Women making "glacial" progress on company boards

Miranda Burdon, chief executive of Global Women in New Zealand. Photo/Supplied.

New Zealand's is making "glacial" progress in getting more women on public company boards and needs to move faster, says a directors' advocacy group.

The New Zealand stock exchange released its annual diversity report yesterday showing the number of women on listed company boards rose from 17 per cent to 19 per cent in 2017.

Felicity Caird, general manager of the Institute of Directors' Governance Leadership Centre, said while the figure had nudged up it was still very slow progress.

"That really does feel like it is glacial. Australia is 26 per cent - we should be trying to get there quite quickly."

Caird said it was also concerning that the percentage of women in officer positions had only increased from 18 per cent to 20 per cent.

"That means our pipeline is still hovering in that pretty low region."

Caird said there were some encouraging signs with more than half (51 per cent) of listed companies now having a diversity policy.

Last year the NZX introduced a new corporate governance code which means all listed companies must have either a diversity policy or explain why not as part of reporting requirements.

The requirement didn't come into force until the end of last year.

Caird said hopefully that would help boost figures again in 2018.

The percentage of women directors of listed company boards has increased just 7 percentage points from 12 per cent in 2013 when the NZX started to report the data.

Caird said it was hard to know why progress was so slow but said there was a lot of support for change particularly from larger companies. .

At the top 10 largest listed companies nearly a third of directors are women (32 per cent) while companies in the small cap index only had 13 per cent female directors last year.

Caird some of the barriers were unconscious bias and she challenged board chairs and those in the hot seat for appointing new directors to go wider in their search for new directors and reject recommendation lists solely consisting of male candidates.

"We know there are women out there." she said. The listed company sector is lagging far behind the public sector in which 45 per cent of directors are female.

Despite the slow progress Caird said she was not a fan of quotas which have helped to significantly lift the number of women on boards in Norway. "There is a lot of debate around that. I think the real change comes from leadership and cultural change." Caird said she hoped change would increase with growing pressure from institutional investors.

Miranda Burdon, chief executive of Global Women in New Zealand, said while the trend was positive New Zealand was still behind internationally especially compared to Australia and the United Kingdom.

Burdon said she was hoping to see change pick up this year this year with growing recognition of the benefits of diverse thinking in leadership.

This year also marked 125 years in New Zealand since women won the right to vote.

Burdon also pointed to the difference between larger and smaller listed businesses.

Burdon said there were still 32 listed companies without a single woman on their boards. "I can't see how they can stand up in front of shareholders and justify that."