Every few weeks, Sue Riddell Rose gets a phone call asking if she’s interested in joining another corporate board.

An engineer by training, she is the CEO of Perpetual Energy, a corporate director and is well connected (her father, for starters, is Alberta oil patch billionaire Clay Riddell). She is also, crucially, a woman at a time when the composition of Canadian boards are under scrutiny.

With about a month until new securities rules will require listed companies to disclose targets for leadership diversity, Canadian businesses are rushing to add female directors, especially in the resources sector. The fact that not many women have engineering experience does not explain the dearth on energy boards, Riddell Rose says.

“There are lots of people on the finance side that are female who could be board members”, says Riddell Rose. “So I’m not sure why we’re not proportionately represented.”

Under the new rules, which come into effect at year-end in 9 of 13 Canadian provinces and territories, companies will be required to disclose information including their policies on female representation on the board, consideration given to women when appointing senior executives and new directors, and targets for women on the board and in top positions.

More Proactive

“Boards are being questioned on where are you going for candidates?” says Carol Banducci, CEO of Canadian gold producer Iamgold Corp. Already a director at Thompson Creek Metals, she also has been approached about joining other boards.

“Companies are wanting to be more proactive than reactive,” Banducci said says. “People are looking for individuals with a particular competence, in my case on the finance side. I’ve seen it on the legal side, I’ve seen it on the governance side as well.”

Canadian firms have been increasing efforts to find female board directors since the Ontario Securities Commission first proposed the new rules in January, according to Sherry Cooper, chief economic counsellor at marketing firm MDC Partners and former chief economist at Bank of Montreal.

“There’s certainly been a lot of activity for the last year,” Cooper says. “I’ve had to turn down potential board appointments.”

Ground to Cover

There is still a lot of ground to cover. While the Canadian government has said it is seeking to increase the representation of women on boards to 30% within five years, the current figure is 11%, based on available data for 235 companies in the Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite Index, Canada’s benchmark equity index. This compares with 18% for the S&P 500.

Among the S&P/TSX group, 91 companies do not have any female directors, and only five have a woman as CEO, the data show.

Resource companies, as a group, are on the low end. The average percentage of women on boards is 7.3% in the S&P/TSX Materials Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Among companies on the S&P/TSX Composite Index Energy Sector Index, the number is 6.2%. Across both groups there’s only one female CEO, the data show.

Cheryl Brandon, a partner at mining-focused private-equity group Waterton Global Resource Management, says she is the only woman in the room “99% of the time” during business meetings. She does not believe that is because there is a shortage of qualified candidates.

Predominantly Male

“I think the issue stems more from the process of how in the past public companies have approached their board,” she says. “There has been predominantly male-leadership networks, and they tend to choose candidates that are more like themselves.”

Slow board renewal also has hampered changes, according to Cooper. Directors can have long-term limits, which means companies looking to add more women may need to wait or make some big changes soon.

One precedent is encouraging. Similar principles adopted in Australia in 2010 helped increase the proportion of female directors of companies in the S&P/ASX 200 index to 17% currently from about 8.2%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Canadian companies have already added female directors this year. Yamana Gold Inc appointed two women to its all-male board in September, while Vancouver-based Teck Resources said last week it’s adding two more women to its board.

Osisko Gold Royalties, a Montreal-based royalty company, has appointed Francoise Bertrand to its board of directors.

“Female director candidates with a proven experience running a P&L, finance or accounting are in particularly high demand,” says Steve Chan, principal at Hugessen Consulting, in Toronto, which advises boards on compensation. P&L refers to a profit-and-loss statement.

Even without the new rules, there is a growing recognition that a diverse set of perspectives at the board table can add value, Chan says.

“People have it on their radar screen,” Riddell Rose says in the interview. “When you are looking at your slate of potential candidates to fill open positions on a board, you are seeking harder to make sure that you’re considering a broader range of options.”