Bitch – How stereotypes can inhibit women's aspirations of leadership

 Stats to find:

Population: 51% women

Percentage of NZ labor force: 47%

Percentage of women in  BUSINESS leadership roles:

ONLY 5% OF NZ BUSINESSES ARE LIKELY TO HAVE A FEMALE CEO

Globally fewer than 1 in 10 businesses is likely to be lead by a woman

Company Directors: 14.75% female

Chief Executives: 24.1% female

Percentage of women in parliament: 32% (June 2012)

Cabinet: 30%

Select Committee Chairs: 23.52%

Women hold 39% of list seats and 27% of electoral seats.

Only 20 percent of political leaders in the world are women.

Percentage of women in NZ who hold executive office positions:

Women hold 5.04 percent of board directorships in companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) 
Twenty- five (28.09 percent) of New Zealand’s publicly listed companies on the NZX contained at least one women director. Sixty-four (71.91 percent) of the eighty-nine publicly listed companies did not contain any women director. 
Women hold 35.07 percent of board directorships in New Zealand Crown Companies

Average percentage of women on boards of the top 100 companies : 

14.75% (2012) (At the rate of progress for women in corporate governance over the past decade, it will be another 35 years before boardroom equality is achieved. )

 Percentage of women national executives of trade unions: Just over 39%

Percentage of women in sports governance: 30%

 School Boards of Trustees at at December 2011:

52% female but 39% of chairpersons

 Percentage of women who study at tertiary level:

Women comprise of 64% of the country’s university graduates. 

Percentage of women who earn medical degrees:

Percentage of women who earn business degrees:

Percentage of women who earn management degrees:

Percentage of women who study at post-grad and masters level:

Average percentage of women professors: 

18.73%  percent of senior academic positions in New Zealand’s eight Universities (excluding emeritus professors).

Percentage of women who earn law degrees:

30% of judges are women
Less than 25% of senior academic staff are women
Less than 20% of top legal partnerships
Women have been gaining professional legal qualifications in at least equal numbers to men over the past ten years.

Percentage of women practicing law:  

41% of lawyers are female, but only comprise 24% of principals. 

“Principals” are lawyers who are qualified to practice on their own account – and therefore to be partners or directors.

Percentage of women in leadership roles in legal firms: 

15.26 % of legal partnerships in New Zealand legal firms (with ten or more partners)

Percentage of women engineers : 13% with 7% of Chartered Professional Engineers being female 

 Percentage of female doctors: general practice (44%),  

Only 8% of doctors working in surgical specialties are female. 

44% of district health boards are female

Percentage of women who want to be leaders:

Age :

5-10

10-20

20-30

30-40

40-50

50-60

Fully one-third of girls who do not want to be leaders attribute their lack of motivation
to fear of being laughed at, making people mad at them, coming across as bossy, or not being liked by people.


When analyzing the effects of age, a striking trend appears: as girls get older, they are less likely to engage in some forms of leadership.

40% of girls report having been discouraged or put down, usually by peers and classmates, when they were trying to lead.

56% of youth believe that “in our society, it is more difficult for a woman to become a leader than for a man.”

50% of girls believe that “girls have to work harder than boys in order to gain positions of leadership,”

These stereotypes can inhibit girls’ aspirations for leadership because girls are sent the message that it is inappropriate for them to behave outside the narrow range of “accepted” female qualities/roles.

Number of women prime ministers so far:

Wage gap:

Mean gender pay gap at 14.9%, median gap at 9.64% in the labour market. (June 2011)

22 Government departments have gender pay gaps bigger than the average pay gap in the labor market.

In media and public relations men earn between $15‐17,000 more a year after the first four years in public relations. Early in their career men earn about $8,000 more than women. The biggest variance in salaries according to the survey is where women are paid almost $40,000 less than men in consultancy roles. In teaching and academic roles women are paid $8,500 less and in in‐house roles in the private and public sector women are paid on average $10,000 less. Only in in‐house public sector (local government and DHB) roles are women paid more, and then by only $1500.

Two departments have a gender pay gap in favour of women, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Serious Fraud Office. 
The remaining 30 departments have gender pay gaps in favour of men, ranging from 2.77% at the Department of Corrections to 42% at the Ministry of Defence. 
Interestingly both these departments have a majority of male staff, with 43% women staff and 31% women staff respectively.

Volunteers and Community Organisations:

60% of organisations, women hold more than 50% of governance roles. 
Leadership teams in the organisations surveyed were also predominantly comprised of women (more than 80% of the leadership teams included 50% or more women). 

More than 60% of these had between 75-100% women on their leadership team.

(An exploration of the factors that contribute to women seeking and remaining in these positions could shed light on the strategies that could be adopted by the private and public sectors to recruit and retain increasing numbers of women leaders. In addition, information about the career paths taken by women leaders in the sector would be valuable for policy related to both education and training and for strengthening communities.)