At Canada’s spy agency, a new Women’s Network safeguards progress on gender equality
When CSIS was created, its culture mirrored the male-dominated environment at the RCMP. Thirty-five years later, women are taking up space, on surveillance missions and around the executive table.
Thirty-five years ago, by an act of Parliament, the security service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was replaced by a new civilian spy agency: the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). For years, the Mounties’ domestic intelligence branch had been flouting the law by using investigation techniques such as illegal break-ins, the forging of documents and the unauthorized opening of mail. As a result, in 1981 a federal royal commission recommended the creation of a new body altogether, one responsible for gathering intelligence, investigating threats to the security of Canada and reporting on those threats to the government.
On July 16, 1984, CSIS was born. Many of the officers that made up the workforce of the new agency were plucked from the RCMP, so in the early days, and for some time afterward, the culture at CSIS remained one “strong on testosterone,” as a veteran of the organization described it to me.
Three-and-a-half decades on, CSIS still draws criticism in the press, including accusations of unlawful behaviour, but when it comes to gender equality, the situation has certainly improved. According to the 2018 CSIS Public Report, women make up 48 percent of the organization’s 3,200-strong workforce and 40 percent of its senior management. Five out of 10 members of CSIS’s senior-most executive team are women.
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