Overview of 2004 New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation in Governance and Professional life

New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation in Governance and Professional life

Human Rights Commission

Massey University

New Zealand centre for Women and Leadership

2004

http://www.neon.org.nz/documents/womensCensus/HRC-Womens-Census2004.pdf

The purpose of the Census is to bring to the attention of many women in the areas addressed, the need for their skills and experience to be represented at senior levels of governance and professional life in public and private enterprise.

The results of a census of women board directors for the top 100 organisations in the NZX index and the 12 organisations in the NZAX index, it also includes figures form 35 NZ crown companies. (Women in leadership and decision-making positions in private and crown companies, business, law, politics, and the top rungs of academic life.)

Findings reveal a chronic underutilisation of women’s skills and talents in governance as members of boards of top companies in the private corporate sector. Crown companies by comparison have almost seven times the proportion of female directors.

New Zealand and international media have focused on the perceived predominance of women across some of the country’s key leadership positions during recent years. This type of commentary has been welcomed by many as proof that our nation is paying more than lip service to issues of gender equity in the workforce.

Evidence clearly suggests that diversity and gender balance can have a positive effect on the performance of the board and management, and consequently the business as a whole.
Women represent 47% of NZ labor force, yet remain significantly under-represented in leadership positions and over-represented in lower-paid jobs.

(This Census does not at this stage identify specifically the position of Mäori women in relation to their progress at senior levels of governance and management in private and public sectors. It does, however, provide us with some factual material against which Mäori women can regularly measure their progress in comparison with that of other women. It can also be a spur to encourage them further in their efforts to achieve an improved way of life for their families. )
Professor Judith Kinnear is NZs first female Vice-Chancellor (Massey University)
We can be proud of the women lawyers who hold the positions of Governor General, Chief Justice and Attorney General, but women lawyers have yet to hold, in significant numbers, positions of leadership and influence in the profession.

Women have been gaining professional legal qualifications in at least equal numbers to men over the past ten years.
Of those lawyers who have been in practice for 16 to 20 years nearly 30% overall are women.
In comparison, women now make up 14% of partners in the twenty two largest law firms; 10% of Queens Counsel; 23% of District Court Judges and 16% of High Court Judges.
In 2001, 60.4 percent of law graduates were women, yet women only represented 37 percent of employed barristers and solicitors.

There is one woman permanent member of the Court of Appeal of seven members (excluding the Chief Justice) and the Chief Justice is the only woman of 5 Judges appointed to the new Supreme Court.
In its Action Plan for New Zealand Women, the New Zealand Government set a target of 50% female representation on government boards by the year 2010. (Its now 2015 and….)
Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, as a follow up to the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, promised to improve the proportion of women on statutory boards (Crown Companies) to 50 percent by 2000. This target was not reached.

Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) was introduced in 1996 and increased the proportion of women in New Zealand’s Parliament by 10 percent (CEDAW, 2003).
The visibility of successive female Prime Ministers has also lead to the perception that women have made significant gains not only in political representation, but in other areas of society as well.
The participation of women in governance and professional life in New Zealand is significant internationally.

New Zealand ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1985.
The Convention’s obligations are considered implemented through a number of existing statutes such as the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, Human Rights Act 1993, Domestic Violence Act 1995, and the Employment Relations Act 2000.

• The under-representation of women in public life, particularly with respect to chief executives in the public sector and on Crown Company Boards

• The inequality which persists within the private sector where equal opportunities are only taken up reluctantly

• The number of women in Parliament and in local government

• The number of women among university teachers in higher posts.

These figures are derived from 89 companies with a total of 29 female and 546 male board directors.
(36.5 percent) from a total of 52 MPs. The largest opposition party in New Zealand, National, by contrast has 6 women (22.2 percent) from a total of 27 MPs. The ACT Party and the Green Party each have 4 women MPs (44.4 percent). New Zealand First with one woman MP (7.7 percent) from a total of thirteen MPs (excluding Jim Anderton’s Progressive Coalitions 2 male MPs) is the least representative party in Parliament by gender.

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Nb. Sustainability is linked to the increase of women’s participation in leadership and decision-making in the economic sector.

Women hold 5.04 percent of board directorships in companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX)

Four companies had two women board directors: Telecom Ltd, Independent News Ltd, Lyttelton Port Company Ltd, and Wrightson Ltd. None of the 89 companies had more than two women directors.
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 as reviewed by the Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit. Only two of the Crown Companies did not have women directors. In each of these cases the Crown representation is limited to two directors. These figures are derived from 35 Crown Companies with a total of 74 female and 137 male directors.

(The Crown Entity, the Public Trust, had the greatest number and proportion of women on its board with five of the eight directors (62.5 percent). The Crown Research Institute, New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research Limited (57.1 percent) and the Crown Owned Company, Radio New Zealand Ltd (57.1 percent) each had four women board directors from a total of seven board members. )

Women hold 16.39 percent of board directorships in publicly listed companies on New Zealand’s Alternative Stock Exchange (NZAX)

These figures are derived from 12 companies with a total of 10 female and 51 male board directors. Two of the twelve companies had two women board directors: Oyster Bay Marlborough Vineyards and RetailX. Four of the twelve (33.3 percent) publicly listed companies on the NZAX did not contain women directors. RetailX was the only company from either the NZX or the NZAX to have proportionately (66.6 percent) greater numbers of women directors than men.

Women hold 14.12 percent of legal partnerships in New Zealand legal firms with ten or more partners as collated by the Women’s Consultative Group of the New Zealand Law Society.
These figures are derived from 22 legal firms with a total of 77 females out of 545 male partners. Simpson Grierson with 11 women partners (26.8 percent) have the greatest numbers of women partners. AWS Legal with three women partners (27.3 percent) has proportionately the greatest number of women partners.

(Two caveats apply to these results. First, as revealed by the New Zealand Law Society’s Annual Report 2003 the majority of members, male and female, work in firms with five or less partners. Second, there was no verification process to ensure that the figures collated by the WCG were correct. The 2003 Annual Report shows, however, that more women than men continue to be admitted to the New Zealand Law Society with 464 females compared to 316 males. )
Women hold 15.82 percent of senior academic positions in New Zealand’s eight Universities (excluding emeritus professors).

Canterbury University has the lowest percentage of women Professors and Associate Professors with 3.33 percent and 5.47 percent respectively. Only six women hold any of these 133 senior positions. The South Island universities, in general, trail in comparison with the North Island Universities. Auckland University for example have 77 women (19.59 percent) in senior academic positions from a total of 393 available positions.


There are 35 women (29.16 percent) from a total of 120 Members of Parliament (MPs). The majority party in Government, Labour, has 19 women

International comparisons are generally limited to proportions of women as directors in publicly listed companies. Given that the United States is used as a benchmark for women’s participation in business, the 2003 Catalyst Census of Women Board Directors in Fortune 500 companies shows that 13.6 percent of directorships were held by women, up from 12.4 percent in 2001 and 9.6 percent in 1995 (Catalyst, 2003). A Catalyst study of Fortune 1000 companies showed that women held 10.9 percent of directorships and 74 percent of the companies have at least one woman director (Catalyst, 2001a). The point to be noted here is that any enlargement of the sample appears to reduce the percentage of women directors.

Comparisons in New Zealand are provided by Shilton, McGregor & Tremaine (1996) who in a study of the top 40 New Zealand companies found that women represented 3.86 percent of board directors in 1995. The figure of 5.04 percent represents an increase of 1.18 percent over eight years to 2003. Similar to the present results, 71 percent of New Zealand companies had no female representation on their boards.

As described by McGregor (2004) women’s power in New Zealand currently achieves high visibility because women have occupied high profile positions such as Prime Minister, Chief Justice and Governor General. New Zealand has its first elected female Prime Minister Helen Clark (who followed the first female Prime Minister Jenny Shipley), a female Attorney General Margaret Wilson, a female Chief Justice Sian Elias and a female Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright. The high profile of a select group masks women’s overall participation in senior positions throughout the rest of New Zealand.

New Zealand ranks 17th among 182 member nations regarding proportions of women elected to parliament according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.