Grappling with gender balance

Two-thirds of graduate degrees went to women in 2008, according to Ministry figures. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Eliza Prestidge-Oldfield, 22, is a graduate from the University of Auckland with an arts/law degree (BA/LLB) and is about to begin her first law clerk's job at Auckland law firm Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.

She has ambitious plans. She has joined the environment team at Minter and after a few years she wants to go to the United States and do a Masters in International Law.

Law is increasingly popular among women as a career choice.

According to an Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Trust report, from 1991 to 2006 there has been a huge gender shift on the legal profession - the proportion of women in it growing from 24 per cent in 1991 to 42 per cent in 2006. In 2008, 58 per cent of bachelors graduates were female, says the Education Ministry.

Prestidge-Oldfield remembers her law classes being fairly equally split between males and females. She thinks law is one of the better disciplines for women - there are quite a few options for their careers in the bigger firms, she says.

When the confident Auckland Girls Grammar alumna is told the statistics show she may well be earning less than her male counterparts within a year, she says if the guy is working more hours that's fine, but she wouldn't be too pleased if he was working the same amount.

The partner of her team at Minter's is a woman so she feels she will have good support there.

Prestidge-Oldfield has thought about how her career will unfold. Some lawyers are opting out of the partnership route these days, preferring to become a special counsel.

The option is ideal for people wanting a more flexible schedule, but who still want to maintain a level of responsibility, she says.

She plans to be "strategic about what I want to have". She has no intention of trying to have it all.

"It may not be possible to do as well as you can in your career and do as well as you can with everything else."

The young graduate is part of the cohort of young women in New Zealand and the OECD outnumbering male university graduates.

Late last year, the Ministry of Education said two-thirds of graduate degrees went to women in 2008 and men were falling behind.

The widening gender gap was attributed to an increase in men going into trades and a secondary school system which might discourage or poorly prepare boys for further learning.

What does this all mean for men's and women's careers in the future? Will women be taking the top jobs and men the less skilled ones?

Time will tell, but the trend for more women university graduates has been happening for several years, and educated women are not dominating the senior jobs so far.

In Britain, Cranfield Institute Professor Susan Vinnicombe reports that while 60 per cent of graduates are female throughout the developed world, this trend for women being better educated than men isn't helping women get to the top in their careers.

"What our research shows is that it is still social capital, not human capital, that gets you to the top - it's who you know, not what you know," says the director of the International Centre for Women Leaders.

The improved education scores don't seem to be helping pay parity either. According to the Ministry of Women's Affairs, one year after entering employment the average income gap between men and women with a bachelor's qualification or above was about 6 per cent. After five years, the average income gap had increased to 17 per cent.

Ministry of Women's Affairs chief executive Shenagh Gleisner says: "While it's great to see that increasing numbers of women are gaining tertiary qualifications, we still see women's pay immediately falling back in relation to men's. This is a waste of talent for New Zealand."

"Unless we change the way work works, and enable both men and women to work flexibly, so both can progress their careers and spend time with children, the gender pay gap is likely to remain an issue."

The ministry says although women continue to graduate in increasing numbers, they remain concentrated in more traditional and generally lower-paid fields of health (nursing) and education (teaching).

Women now outstrip men in the field of management and commerce but remain under-represented in engineering and related technologies and information technology.

Roger Smyth, manager of tertiary sector performance analysis and reporting at the Ministry of Education, sees the increasing numbers of women graduates as a positive rebalancing.

"We are leading to a situation where there is much greater gender equality in the workforce." And there are still large numbers of men going through at different levels, he says.

"There has not been a reduction of males - more an expansion of females."

He acknowledges some young men have different aspirations. According to the Ministry of Education, men have a small advantage in level 4 certificates - 51 per cent.

Nearly 71 per cent of industry trainees are male and men dominate industry training in most industries.

And within industry training, modern apprentices are overwhelmingly male - 91 per cent. Young men like the idea of being paid during their training, says Paul Callister, associate Professor at the Institute of Policy Studies.

"That's why I still think apprenticeships appeal to the boys."

Very few companies offer trainee schemes these days, he says.

One of the few places that does it now is the Army and that's still a good career option if you want to be trained and paid - you can get a degree or a trade there.

Meanwhile, more women coming through the tertiary system are already influencing work practices, claims Callister.

Their presence has led junior doctors to lobby against over-long hours, he says. When most doctors were male, it was not a problem.

"But woman were often married to another doctor or a professional - and both parties could not do these extraordinary hours," says Callister.

In areas such as medicine, law, veterinary medicine and planning, the workforce is currently dominated by older men and younger women, according to EEO Trust research.

This could lead to some problems.

"Organisations in these sectors may face particular challenges with older workers moving to reduced hours/transition to retirement just as younger women take time out to start their families," says Philippa Reed, chief executive of the EEO Trust.

"With women in New Zealand and other developed countries making up the majority of university graduates, ... employers face the challenge of retaining them," she says.

"Flexible options are one proven way of doing this."


Leading the field

Women represent a majority of bachelors graduates in the following broad fields:

* Natural and physical sciences
* Agriculture and environment
* Health
* Education
* Society and culture
* Creative arts

Men have a majority in:

* Information technology
* Engineering
* Architecture