No ma'am's land at the top

Mai Chen is part of NZ Global Women, a networking group aimed at mentoring women to enable them to get ahead. Photo / Greg Bowker

If you are a young woman climbing the career ladder unencumbered by gender barriers, prepare for a shock as you advance further.

The struggle for women to take their places as decision-makers at board level continues and it is a losing one at the moment, according to international researchers. Next time you apply for a job, check the number of women on the company's board. It will tell you something about the senior management's true attitudes toward gender equality.

While women make up 46.8 per cent of the New Zealand workforce, a mere 8.7 per cent are on the boards of New Zealand's NZSE 100 companies. Despite the fact that there are many senior women eager to take up directorships - 122 women directors on the Institute of Directors database - and 2800 on the Ministry of Women's Affairs Nominations Service, to name a few - they are rarely getting the opportunity to use their experience.

The reality is that the progress of women to leadership and governance roles has stalled during the world recession and this is being replicated in Britain, the United States, NZ and Australia. While in some countries - like Iceland - the recession has led to a complete rethink about the way boards are structured and women now have an equal share of the directorships, in most countries the opposite has happened. Women have lost out.

And this is being done in the face of a growing body of international evidence which shows that the presence of women on boards does make a difference. A recent French study showed that in France's top 40 companies, the more women in management, the less the share price fell in 2008.

According to the Critical Mass Project in the US, research among Fortune 1000 companies found women specifically bring three things to a board: they broaden discussion beyond short-term financials to take in a wider set of stakeholders; they ask the tough questions and raise difficult issues more than men; and they are more collaborative in their leadership.

In New Zealand, a number of initiatives are under way to help women progress in greater numbers to the top. NZ Global Women, an elite networking group which includes former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and public lawyer Mai Chen, is following through on its promise to do peer mentoring. The Ministry of Women's Affairs, Business NZ and the Institute of Directors have produced a publication, Women on Boards, saying that boards with women are more successful.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Commission and the EEO Trust recently hosted the visit of leadership expert Susan Vinnicombe, professor of organisational behaviour and diversity management at Britain's Cranfield University.

Professor Vinnicombe's visit was timed to coincide with the launch of A Place at the Table, a new initiative run at the University of Auckland Business School, where 50 private and public sector directors and leaders, including Genesis director Brian Corban, KiwiRail deputy chair Paula Rebstock and TelstraClear head Allan Freeth, will work on strategies to boost diversity in New Zealand's boardrooms, in particular that of women.

The ideas mooted included target-setting for board diversity and regular reporting on gender balance, men championing gender diversity and chairpersons using their influence to create change.

The UK, where women represent 12 per cent of directors on the boards of FTSE 100 companies, is further advanced than New Zealand. Professor Vinnicombe is pushing for this to increase to 20 per cent in the UK by 2012, which would mean another 100 directorships.

The academic points to other international examples such as Norway, where all boards must have a 40 per cent minimum quota of women board members. Women now represent 42 per cent of boards.

"If Norway can find 1000 new women directors out of 4.5 million, I think 100 more women directors out of a population of 61 million should be possible," says the director of the International Centre for Women Leaders.

Britain's institutions have been guilty of stopping women's progress as a reaction to the recession, says Professor Vinnicombe, and she expects there to be fewer women on boards this year rather than more. Some British companies have reacted to the downturn by going back to a "very old-style, very controlling, centralising, very-against-change [mindset], which is exactly the opposite of what you need," she says.

Anecdotally, Professor Vinnicombe has found that a number of senior women in the UK finance sector have left their jobs because the atmosphere in these organisations has become so repressive. "Women have said: 'This is the last straw, I'm going'."

The reshuffle of boards in the banking sector has not happened in the UK as she had hoped. And entry barriers have been raised. "They've tightened the grip and they are now saying women must have CEO experience."

After last year's Female FTSE Report 2008, Professor Vinnicombe pushed for some real change. She called for advertising private-sector directorships; 30 per cent female long-lists; companies setting gender targets; and search consultants making more effort to build relationships with female director talent.

The mother of two daughters in their 20s says many young women don't feel there are issues of discrimination against women where they work, because they're at entry levels where there are a lot of women, but this changes the closer they get to the top.

It is common for the male boards to say women simply don't have the experience and skills for board positions.

"I think we've proved with our research that's just not true," said Professor Vinnicombe.

"Actually, if you look at the human capital of these potential women directors, more of them are international and they've got more multiple-sector experience than men."

Some argue that women aren't interested in board positions. "We did a survey last summer with 2000 women who sit on executive committees in some of the top 300 British companies and 80 per cent said they would like a non-executive directorship.

"I do not understand why time after time these women are overlooked. This is a myth about there not being women in the pipeline."

In the UK many women have been funnelled off into not-for-profits and public sector directorships, but they are made to feel as if this experience is not transferable to the private sector.

On her trip to New Zealand, Professor Vinnicombe said: "I do not think that NZ and Australia would go for quotas." The whole issue of gender inequality is very embedded, she says. And if quotas were made mandatory, they would be thought of as outrageous in New Zealand.

"I think the key is to mobilise chairmen and search consultants. The aim should be to draw up a long list of candidates for each non-executive directorship which includes 30 per cent women. At least then women would be assured of a look-in."

In the wake of Professor Vinnicombe's visit, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor has called for New Zealand companies and search consultants to put women on long-lists and short-lists for directorship roles.

The commissioner also argued for boards to advertise their vacancies before making appointments. "What we would like is transparent advertising of all public and private board appointments."

In the UK, all FTSE 100 companies have had to use approved search consultants to help them draw up lists for directorships since 2003.

Search consultants in New Zealand have to lift their game, says Dr McGregor.

They seem to absorb "by osmosis" the narrow briefs made by conservative boards, she says.

Dr McGregor says that the reason men tend to choose other men for boards in New Zealand is because of the social networks they move in which makes choosing another man a "risk-averse" option.

She asks where the women are on the boards of well-known New Zealand companies like PGG Wrightson and Fisher & Paykel Appliances. Others, like Pumpkin Patch chairman Greg Muir, have spoken publicly about the benefits of women directors, she says. Pumpkin Patch has three women on its board of six.