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A sexist and historic relic that should be scrapped - that was the jist of the call in parliament late last year about the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
Makes sense, right? I mean, we were the first in the world to give women the vote, we've had a female Governor General, Chief Justice, we've had women running the country.
Why would we still need a dedicated Ministry to advocate on their behalf? The playing field is level now, the glass ceiling has been smashed to smithereens. Right?
Erm, no.
A number of inequalities still exist, to my mind. For a start I was astonished to read in the Washington Post recently that April 12 was "equal pay day" - that is, women had to work more than three months into 2011 to earn what men earned in 2010.
If you extrapolate that out over a 40-year working life, women have to work for an extra 11 years in order to earn the same as their male counterparts, a figure which made my jaw drop.
Mariko Chang's article also goes on to debunk a number of the myths as to why this gap exists and is well worth a read. However, I digress.
Here, I just want to focus on one issue, raised by the Minister of Women's Affairs Hekia Parata this week on AMP Business - and that is our dismal record of appointing women to the boards of our top companies.
Just 9% of the directors of our top 100 companies are female. More than half of those top 100 companies have no women on their boards at all.
But if you look just across the Tasman that is changing and rapidly. At the beginning of this year the Australian Stock Exchange introduced measures that require companies to report on their gender balance, set targets and then disclose what they're doing to achieve them.
No doubt a number of other measures back this up, but it's having an impact already - a 600% increase in the number of women on the boards of Australian listed companies. Since the changes were implemented, 27% of appointments have been women, up from around 5% previously.
Other countries, like Norway, Iceland, Spain have set quotas - an option not favoured by the Minister. Hekia Parata would rather see leadership on the issue. "Leadership does mean our institutions such as the New Zealand Stock Exchange, such as the New Zealand Institute of Directors....that leadership hasn't been apparent in New Zealand yet," she told me on AMP Business.
The NZX in the past hasn't favoured following the ASX's lead, but given the Minister's recent visit to Australia to find out more about its progress, I took the opportunity to bring the issue up again with Fiona MacKenzie, the NZX's head of markets and strategy.
Why don't we follow their lead? "Rules by themselves don't always result in the best success," she told me.
Essentially, she is arguing the conditions need to be right for such rules to work and the right systems need to be put in place to ensure there are women who are sufficiently qualified to reach a company's upper echelons.
MacKenzie says the NZX itself voluntarily reports on its board diversity, which is thoroughly commendable. But I see no reason why we shouldn't make it mandatory for all listed companies.
I spoke late last year to a high flying ex-pat businesswoman Denise Aldous about the (at that stage) impending changes in Australia. While she was reluctant to come out all guns blazing in favour of regulation, she made a very valid point: "What gets measured, gets done."
I'm not aruging that there is a silver bullet, there seldom is. But I believe the "what gets measured, gets done" mantra holds water. Companies work on measuring things - inputs, margins, production, profit.
Put in place the guidelines, I say. It might just be the first step, but that's how all journeys start.
From a personal point of view, since starting this job I can't count the number of times I've been told how nice it is to see a woman fronting a business programme, footing it in a man's domain. Because it absolutely still is.
As "nice" as that is to hear, I look forward to the day when that fact is not unusual and perhaps not worth commenting on at all.
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Add a Comment:
Post new commentnztifosi said on 2011-06-03 @ 17:26 NZDT: Report abusive post
Just when my family was making headway financially the government chose to cut tax and put GST up. At the same time funding to the school I work at was cut resulting in an hours cut for me. Result? We are now worse off than ever before! And now we are supposed to spend, save, donate to Canterbury and every other charity as if the current situation were the working man's fault. It is the speculaters and the financiers along with the government who got us into this mess! -now they can get us out!
deltics said on 2011-05-19 @ 12:38 NZDT: Report abusive post
Saving isn't what NZ needs right now, it needs to pay off it's debt AND increase spending. Money paid into KiwiSaver doesn't reduce our current debts and doesn't circulate around or stimulate the economy! So it actually makes a lot of sense for the government to reduce the incentives to pay into KiwiSaver whilst emphasising the need to be more prudent in our spending (paying down debt) without closing our purse strings too tightly in the process.
ceejaygee said on 2011-05-15 @ 12:33 NZDT: Report abusive post
i currently pay 4% into kiwi saver i would like to pay 6% unfortunately there is no provision for that hopefully the govt have thought about that. as to the tax credit cut not a clever idea, maybe they could make it totally tax free then we could really save for our retirement then they could cut the tax credit altogether
Danthetaxpayer said on 2011-05-14 @ 19:10 NZDT: Report abusive post
I would also like to ask how is it retirement savings are even a priority when we fail so badly as a country to take care of our children? Children who are meant to be our future taxpayers helping to fund future NZ Super? Children who are often neglected, illiterate & who struggle to get the medical assistance they need due to health care shortages and whose families often have to fundraise? Why are these things not a priority?
Danthetaxpayer said on 2011-05-14 @ 19:07 NZDT: Report abusive post
I'm confused: how is it saving when most of the 1.67 odd million people with Kiwisaver are probably receiving some kind of government assistance. Assistance is for hardship and to meet basic needs - food, clothing, shelter only. If they have enough spare to put into Kiwisaver which then gets matched by more taxpayer funds earned by the hard work of others, then isn't this the horse before the cart? Further, how can it truly be savings when we are borrowing $300 million each week?