous group of business leaders who would strip away jobs and equality in pursuit of profit.”
Shopify served as her inspiration.
On top of backing away from DEI efforts, the company allowed rapper Kanye West to sell T-shirts bearing swastikas for days before taking down the site amid outcry.
Several of its leaders, including president Harley Finkelstein, also joined an initiative called Build Canada, which publishes policy papers meant to prod the country toward prosperity. All 11 papers it has released so far were written by men.
“If you’re getting rid of these teams, if you’re showing with your actions that these people are not a priority, these groups are not a priority for you in any way, shape, or form, then what does Build Canada stand for?” Gabor said.
Though some may feel such developments make their participation in International Women’s Day more important than ever, Hill says their time is better spent resting up for the other 364 days of the year, when there is more room to make a difference.
She reasons that International Women’s Day events can be costly and take time away from other work that may actually have an impact.
Unpaid appearances she’s made at these events over the last six years alone, plus the time spent preparing for them and the travel fees associated with getting there have cost her $8,400.
She fears her participation has also given a false impression that the current corporate playbook is working.
“When someone wants to create some kind of change, the playbook is to give them a day and then (women) get flowers,” said Hill.
“Keep the flowers. I don’t need them and can buy my own but give me equal pay instead.”
