Several big names in the corporate world and public sector didn’t partake in the exercise at all.
Port of Auckland chief executive and Champions for Change co-chair Roger Gray acknowledged the port was slowly making progress, improving female representation at its top tiers.
He said that in the past, employees had to work their way up the hierarchy, starting with very physically demanding roles.
Now, they can join the port doing more skilled jobs, creating a dynamic that’s more accommodating for women.
“That sort of change is an acknowledgement from the unions and from our organisation that we’ve got to allow people to enter at the right level with the right skills, rather than the traditional hierarchy of starting at the bottom and working their way up,” Gray said.
“The next step is that we have to break our upstairs/downstairs mentality within our organisation and allow people to say it’s okay to remain part of the union whilst being a manager.”
Gray acknowledged some sectors found it harder than others to achieve a balanced gender mix.
However, he talked up the benefit of a more diverse organisation.
“Women are much better operators of heavy equipment – they’re less hard on the equipment,” he said.
The other Champions for Change co-chair, ANZ chief executive Antonia Watson, said research suggested “the more diversity of thought you have in your organisation, and the more you look like your customer base, the better outcomes you get”.
Asked how organisations should balance meeting numerical targets aimed at achieving fair gender representation, without making someone feel like they’re only hired because of their gender, Watson said: “It’s in no organisation’s interest to hire someone as a diversity hire just because – because they tick a box.
“Go back to the reason we think diversity is the right thing to do – reflecting your customer base and making better decisions.
“If you have two people who are equally technically qualified, but one of them brings more diversity of thought to the group they’re in, that is a real skill that’s at the table. That may be wāhine Māori, that may be an old white guy, depending on the group in question and what you want that group to achieve for your customer base.”
Coming back to the data, of the 37 organisations that reported the gender mixes of their boards to Champions for Change, 70% achieved “balance” – defined as 40% women, 40% men, 20% room for natural year-to-year fluctuations and gender-diverse people.
As for executive leadership, only 49% of organisations that provided data were deemed balanced, while at the management level, this portion hit 58%.
While women are better represented now than they were in the past, Watson said there was room for improvement, especially at the executive level.
“You can’t rest on your laurels,” she said.
“There’s enough unconscious bias out there that you have to be quite laser-focused on it over time.”
Watson also made the point that having more women in leadership required being aware of the skills women have, even if these don’t meet old stereotypes of what being a leader looks like.
Put to Watson and Gray that organisations wouldn’t want to make men feel unwelcome in the workplace, Watson responded: “That is nowhere near happening.”
“Not at all,” Gray added.
The other organisations that broke down their gender mixes and reported them to Champions for Change included: ASB, Auckland Council, Bay of Plenty Regional Council, Chorus, Contact Energy, Deloitte, FCB Aotearoa, Fletcher Building, Gensis Energy, KiwiRail, KPMG, Meridian Energy, MinterEllisonRuddWatts, New Zealand Rugby, NZIER, NZX, One NZ, Powerco, Publicis Groupe, Russell McVeagh, SkyCity, Transpower and Whakaata Māori.
Jenée Tibshraeny is the Herald’s Wellington business editor, based in the parliamentary press gallery. She specialises in government and Reserve Bank policymaking, economics and banking.
