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News reports on some recent research had me – and many others with ovaries – alarmed and, frankly, a bit cranky. Although we’re now 52 years on from the Equal Pay Act, it would appear we still have a long way to go in gaining gender equity and equality in our working and financial lives.
New research from Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission shows the KiwiSaver gender gap has widened in the past year. There’s now a 36% gap between the amount men and women are saving for retirement in KiwiSaver each year, which outpaces the still-significant gender pay gap.
(Right now, the gender pay gap is 8.6% but significantly wider for wāhine Māori, Pacific and Asian women, and disabled women.)
Though men and women are contributing the same percentage of their salaries to KiwiSaver, women are disadvantaged, it’s thought by working part-time and taking greater unpaid care responsibilities.
In related news, the NZ Herald published its survey of the country’s top-earning CEOs. Of the top 10, just one is a woman, and of the 54 CEOs in the survey, only seven are women.
It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that barriers still exist to women stepping into senior roles. I also can’t help but reflect that at the time women should be advancing their careers at the same pace as their male peers – midlife – they’re also facing an extra challenge: menopause.
This transition of perimenopause and menopause – though temporary – can have a big impact on working life. Recent research published by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) on menopause and the working lives of women concluded that menopause “is still very much a silent transition when it comes to the New Zealand workplace, hindering women and employers from working together on solutions”.
The report found three-quarters of NZ women who experienced menopause symptoms said these negatively affected their work. The most common and debilitating symptoms were sleep issues, loss of concentration and brain fog. Lack of motivation and confidence also figure prominently.
In the survey, 14% of women said they had to reduce their working hours to manage their menopause symptoms, and 6% changed roles. And 20% of women who experienced symptoms said it would have been helpful to have been able to make adjustments, but they never requested any, mostly because of menopause and gendered ageism stigma.
Sarah Hogan, principal economist and deputy CEO of NZIER, who led this research, says the interesting thing about menopause and working life is that employers – whom she also surveyed – insisted they did not perceive a drop in performance of women in midlife, even when the women thought they were performing below their best.
“Employers don’t see a productivity problem,” she told me. “They don’t see a competence issue. They often don’t know anything about the symptoms that are being felt because women aren’t talking about it. I think employers are seeing women in this age group as being highly competent and productive and probably in a great position to be moving forward in their careers.”
So here, then, we have another gap. I wonder why we still see the corner offices in our top organisations occupied mostly by men? And what about the stories I and others working in menopause education consistently hear of women stepping back from senior roles because they feel they don’t have enough support for their wellbeing?
“I guess that’s probably where you think about the [work] environment we’re in”, Hogan says. “The research does also show environment is so important; everything that’s going on inside you is interacting with everything that goes on around you. And I think men probably just get a lot more validation about their competence that allows them to maintain their confidence probably at a higher level than women.”
The language we use
A piece of US research published in the Harvard Business Review illustrates this point. It looked at the language used to describe male versus female leaders across 81,000 performance evaluations. Though objective performance measures showed no differences between genders, subjectively it was a different story. Many more negative words were used to describe women than men. Men, if described negatively, were called arrogant or irresponsible (read: maverick risk-taker). Women were called inept, selfish, frivolous, passive, scattered, temperamental and indecisive, among other terms (I don’t think it’s a stretch to read here: emotional/hormonal hot mess).
The most commonly-used positive term to describe men was analytical and for women it was compassionate. We might say “so what?”, but the researchers suggest perceptions of these attributes might have quite an impact when it comes to promotion (or at the other extreme, redundancy) depending on what qualities an organisation values.
Hogan reports that negative attitudes still exist among managers towards older women in Kiwi workplaces.
“A lot of women in our survey said that they felt women in midlife are not valued and respected within their organisation”, she notes. And on the other side, though in the minority, “there were some organisations where the view was that older women don’t fit the culture, or older women can be difficult to work with. Those attitudes are still very much out there. You know, the view that as a woman gets older, she becomes this cranky, difficult, frumpy old wet blanket that nobody wants to have around.”
For example, more than one in 10 managers in the agriculture, manufacturing, accommodation and food service industries agreed with the statement: “Younger women tend to look more professional than older women and this reflects better on my organisation.”
So, what has to happen to help close some of the gaps? The answers are not straightforward.
Hogan believes women need to be supported at all stages of their careers – not just in midlife, but earlier, so gaps don’t get the chance to widen.
“If there has been any favouring of men at any point in their careers then it isn’t a point in time,” she says. “It accumulates over time. And the advantage carries forward into the next role and the next role after that.
“I think the solution actually lies in how we support women from the very early stages in their careers, rather than being something that swoops in right at the end, where I think it will always end up being seen as some kind of affirmative action.”
Hogan says the time when women re-enter the workforce after taking time out to have children is a critical moment. And solutions are not solely organisational, she says. There’s a cultural shift that has been far too slow to happen.
“Women are [still] having to take on a lot more of the household responsibilities at home. And some of that has been because parental leave policies haven’t been equal.” This, at least, is something that’s changing now, though men still make up a tiny percentage of people taking parental leave.
Government can also help by levelling the field with policy, and there are steps in this direction: from July 1 2024, if you choose to have KiwiSaver deductions from your paid parental leave payments, the government will cover the employer contributions of 3%.
When it comes to menopause, the research suggests organisations are keen to support women by starting conversations about it, but they are uncertain about how to do it.
“Managers are really keen to understand what’s going on with women in this age group, and they’re really keen to support them,” says Hogan. “They really do value women in this age group. But I think it’s just they’re a bit hampered by a lack of information about what they can do, and about how to start the conversations.”
Niki Bezzant is a journalist and author focusing on health and science. Her menopause book, This Changes Everything, was published in 2022 and the follow-up, The Everything Guide, focused on healthy ageing for women, is published on 14th May.
