How companies can smash the lavender ceiling for LGBTQ workers

Toronto Star

a day ago

Across the world, LGBTQ+ communities are confronting a growing tsunami of hostility — laws targeting their identities, escalating social ostracism, and rhetoric that feels ripped straight from darker chapters of history. But there's another battlefront, quieter yet no less fierce: the sleek, hushed boardrooms of corporate power. In Canada, as in much of the world, the lavender ceiling remains stubbornly intact, nearly invisible yet profoundly unyielding.
Take this sobering statistic: among the more than 9,300 directors who graced Toronto Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2015 to 2022, just 0.15 per cent were openly LGBTQ+. That's a stark contrast to the 4.4 to to nine per cent of the Canadian population who identify as LGBTQ+. The math here isn't merely off — it's screamingly wrong. It suggests not just oversight, but wilful ignorance.