Global Women CEO Agnes Naera. "I grew up in the shadow of my maunga confident of my value." Photo / Brett Phibbs
Joanna Wane talks to Global Women's Agnes Naera and Theresa Gattung about #BreakTheBias, a worldwide campaign launched this week on International Women's Day.
Former Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung didn't get where she is today by being a shrinking violet. One of the first women to breach the corporate walls and make for the penthouse, she describes her style as having "bulldozer forward momentum".
That refusal to take no for an answer is one of the reasons she was brought on board last year to chair Global Women, a collective of high-powered business leaders using their influence to lay down new career pathways that are both gender-inclusive and more diverse. But her first official meeting with CEO Agnes Naera (Ngāpuhi) did not go well.
"I was so full of ideas, I just talked at Agnes," says Gattung, who founded the New Zealand arm of international women-only funding platform SheEO and funds a Chair of Women in Entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland.
"Afterwards, I knew I'd made a mistake and rang a good friend to tell her what had happened, looking for a bit of sympathy. She's very direct and said, 'Theresa, it might be quite good to consider you approached that meeting like a white businessman.' And she was right. So I rang Agnes to apologise and we started again."
Since then, they're formed a close working relationship that plays to their strengths. Naera spent 15 years in the education sector before taking on her role at Global Women and is collaborating with Gattung to broaden the organisation beyond its traditional base. "Too white, too corporate, too Auckland/Wellington-centric," says Gattung, aware she might as well be talking about herself.
On Tuesday, a global #BreakTheBias campaign was launched for International Women's Day to promote a more gender-equal society. Canvas talked to Naera and Gattung about how much – or how little — has changed.
Canvas: How have you experienced discrimination or been treated differently in the business world because you are women?
Gattung: I'm not aware of any gender bias around me now, but it was different in the 80s and 90s. One of the bosses where I worked called every woman in the company "the bride".
Canvas: Cringe! Did you ever get asked to take notes in a meeting? That's a classic one.
Gattung: Never. Why was that? I did have two degrees and I had staff of my own from almost my first year of working.
Naera: That's interesting what Theresa says about having a degree. I have an MBA but I don't tend to wave that about, because it doesn't seem to make any difference if they put Māori first, women second and [qualifications] third.
I remember being a guest at a formal function about 10 years ago — I won't name the club — and I happened to have on a white top and black bottom. A number of people assumed I was wait staff and asked if I'd get them a gin. I pointed them in the direction of the bar.
Canvas: Did you ask them to bring one back for you too?
Naera: I did! The man just looked at me as if I was a lippy service person. More recently, I was in a conversation with an organisation about doing some partnering work with Māori and they used the word assimilation. Here we are in 2022 and that language is still being used.
Gattung: I'm … a polite word would be statuesque. I've got a strong personality and I'm an extrovert. If you look at the qualities of how we've traditionally seen male leaders — tall, white, extroverted, commanding the room — they're all natural to my personality. So I've never had imposter syndrome, because that style, which the world has rewarded with leadership not just in business but politics as well, is my natural personality.
But I'm also in many ways tender and quite kind-hearted and sensitive. You couldn't display any of that. I still remember speaking at a Top 100 leaders' session two days after my partner of 22 years and I separated, and my then head of corporate affairs, who was a good friend, saying "I can see you're really upset but you just have to park that." And so I did. But I wouldn't park it now. At a minimum, I'd acknowledge something major was going on for me.
Things have shifted; you can bring your whole self to work now. But that wasn't acceptable in business then. Antonia Watson talking about menopause as the CEO of ANZ — I would never have dreamt of doing that.
Naera: I was fortunate to grow up in two worlds and that was not everyone's experience as a Māori. We lived in Auckland, where I had access to education and health and all the things we should. But we went home every holiday to my grandparents in the Hokianga, where I saw wāhine and tāne — women and men — not as different but as essential parts of the collective.
The only way on to a marae is through a wāhine's voice. The only way off a marae is through a wāhine's voice. Although there were gender specific roles, they were in balance, and I grew up in the shadow of my maunga, confident of my value.
However my adult experience was very different, as a wāhine living and working in Auckland, where I was seen as Māori first. People would say, "What a great achievement for a Māori woman! You must be one of those Māori." I was never really sure what that meant.
Canvas: When International Women's Day was first held in Europe in 1911, its focus was on the right to vote and the right to work. What do you see as the key issues today?
Naera: The gender pay gap is still top of mind. Equivalent pay for equivalent work and leadership roles for Māori.
Canvas: Still politics and pay cheques, then.
Gattung: In 1911, women in New Zealand had the vote but they didn't have the power to make decisions. It wasn't until 1919 that they could stand for Parliament. After that, it was the rights of married women to own property in their own name, and then to keep custody of their kids.
Naera: Of course, traditionally Māori women always did. They were warriors and landowners and could speak in their own right. Some of my kui don't accept that we're in any better place, because we're just back to where we've always been. When European settlement and Christianity brought gender bias into Māori communities, all that was taken away from us.
Gattung: When Māori women married white settlers, as some did, they lost the rights to their land. They understood what it felt like to be disenfranchised. In New Zealand, the vote was given to Māori and Pākehā women on the same day. That didn't happen in other places in the world, where it took indigenous women a lot longer.
Canvas: What's the experience for a younger generation of women entering the workforce now?
Gattung: The world of work has changed. Look at last year's Y25 list [a YWCA programme celebrating rising young female trailblazers] and no one works for a boss. They're all self-employed. They've grown up in a world where you can create a global company from your bedroom.
Naera: Many young Māori wāhine, they're just fearless, partly because the road has been paved for them by people like Dame Whina [Cooper]and Mira Szaszy. They have these strong role models out the front.
Canvas: Do you think attitudes are genuinely changing or is discrimination against women more subtle now and perhaps driven underground?
Gattung: The gender bias in the world I'm now very involved in is obvious. When it's an entrepreneur looking for capital, it's not covert. It's overt. Women founders access only a fraction of the available capital for investment. There aren't enough women VC [venture capital] partners in firms. Only 20 per cent of angel investment goes to women.
Canvas: What's the reason for that?
Gattung: It's changing with success stories like Sharesies and Ethique but it's that comfort factor: you invest in people who look like you, who you can identify with. The University of Auckland did research around this last year. Women don't tend to have the same networks and don't feel comfortable going for outside capital, so they tend to be risk-averse. They take on less debt so their business doesn't grow as fast or look as sexy, and then they don't get the next round of capital. Some of those factors women can do something about but also they're not yet an equal partner in the ecosystem.
Lots of government money goes to businesses through MFAT and MBIE, but there's no gender lens across it. To shift the dial in a major way, the government could do a stocktake of what's already been committed and say 40 per cent of it has to go to women founders. That would make a huge difference and it wouldn't take any more money than what is currently being spent.
Naera: There has to be a new way of working. What got us here isn't going to get us where we need to go next. And as the balance of power shifts, we need to look closely at the loss and grievance of those who've been in those dominant roles and walk them through it somehow, because they're going to have to find a new place.
Gattung: There have been some powerful essays written about the idea that we're still not allowed to speak about what's considered men's business. Women can raise their voice in support of other women, and advocate for them. In our world, we're not punished or ostracised for that. But as soon as women start to look like they want to be the boss of men, as the prime minister or the CEO of a company …
Canvas: Or a rugby referee…
Gattung: ... the s*** hits the fan. Then you are silenced or misogyny comes out in the form of some of what was directed at Helen Clark or now at Jacinda Ardern and what I get occasionally, although not nearly in such a bad way. Women being in charge seems to trigger something in some men that causes a reaction.
Things can change really fast in the world. We've seen that in the past few years with the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States. Women need to not be complacent or take what we've got for granted but stand in our power and call it out if we think things are backsliding, and keep electing governments that continue to make progress. If women don't use their voice and money to support other women, no one else will.