Flexibility within the workplace is becoming essential for workers and professional and corporate women want employment that offers flexible hours, locations and options of job sharing.
The women are rejecting businesses that won't take flexibility seriously at a time when employers are struggling to find and retain top staff.
Long hours and high pressure work were the norm in Galia Barhava-Monteith's former life in senior management and consulting roles.
"I wanted to get it all in a way...I was pulled in so many different directions that I was not doing any of them very well," she says.
Barhava-Monteith was seeking flexibility so she took her skills out of the corporate pool and created Professionelle - an information and networking space for women. The website is about balancing life and work.
"It came from my realisation that a lot of us share the same struggles but not necessarily share them with one another."
As Professionelle turns one, it's clear Barhava-Monteith wasn't alone.
Barrister Tanya Thompson left a large law firm and six months ago set up her own practice from home.
"It's really really hard to get to the top, to make partner when you're part time in a full time environment, so no matter how flexible they are it's an environment that's geared towards people succeeding in full time jobs," Thompson says.
The women believe workplaces need to adapt to our changing lives.
"We're talking about women in their 30s who have proven themselves, who are hard workers, those companies who realise that make it work for them," says Barhava-Monteith.
Thompson says the flexibility works really well for her.
"The opportunity to shape my own role and my own future is fantastic," she says.
Barhava-Monteith says businesses will change because there is a talent shortage.
But there is still a lockout of women from the power positions. Of the top 100 companies on the stock exchange there are just 54 with female directors and 91% of the directors are men.
"I think it's fair to say that because men shape the organisation, they find it more difficult to understand women's experience, particularly women who are the primary caregivers of young children," Thompson says.
Businesses are now being forced to face the fact that it's hard to keep good women. On July 1 flexible working arrangements will come into force which will allow some employees to request a variation to their hours of work, days of work, or place of work.
The BNZ has been offering flexibility for some time.
"The workplace is changing so much and it's changing so quickly and we need to be ahead of the game," spokeswoman Bridget O'Shannessey says.
The trust it places in its employees works and O'Shannessey says if the big organisations don't lead, it is very hard for the small organisations.
Barhava-Monteith says it definitely works for her.
"I love it, so I'm happy, I think I have a balance, my kids are happy, my husband is definitely happy...but there is no right answer," she says.
And she hopes the forward thinking that is working for her will spread throughout the business community, giving other women a chance.
