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Ep 29: Billion-Dollar Blind Spot - The Cost of Excluding Women

• Julia Pennella • Season 1 • Episode 29

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What’s the real economic cost of excluding women from the workforce, business opportunities, and leadership roles in Canada? The answer might shock you – nearly $180 billion in lost GDP according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. This eye-opening figure represents more than just a moral failure; it's a massive missed business opportunity that Canada simply can't afford.

Our conversation with Marwa Abdou, Senior Research Director with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Business Data Lab, goes beyond the standard talking points on gender equity to explore the hard economic realities. With her background working with global organizations like the World Bank and OECD, Marwa brings data-driven clarity to a conversation often clouded by misconceptions and platitudes.

The reality for women in Canadian business is stark: only 5% of CEOs in top companies are women, less than 1 in 5 businesses are majority women-owned, and a mere 2.3% of venture capital funding goes to all-female founding teams. These aren't just social justice statistics – they represent billions in untapped economic potential during a time when Canada desperately needs to boost productivity and competitiveness.

What makes this situation particularly frustrating is that women face not just one barrier but multiple "glass ceilings" and "broken rungs" throughout their careers. From entry-level bias to the promotion plateau in middle management, from boardroom exclusion to disproportionate care responsibilities, women navigate an obstacle course that men simply don't encounter. The problem isn't a lack of education, skills or ambition – it's a deeply entrenched ecosystem that makes scaling exponentially harder for women entrepreneurs and executives.

Ready to understand what policies could move the needle on this critical economic issue? Curious about how trade policy, regulatory reform, and a reimagined care economy could transform Canada's economic landscape? This episode offers concrete insights into how businesses and policymakers can turn gender equity from a talking point into an economic advantage. 

Don't miss part two of our conversation, where we'll dive deeper into workplace changes and practical advice for women entrepreneurs navigating these challenging waters.

Check out Marwa Abdou’s work here:

Barely Breaking Ground: The Slow Stride of Progress for Women in Business Leadership and Entrepreneurship: https://businessdatalab.ca/publications/barely-breaking-ground/

Women Entrepreneurs: Canada’s Biggest Missed Business Opportunity: https://businessdatalab.ca/publications/women-entrepreneurs-canadas-biggest-missed-business-opportunity/ 


Julia Pennella:

Welcome back to another episode where we break down the political headlines, economic trends and policy moves shaping our world, without the jargon overload. So here's a thought. What if I told you Canada is leaving billions on the table every year, not because of bad investments or trade deals, but because women still aren't being paid equally, promoted fairly or supported with the infrastructure they need to fully participate in the economy. Sounds familiar, right? According to a United Nations report, at the current rate it will take an estimated 300 years to end child marriage, 140 years for women to be represented equally in positions of power and leadership in the workplace and 47 years to achieve equal representation in national parliaments. That's not a timeline. That's a warning.

Julia Pennella:

You might be thinking well, I'm in Canada, our numbers can't be that bad. Well, think again. Canada ranks among one of the worst in the developed world when it comes to pay equity. And while we've heard the stats before, here's what doesn't get enough attention that this inequity and inequality is costing us big time. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce estimates that excluding women from full participation in the workforce has costed our GDP nearly $180 billion. So today we're diving into the economics of gender equity and equality, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do, and I'm joined today by someone who knows the numbers inside and out.

Julia Pennella:

Marwa is Senior Research Director with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's Business Data Lab and the host of Canada's Economy Explained podcast. Before that, she served as Economic Advisor to Egypt's Minister of International Cooperation and she's worked with global heavyweights like the World Bank, OECD and the Asian Development Bank. Whether it's regulatory reform or data-driven storytelling, her work always centers on one mission driving impact for those too often left out of the conversation. And today she's here to share her insights on what Canada needs to do next to strengthen its economy and how we can make sure women are part of that progress. So let's get into it, marwa. Thanks so much for joining us.

Marwa Abdou:

Thanks for having me, julia, I really appreciate it.

Julia Pennella:

I'm really looking forward to the conversation and getting that economic business lens. So I want to start off with the big picture. Why has Canada, despite all its talent and investment, made such glacial progress when it comes to female entrepreneurs and businesses?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, big question. So I think Canada's slow progress towards gender parity and entrepreneurship and business leadership, you know, despite its wealth of talent and investment, is really a multifaceted issue and one that's really rooted in structural, cultural and systemic barriers that women continue to face even now in 2025. And both reports that we have published at the Chamber, including Barely Breaking Ground and Women Entrepreneurs Canada's Biggest Missed Business Opportunity, really provide insights into some of those challenges. Persistent barriers that are hindering progress include things like underrepresentation in leadership roles, compensation disparities, access to financing, organizational culture and bias that remained very resistant to change in development sectoral segregation. So women-owned businesses are still predominantly concentrated in service sectors, like health care, like education, like retail. These industries are often ones that have low profit margins and effectively limit growth opportunities in comparison to maybe more male dominated sectors like technology and manufacturing more male-dominated sectors like technology and manufacturing.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, really well said and I appreciate that scope and we'll be sure to include the report in the show notes. But the report does make it clear that there have been some gains, but Canada is nowhere near gender parity in business leadership. Why has that progress been slow, especially maybe compared to our other countries across the G7? We do have them coming to Alberta in a few short months, but I'm curious through that economic global comparison, why are we behind?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, I think the data and analysis really reveal what a lot of the researchers and what I suspected and has been reiterated in the literature. The problem isn't a lack of ambition or a capability or a skill or education. Women in Canada are more educated than ever, more skilled than ever, but it's a deeply entrenched ecosystem that makes scaling exponentially harder for women. So you have women increasingly active in entrepreneurship, but we are still seeing less than one in five are majority women-owned businesses. One third of self-employed ventures are women-led. Their companies tend to be smaller, they tend to have fewer employees and they tend to have lower revenues. So I think that when you look at other economies where the ecosystem has done a better job of being more inclusive for women, I think globally we still have work to do. There's no doubt about that but comparatively, I think Canada hasn't kept up with the demands of its economy and with what's happening in the world.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, I appreciate that and I want to point to the B7, also recently just wrapped, with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce hosting. Were there any conversations or anything you're hopeful of about maybe making a bit more progress, of having that international dialogue of how can we support businesses, specifically women-focused ones?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, I think, when you're seeing a renewed focus on things like artificial intelligence and building more inclusive ecosystems, to move the needle, not just beyond the research which I think we know that Canada leads and was first out of the gate in terms of AI research, but it hasn't followed through with that, that's definitely one realm Looking at diversifying our trade, resilience, right. So I would love to talk a little bit more in terms of, especially in this moment in time, thinking about how Canada can insulate itself from economic shocks and uncertainties, and one of the ways it can do that is really by ensuring that we are not leaving opportunity behind, and that includes women and marginalized groups who are ready to be productive contributors to our economy.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said. And just even on a macro scale, there was some news over the weekend and late last week of breaking down interprovincial trade barriers. So really hopeful that, to your point, diversifying and being a bit more economically resilient that might be a factor in it. So hopeful to see how that is going to play out for our industries.

Julia Pennella:

I want to lean into the point and you mentioned it about how women are leading a significant portion of Canada's small business space, but scaling up remains a major hurdle. This, you know, is unique to women, but also to small businesses in Canada more broadly. This is a topic I touched on with Don Drummond on one of my other podcasts. But you know the broader challenges across the country. Women do face that added layer of complexity. So I'm curious, like, why don't we see more Canadian examples of female founders at the scale of, you know, melanie Perkins from Canva or Whitney Wolfe Hurd from Bumble? Like, what do you think is the biggest barrier to scaling up for female entrepreneurs in Canada? Is it the market, taxes, access to capital, or is it maybe something else?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, I want to pick up kind of where from a point that I mentioned. When we talk about that, the companies tend to remain smaller, they tend to have fewer employees, they tend to have lower revenues. The idea here is, the gap isn't about talent, it's about the friction, right. So there are amazing examples of women entrepreneurs who are doing really cool things. I want to give a big shout out to Erin Burey of Willful. So there is a lot of innovation that is happening at the hands of women entrepreneurs and there are many examples for that.

Marwa Abdou:

But a lot of the key reasons why Canadian female founders face steeper hills when really trying to scale. You know, unequal access to capital tends to be one of the top three reasons. Only 2.3% of venture capital funding goes to all female founding teams and firms. In Canada, that number is similarly low. 2.3% is the global figure. Women are less likely to secure loans, they're less likely to secure productive investment. They're less likely to secure productive investment and, as a result, a lot of women-led businesses are disproportionately self-funded or they are bootstrapped for much's sector concentration. So there is the not so simple issue of the disproportionate toll of, and the burden of care work on women and, of course, another massive barrier is policy and tax disincentives that continue to bear a significant weight on women entrepreneurs.

Julia Pennella:

Well said and I appreciate that analysis. Is there anything more broadly that the data is also telling?

Marwa Abdou:

It's really interesting when we think about the data, one of the biggest hurdles that I think, as a researcher, it's not for a lack of knowing that, logically, women have so much untapped productive potential for our economy and they are this untapped lover for growth and prosperity have had such a glacial progress and where you find resistance to kind of moving the needle you're ultimately led to when you look in terms of unraveling some of those reasons, you think about things like the impact of regulation, so current tax structures, like limits on income splitting or inadequate parental leave for entrepreneurs.

Marwa Abdou:

These are things that are not insignificant. They can disincentivize business growth. They can have huge impact in terms of hiring, regulatory burdens and we know this time and time again and there's a recent StatsCan paper that shows total regulation accumulation from Canada has increased from 2006 to 2021. Over a 15-year period, regulation accumulation has increased by 37%. These are the kinds of burdens that often hit small, women-led or minority-led firms the hardest, especially without the ability to actually navigate some of those bureaucratic, administrative burdens and processes, let alone some of the cultural differences that might be added to that burden.

Julia Pennella:

Well said and what's also coming to mind. We talked about the hurdles and in the report you reference the idea of multiple glass ceilings and that's something that really stuck with me and I want to read a quote that you actually said. That quote women in Canada face not only one glass ceiling, but several, and not one broken rung in the promotion ladder, but many, all of which hinder their ascent to full equality. The data shows that barriers for women persist most prominently in management positions and in boardrooms end quote. So I want to lean into that and can you walk us through what that looks like in practice and why the promotion ladder seems particularly broken for women? You mentioned networking gap is a piece of that as well, but maybe internally in an organization like what are the challenges still or barriers for that promotional ladder?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, big question. So often our line of sight is to the top and while we often focus on the final hurdle, which is getting to the boardroom or getting to C-suite or CEO positions, barriers really start much, much earlier in the pipeline and they multiply at every single stage of a woman's career. And that was something that was very much glaring in the research and why I always say it's important to think about this as a pipeline issue, because there are clear breakpoints. You know, when you think about entry level bias, those with perhaps non-linear career paths are ones who are more prone to face additional skepticism or gatekeeping. One of the other findings of the Barely Breaking Ground report is that there's this glaring promotion plateau in middle management. So the data shows that there is a steep drop off after mid-level roles.

Marwa Abdou:

Women in middle management are often passed over for stretch assignments, they're less likely to receive sponsorship or mentorship and they're often siloed in support functions like HR, marketing administration rather than core business units. These are sticky floors that keep women from reaching the roles that lead to executive pipelines. The other aspect is, of course, executive and C-suite barriers. So women represent only 30% of senior managers and just 5% of CEOs in Canada's top companies. Those are pretty abysmal figures when you think about the proportion of women in the economy, the share of them, the richness in them. Even when women reach positions like VP level, fewer than one in five women actually get promoted.

Marwa Abdou:

Boardroom exclusion is obviously something that we touched on. Despite being educated, experienced, ambitious women are still underrepresented on boards. Many of them are, you know, stuck in, like I said, more gendered industries rather than strategic sectors like tech, like energy, like finance, and sometimes there is qualitative research that shows that many of the women who are appointed to boards, they're only appointed after multiple other men have declined. Their inclusion is ultimately still viewed as something that's optional and a nice to have, and not something that is essential in terms of shaping that structure.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and to your point, it almost sounds like it's a second thought to bring a woman into that boardroom position, like you said, if men have declined that. A few things I want to pick up around there. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept that was introduced to me by my mentor, alison Ventiti. She runs Moms at Work Advocacy Group. They just put out a survey as well, talking about, in addition to women already experiencing these barriers of accessing higher positions and climbing the corporate ladder, you have the motherhood penalty, where that woman's out of the job market and you know who's her biggest competitor childless women or younger women. And then you have the fatherhood bonus. I'm curious has anything in your research also pointed to more specific to mothers in your data that's also showing these challenges?

Marwa Abdou:

I mean, I haven't done specifically research on mothers, but you know, the reality is when you look at the intricacies of these barriers, that is one of the things that is glaring when we think about, and again, it was important for me when I did the first report Barely Breaking Ground, to reorient some of the narrative in terms of the pathway to and the possibilities for women in terms of how they can ascend to leadership right.

Marwa Abdou:

So entrepreneurship is one pathway, traditional careers is another, and so I think we need to break out of these rigid frameworks, thinking about how women can take their rightful place in driving economic growth and prosperity in this moment in time. I think, when we think about mothers and particularly one of the glaring reasons that a lot of women exit traditional employment, it's not just out of you know, I have a great idea for a business and I'm really passionate about it. It's out of necessity, because they can't simultaneously juggle responsibilities in terms of the disproportionate kind of weight of care. Work is often on women in households, be it traditional ones or untraditional ones, and so the lack of social infrastructure that allows women to both juggle life at home and life at work within the typical nine to five structure forces women to say well, I need something to give, able to both work and be a productive member of society, while also navigating other responsibilities that are also imperative. It's thinking about that. Social infrastructure is a really key piece of all of this.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, and you touched on it too earlier about the regulation piece and the barriers that that also caused not having adequate parental care, and I'll flip you the report as well, because I think there is some really interesting data from the survey pool that they did. We often talk about gender equity as a moral or a social issue, but there is a hard economic question. So you know what is the cost of inaction. How much growth are we leaving on the table by not incorporating more flexibility for moms or women in general and understanding what that untapped market is? You've shared some stats as well, like only 5% of women are actually CEOs or in those boardrooms. So, yeah, what money is being left on the table?

Marwa Abdou:

Yeah, that's really one of those questions that reframes the entire conversation. Yes, gender equity is a moral and social imperative, absolutely. It's also fundamentally an economic no-brainer and the cost of an action is not something that's abstract, it's measurable. Of an action is not something that's abstract, it's measurable, it's mounting and it's hurting Canada's competitiveness ultimately and we know this because when we looked at even rough estimates in terms of closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship, the second report, which is Women Entrepreneurs Canada's Biggest Missed Business Opportunity when I wanted to start the research is look at, you know, in 2018, the government had set these targets and not even saying we need to have a proportionate share of women, majority women-owned businesses in Canada, but saying we need to double the number of women-led businesses, which wouldn't even get us to a representative share, but it would be a significant progress. And even in that, we only had managed from 2018 to 2024, 2025, we've only managed to add about 25,000 majority women-owned businesses to the economy, which is, again, while it is progress, it is not as much as we need and it's not as fast as we need.

Marwa Abdou:

We achieved the targets that we had set in 2018 for what we wanted to achieve by 2025, we would have basically cashed in on an estimated at a minimum $150 billion and up to $180 billion. That's foregone and lost economic opportunity that we've said we could do without it, and especially in this moment in time when we're thinking about what that means for the economy. It's not an insignificant amount. And that's before factoring in things like the cost of stalled leadership pipelines. It doesn't factor in underfunded women-led firms. It doesn't factor in the cumulative impact of pay and promotion inequity. So you can only imagine the opportunity that we're leaving behind and what that will mean going forward.

Julia Pennella:

Yeah, well said, and I appreciate those figures. They're not small by any means of the money that is being left on the table. And I want to bring maybe the conversation a little bit bigger because we touched on the themes like Canada's competitiveness. This is a big piece. The Bank of Canada, economists have all been calling on this lag in Canada's productivity and competitiveness, but the big question right now is ongoing trade tensions and that possibility of a looming recession. So I'm curious, given the data that you've pointed to and we talked about, you know, as well as the policies and regulation that are impacting women's ability to contribute to Canada's economic development, what kind of policies would you like to see governments and whether that's federal or provincial put forward to elevate women's participation as we are navigating these really economic turbulent times?

Marwa Abdou:

as we are navigating these really economic turbulent times. Let me start with the trade piece, because I think that's definitely top of mind for a lot of people, and rightly so. With everything going on south of the border, I think we need to think about how we can make I mean, amongst the myriad of things that we need to do in order to kind of change course and move towards the kind of future state that we all want to see Canada in we need to think about how we make trade policy work for women. Something that a lot of people don't know is that my background is trade, and oftentimes I think about how trade isn't gender neutral. Trade isn't gender neutral and ultimately, if women can't access opportunities, be it in Canada, due to things like interprovincial trade barriers or administrative burdens that continue to gatekeep women from accessing markets in other provinces or even outside of Canada, neither they can benefit from it nor can our economy actually benefit from it. So we need to think about things like embedding gender impact assessments and trade agreements and tariff negotiations. We need to think about expanding the support that we're extending for women exporters, things like not just extending tailored trade missions, but also thinking about the access to logistics infrastructure, translating and localizing, or making sure that women have access to translation and localization services that can allow them to understand international markets better.

Marwa Abdou:

We need to think about how we promote supplier diversity in global value chains. We need to think about how we promote supplier diversity in global value chains. That's just under the trade umbrella. If you think about other components in terms of policy, again touching on the care economy, we need to build a care economy that works. We need to accelerate investments in affordable child care and elder care, especially for underserved regions and geographies in Canada. We need to extend things like entrepreneur-accessible parental leaves in EI, recognize that care, work and economic models and procurement. We need to actually think about it as social infrastructure and treat it like infrastructure which we place so much value and importance in, and not think about it as just an afterthought.

Julia Pennella:

So much value and importance in, and not think about it as just an afterthought. That's a wrap on this episode, but don't go too far. Marwa's back in part two, where we dig even deeper into the lost economic opportunity and the real barriers women faced in Canada's economy and beyond. In the next episode, marwa shares what needs to change in workplaces and policy to create real inclusive growth and why businesses need to move past just checking a box when it comes to putting women in leadership roles. Plus, she's got some powerful advice for any woman thinking about starting her own business, including what to ask for, what to push back on and how to stay competitive Even when the door doesn't feel wide open. Don't miss it. Part 2 is coming up next.