Women in Leadership, the Vision of Women's Affairs

  • Pansy Wong
Women's Affairs

Thank you Lynette (Dr Lynette Hardie Wills, CWC President) for your warm welcome.

It's a pleasure to be back in Christchurch, which was my home for nearly 30 years. This is my first time in the city as Minister of Women's Affairs, so it is also a good opportunity to share with you my early thoughts about the portfolio and about women in leadership.

I am delighted to be Minister of Women's Affairs and I have strong ideas about what I would like to see in the future for women.

I can see a world where women are making their own choices about how they live their lives, where women can choose to be at home full time with their children or at work full time in the paid workforce - a world where women are valued not only for their contribution to the economy, but also to their families and communities.

I see a world where women will no longer be forced to choose between the two because paid and unpaid work can be done together in a world where a woman is not constrained by the limitations of her own expectations of herself and, above all, not constrained by what others think she should do.

I see the barriers which stop women from making these choices removed and the birth of absolute freedom.                                      

I also see men taking a role in all aspects of caring alongside women, and that they are doing this because it is what they want to do, for their own sakes and that of their families.

I have a vision, a picture in my mind, of women at each stage of their lives - as babies, young girls starting out at school or heading into the workforce and as older women - and at every stage there are opportunities opening up for them, not closing down progressively over their lifetimes.

And, above all, my vision sees women no longer being fearful in their own homes - a place where they should always be able to feel safe. And I mean all women, of all ethnic groups, from all parts of New Zealand and of all ages.

In December 2008 government introduced the Domestic Violence (Enhancing Safety) Bill - the aim of this Bill is to improve and strengthen the domestic violence legislative regime. In particular, the Bill proposes Police to issue ‘on-the-spot protection orders' to ensure that potential victims are protected until courts are able to deal with the matter. There is a need, however,  to ensure that Police will still arrest perpetrators of crime and not just issue protection orders.

I know much of this will take time. But there is no better time to start than now.

And when we have reached these goals, we will not need a Minister or a Ministry of Women's Affairs, but until then there is a lot of work to do.

It should go without saying that we can't succeed as a nation if we don't make the best use of the skills and experience of all our peoples - yet everywhere we look there is evidence that we do not fully value the contribution women make. Undervaluing and under-using the skills of half of our population who happen to be women doesn't make sense, yet we continue to waste women's talents on a daily basis.

There is no reason to believe we as women are less talented or less able to lead than men, but of the leadership areas the Ministry of Women's Affairs measure, the only one where women are in the majority is on school Boards of Trustees at 52 percent.

In every other sector women are in the minority.

In the state sector, nearly 42 percent of people in governance roles are women, but in the private sector women in leadership are a very small minority indeed with women representing less than nine percent of directors on the boards of our top 100 listed companies.

In 2004 the Labour government committed New Zealand to a target of fair diversity of men and women on state sector boards and committees by 2010.

While it is unlikely that we will reach the target by the end of next year, I intend to do everything I can to push towards the 50 percent mark - including encouraging my colleagues in Cabinet to look at the performance in their individual portfolio areas.

International research shows that corporations on the Fortune 500 list that have a more diverse representation tend to perform better and their companies dominate the top of the performers' list.

Therefore, it is not just a case of equality to have women representation in the boardroom, it makes good financial sense!

I have a direct role as Minister to increase the number of women in leadership in the state sector and it is a role that I take very seriously not only in terms of gender equity, but as a way to boost New Zealand's economy.

I will now tell you a little about the Ministry of Women's Affairs, because that will help put my comments in context.

The Ministry is the smallest core government department with a staff of fewer than 40 people and a budget of just over $4 million a year.

From that small resource it delivers policy advice to government across the whole range of issues that impact on women.

The Ministry also looks after New Zealand's international obligations in relation to the various agreements we have signed to protect the rights of women and nominates women with excellent governance skills and experience for state sector boards and committees through its Nominations Service. 

The Ministry has a potentially big scope of work to provide from such a small base, so to be effective it has to do two things really well.

Firstly, it has to prioritise its work to concentrate on the areas where it can have the biggest impact, and secondly, it must work closely with and influence other government agencies to ensure they look after women's interests in the work they do. 

Cutting through the government jargon, this basically means:

  • We have a really big job to do
  • We have a very small budget
  • There are high expectations that we will do the job well, despite those small resources, so we have to get others to help us, and
  • We have to be very focused on using our limited resources to do the most important things.

To run the Ministry, the staff basically needs the same set of skills you need to juggle a job and a family or to run a small business or, for that matter, to successfully run an organisation like the Canterbury Women's Club.

The good news is that the Ministry is focused and is building a reputation for high quality work and advice, which you have to have if you want others to work with you and to respect your advice.

Its priority work areas include working to eliminate New Zealand's shocking record of family violence and sexual violence, getting more women into leadership and reversing the remaining pay gap - which is currently at about 12 percent for full time women workers.

The broad vision we are working towards is a prosperous New Zealand where everyone has the same opportunities to achieve their full potential, and where success does not depend on your gender or your ethnicity, or on whether you were born in a state house or a penthouse.

But, as I mentioned earlier, we must work hard to ensure that women are equally represented in the boardrooms, which is the job of the Ministry's Nominations Service.

The Nominations Service has more than 2,600 board-ready women in its database, and is always looking for more. While the Ministry does not make the board appointments, it does put forward suitably qualified women - and frequently these nominations are successful.

This is because the Ministry takes care to understand the needs of the boards and only puts forward women with the right skills and experience. No-one gets appointed just because they are a woman, but because they are qualified.

While the Ministry is continuing to work hard to bring gender equality into the state sector and have had a number of successes, the private sector continues to be a problem, with women often not even getting to the stage of being considered.

I don't believe this is because commercial boards actively set out to discriminate against women - New Zealanders generally have a strong sense of fairness and would be genuinely disturbed at the idea they were discriminating against women or any other section of the community.

But no matter what the reason, the truth is that discrimination is there in dozens of subtle ways; from the way that girls and boys are directed towards traditional career paths and in the way boards often seek new members only from their existing, largely male, networks.

It's much easier to stick with the crowd, to do the jobs that your friends are doing or to choose your business colleagues from you own networks.

As in many things though, the easy route does not always give the best results.

We must work to change these attitudes, but if you want people to change, you have to show them how and also give them a good reason. While the equity argument is strong, it does not lead to change if you already believe you are treating everyone equitably!

In the case of the private sector, there is a much better argument; women in leadership will help you gain competitive advantage and make more money as the recent Fortune 500 company research has proven.

In the report, companies with the most women board members significantly out-performed those with the least in a number of measures.

  • their return on equity was 53percent higher
  • their return on sales was 42percent higher, and
  • their return on invested capital was 66percent higher.

And these are not just any old companies. These are Fortune 500 companies - the 500 largest companies in the United States and some of the largest companies in the world.

There have been other studies that have looked at the reasons why greater diversity in management and governance has had such an impact on performance.

A London Business School study, for instance, found that professional teams that had an even gender mix were more likely to experiment, to share knowledge and to fulfil tasks - all things that drive innovation and profitability.

So our job in the private sector is to make the business case for change.

I will be pushing for it as Minister and I hope that you will be joining me as shareholders and customers.

We also need to celebrate the organisations that recognise and promote women's talents, and to make the most of every opportunity to get our message across.

This will be one of my priorities as Minister.

I've talked about overcoming the barriers faced by successful women like you who already have strong skills and experience, but the barriers to women in leadership don't just start at the boardroom door.

The barriers occur all along the chain, from the lack of opportunities to gain management experience, to the lack of recognition of the relevance of skills learnt outside the paid workforce and women's and men's original education and career choices.

We need to better understand the complex reasons why women are not able to reach their full potential and we need to ensure that they can and do reach their full potential - because New Zealand's success as a nation depends on it.

I hope to make a difference in my time as Minister and I hope that you, and all the women of New Zealand, will help me make the positive changes that are needed.

On a personal note, I observe that many of you have strong backgrounds and may possess the governance skills needed to join the boardrooms of the state sector, which offers many great opportunities.

I'm sure the Ministry will be happy to hear from you, so please check out the ‘women on boards' section of the Ministry's website at www.mwa.govt.nz

Thank you.