Human Rights Commission

“Even a casual observer will have noticed the predominance of males in key leadership roles across many key industries in NZ … the number of females at board level of NZSX top 100 companies is only just over 9%. Only 4% of these same companies had a female Chief Executive. NZ falls behind Australia, the UK, the US and a number of European countries on these benchmarks.”
Goldman Sachs & Partners NZ, Research Report, August 2011.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has been targeting getting more women onto private sector boards for some years. The UN Women NZ National Committee, along with the NZ Federation of Business and Professional Women and Dr Judy McGregor, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission, is taking a different tack.

Our campaign is based on the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), originally promoted  by  the  UN  Women  International  Office  and  United  Nations  Global Compact. The theme is “Equality means business”. We aim to show the companies that have not already embraced the Principles that their businesses will be enhanced through employing more women at all levels and in all sectors of their organisation. We are also inviting them formally to adopt the seven Principles voluntarily.

Empowering women builds strong economies and establishes more stable and just societies. The Principles provide a gender lens through which business can survey and analyse current practices, benchmarks and reporting practices.

Some corporations are already modelling the W omen’s Empowerment Principles. We hope to use them as examples to encourage others to follow suit.

Many organisations will point to the high percentage of women employed in their businesses. Closer analysis often shows that the women are largely confined to clerical, administrative, support or human resources roles. Women still experience discrimination in employment practice in terms of basic issues such as occupational segregation, representation in senior management, in governance positions and in terms of law pay and pay equity. The New Zealand employment statistics show that if they are also Māori, Pasifika or from minority ethnic groups, or have a disability, they are doubly disadvantaged, particularly in areas such as low pay and pay equity.

The Joint Patrons of UN Women New Zealand, The Governor-General, Lt Gen The Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae, and Lady Janine Mateparae, will launch the Principles to the business community and other stakeholders at a function at Government House in Wellington in early February. We hope that some companies will have signed on before the launch and we plan to follow up this function with a series ofroundtables with business in main centres in 2012. They will provide an opportunity for businesses to learn from each other and from other equal opportunity specialists.