NZ trails rest of the world in company board equality

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Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:55p.m.

Pamela Cohen

Pamela Cohen

By Laura Frykberg

It's public knowledge that women get paid less than men, but what's perhaps less well known is that women make up less than 10 percent of the boards of our top companies.

In fact, New Zealand has one of the lowest representations of women on boards in the developed world.

According to the Ministry of Womens' Affairs, New Zealand should be worried

"There's an emerging body of evidence that links the presence of women on company boards and corporate performance, including profitability, so that's why it matters to New Zealand," says Pamela Cohen.

Of the top New Zealand companies, women make up less than 10 percent of boards, and 57 have no women at all.

Business leaders say New Zealand boards are missing out on female expertise. We lag behind a large part of Europe, the UK, the US, Canada and Australia.

Across the Tasman, women make up more than 12 percent of stock exchange boards, and that's expected to reach 17 percent by end of the year.

Helen Anderson has been on company boards for eight years. She says women need to be proactive in breaking the cycle. 

"What's called the old-boys club actually is a comfortable space for saying, who do we know and trust?" says Dr Anderson.

"So one of the things that women can do for themselves is figuring out how women can have them thinking of them."

In Australia, the threat of law changes to ensure women were represented on boards sparked a change of attitude.

Here, the Institute of Directors says businesswomen are reluctant to be seen as the token woman.

"They want to be treated on their merits, they want a level playing field, then yes, that can kick start change - but do you want that to persist?" says William Whittaker.

If it does persist, the institute says it will push for a law change.

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Comments

22 Jul 2011 07:55a.m.

alien wrote:

forget gender and simply hire the best for the job

21 Jul 2011 01:07p.m.

Martin wrote:

And the rubbish continues. Every job I have had over the last 22 years there have been more women been in higher positions or equal positions to me most were paid more than me. Why, they there longer with more pay rises, better performance or productivity than me, had more education than me the list goes on. When I was paid higher it was for the same reasons. Some women stay home to take care of children but during that period have studied. My flight instructor was paid more than her equal because her full devotion to continued study and utmost devotion to the job. She is now a captain in Air NZ and her equal is ...wait for it still an instructor. If you want to winge make sure you have the same suudies, same drive, taken the same opportunites, same perfomance reviews,same experience, same attitude, same productivity and the ezact same job as your male equal and then instead of percentages from the sky which we can all massage in our favour be proactive and positive and investigate you seemingly unfounded views. Why does it seem this way - attitudes towards assuming the male inability to raise children properly, choice to do so rather then "compete in a males world" (Mot my bosses) the list goes on. NZ is smaller with fewer Senior positions with a flatter management structure than other countries. Tough luck to the Female and Male candidates. Get over it and get out there and go hard and compete with your equals employed in the same job and the same prerequisites and same drive and attitude and appraisals and if you don't get the same pay then fight for it or leave. If there is substance to the "statistics" then all the males will be left foundering. Bugger.

21 Jul 2011 10:16a.m.

don wrote:

"There's an emerging body of evidence that links the presence of women on company boards and corporate performance, including profitability, so that's why it matters to New Zealand," says Pamela Cohen. oh yeah? that implies that women are generally more competent than men. I'd like to see that body of evidence! lets have a few brown-skinned paraplegics appointed to boards while we are about it, if we are going to go that far down the discrimination path.

21 Jul 2011 03:43a.m.

Ryan wrote:

Push for a law change based on what? A 2% variation? Are they going to pursue a law change that would activively discriminate against men? What about in companies where the majority of the workforce are males (e.g Engineering). Board members are not just chosen on the basis of finacial expertise but industry expertise as well. Furthermore, there are time issues. Discriminatory polices that existed 30 or 40 years ago (and may no longer exist now), are still going to have influenced who the current senior members of a company are. While there is likely discriminatory practices still going on - these companies should be targetted, rather than broad-reaching law changes that may be unnecessary and themselves disciminatory. If you ever want to achieve true workplace equality, then insisting the women be elected to boards based soley on their gender is that last thing you should be doing.