Fran O'Sullivan: Beware the impromptu gushing

Prime Minister John Key's practised inclination - crack a few jokes about daughter Steffie usurping his credit card and/or messing up her en suite and son Max telling dad there would have been more upside if he had been an All Black and/or how he has got a tad porky since entering politics - still gets laughs when he ventures about the country.

It worked also for Key this week when he pulled out the "Steffie and the chequebook" gag again at the launch of the new New Zealand Global Women network at the University of Auckland Business School.

The network is chaired by Wellington lawyer Mai Chen and appears to have grown out of a carefully selected female group that Chen put together some while back to increase their influence in the circles that matter.

Key's rampant good humour suitably seduced those present that he was taking seriously their stated aims to increase the leadership opportunities for "their members" through building a diverse, supportive and well-connected network that extends from New Zealand on to a global stage.

But it was symbolic that Key was not speaking from prepared notes. There are no speech notes posted on his Beehive website that even acknowledged the launch of this new "power women" network.

Get real sisters. Key's impromptu gushing was so notably light on commitment to what matters for most women that frankly little of a factual nature resonated.

The Global Women organisation intends to mentor upcoming women leaders and has taken it upon itself to "distinguish itself as the organisation that is helping to diversify the makeup of boards and executive offices in New Zealand".

All this, according to its website, through leadership, engagement, and collaboration of members, emerging leaders and affiliation with influential professional organisations.

This is all worthwhile stuff. But there is no stated commitment from Key - nor has there been from shareholding ministers, for instance - to ensure more qualified women will be appointed to state-owned enterprise boards.

Just one significant SOE, Mighty River Power, is chaired by a woman (Carole Durbin), 35 years after women were awarded equal pay.

Across the board the picture is not much better. Just 54 out of 624 director positions on NZX companies are held by women, after a flurry of female leadership during the 1980s and 1990s.

For instance: first woman deputy PM, first woman PM and first female elected PM, chief judge, Governor-General, first female chief executive of a major listed company.

All of which set the scene for female aspiration.

But the metrics are going south again. Women holding CEO or managing director positions are down from 22 per cent in 2006 to 19 per cent; New Zealand is now ranked 10th globally in female representation in business management, down from fourth in 2004.

These are the metrics which Global Women is challenging. But there is a more fundamental issue at stake.

Some of those on the Global Women board are of sufficient vintage to remember the deep humiliation of working alongside men doing the same job (and the women, mostly far more efficiently) for two-thirds of the going male rate. The absurd notion that equal pay was a gift that was within men's right to confer - rather like the vote - rather than a real human right, took a concerted campaign before legislation was passed on this score.

But Global Women seems not to be sufficiently aware (or maybe chooses not to see) the disturbing fact that it was ministers in Key's own Government that have disestablished the Labour Department's pay and employment equity unit and scrapped two other investigations aimed at improving the pay rates of female social workers at Child Youth and Family and female school support workers who are demonstrably getting less than male peers.

The rationale offered by State Services Minister Tony Ryall that such investigations would "generate an additional form of remuneration pressure that is unaffordable in the current economic and fiscal environment" is so deeply insulting to women that he should have been slapped down by his leader.

Where is the commitment from Key's Government to eradicating the 12 per cent gender pay gap?

Key's female appointments: Melissa Lee to challenge for Mount Albert; the Christine Rankin nonsense; and the increasing morass growing around Paula Bennett does not help the perception of women leaders.

You have to go back to other leaders like National's Jim Bolger, who appointed Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley to powerful slots in his government, for a more perceptive approach. Though even Bolger lacked the bottle to back those courageous ministers when their stances proved politically unpopular.

Key has an even deeper need to be Mr Popularity. Global Women does not need to suck up to the PM. If the "power fems" want to make inroads they will need to stamp their well-heeled stilettos much harder and demand a response, instead of laughing at what they would once have deemed patronising jokes.