All the preparation, experience, and lessons learned – the value of the wealth of knowledge women accrue through their careers is unlocked with the help of the right people at the right time who go against the grain and vouch for their talent.

That describes my career well.

I was fortunate to find a great company early in my journey – a firm that cultivates high-performing teams and builds shared success.

I was luckier still that the owners place great emphasis on enabling untapped potential.

Today, I am the Director of Marketing and Communications at BTY Group, a multinational consultancy that provides project management, infrastructure advisory, lender services, and cost expertise.

It is the same firm that took a chance on me more than 13 years ago.

It also describes how ULI Toronto’s Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) helped me develop a network of amazing connections to continue growing professionally, with pathways for me to support more women in building meaningful careers.

For women to succeed in the development industry, it is deeply interpersonal and systemic all at once.

We have the benefit of more women in the workforce than ever before, but the equality gap in the construction and development industries remains stubbornly wide.

I look at women’s careers in this space as businesses.

It helps me understand where we as an industry need to focus if we are serious about building a robust, equitable, and inclusive workforce.

Most of us trying to make our way in construction and development resemble small firms with big dreams.

We are overloaded with today’s work.

We lack investment and growth support.

Our unique talents are, more often than not, glanced over in a system that predominantly (over)values the status quo picture of success (read male-dominated).

So we continue doing today’s work, unable to unlock the true potential of our dreams and talent.

Some of us are more fortunate. We have a personal network of support that helps us reach a senior level in our careers. We might resemble medium-sized businesses.

The breadth of our professional experiences and relationships sets us up for stable growth year after year, chugging along at the same speed.

Very few of us get a shot at becoming market leaders with access to resources that help us scale up.

Very few of us are recruited to take our learnings to a new sector or field for breakthrough innovations.

And too few of us are given opportunities to become equity owners in the businesses we help build.

If you are interested in really changing the ratio, these are the stakes that enable and sustain generational growth and wealth creation for our families and communities.

It is exactly the kind of potential women bring to Canada’s built environment and construction industry.

Let’s look at the example of highly skilled immigrant women who risk so much to start their lives over in Canada.

These women are educated in STEM fields and bring the professional experience that Canada’s labour force desperately needs.

Most of them are the primary applicants for their families in the immigration process.

By helping them succeed, Canada and its cities gain economic advantages now and for future generations.

Based on a Pan-Canadian study of this demographic by TechGirls Canada, STEM-qualified immigrant women choose Canada for two reasons:[1]

1. Personal well-being, safety and security, and less gendered restrictions on mobility.
2. Job security in a stable economy that is welcoming and supportive of immigrant talent.

These highly qualified women spend years looking for meaningful work with minimal to no support network.

After acing Canada’s merit-based immigration process to prove they have the experience and education the country needs, they are turned away by employers looking for Canadian experience and qualifications.

In addition to immigrant talent, we are also squandering the potential of women educated and trained in Canada.

Against entrenched sociocultural odds, women make up 55.5% of enrolment in Ontario’s post-secondary programs.[2]

Across the country, we also make up nearly 55% of the talent pipeline for Corporate Canada.[3]

Yet according to The Canadian Prosperity Project’s 2022 Report Card on Gender Diversity and Leadership, we lose ground starting with Senior Management (41.9%) and then Executive Officer Roles (29.2%).[4]

The higher up we go, the fewer of us there are.

The report is also eye-opening when we break those numbers down for the same categories further for Black women (0.5%), Indigenous women (0.3%), women with disabilities (0.9%), and 2SLGBTQ individuals (0.4%).[5]

This is happening across the country. It is a daily reality in Toronto and the GTHA region.

All the while our industry struggles to find enough workers, and build a sustainable talent pipeline to backfill looming retirements.

We cannot advance the future of city-building without systemically lifting women up.

To do this, we need to make women full partners in powering the construction industry and the wealth it creates.

This is WLI Toronto’s long-term purpose for continuously advancing the goalposts of progress.

Working with professionals across sectors and disciplines, our annual program provides accessible, effective, and engaging opportunities for members to connect, share knowledge, invest in new ideas, and challenge yesterday’s version of “good enough” to create a more inclusive and equitable future for city building.

If this vision excites you, then we must meet and make you part of the momentum to change this industry.

WLI has several upcoming programs to connect with us:

April 19 – WLI’s in-person event on The Newcomers’ Journey in City Building: A Night of Connecting and Storytelling

Upcoming Events

[1] Workfinding and Immigrant Women’s Prosperity in STEM, TGC, June 2020

[2] 2020/2021 Postsecondary enrolments, by registration status, institution type, status of student in Canada and gender, Statistics Canada

[3] “The Zero Report: 2022 Annual Report Card on Gender Diversity and Leadership”, The Prosperity Project