Jen's pick: Female quota system useful

Jen Scoular.

I attended the Horticulture Conference in Christchurch last week — an excellent networking session and a good time to highlight emerging trends and risks in our industry. We had consecutive sessions on agrichemicals in horticulture, on bio-protection options, on labour issues and a very good session about women in horticulture.

Figures constantly remind us that although there are a number of women in my sort of position, heading industry bodies or running their own horticulture business or orchard entity, women are still very poorly represented at board level.

When I was living in Germany, Norway implemented a quota system requiring at least 40 per cent women on the boards of every public company. It worked in the numbers, but debate continues over whether it set the scene for this to become a natural occurrence.

It was legislated for public companies, but not for private companies and what it clearly showed was that the legislation is required because the percentage of women on the boards of the private companies did not change.

I see Cricket NZ has mandated that regional boards won't receive their funding if there are not at least two women on those boards by March 2019.

I have tried to encourage women on to boards I am associated with, very impressive women who would make a real difference. The usual response is they don't really want be the only female voice at the table.

Even as one of two on a board of eight or 10, this leaves the numbers very uneven. Others say they are very used to being in a crowd of men, that doesn't worry them, but they would prefer to use their time outside the board room.

Capability is there, and there are probably equal numbers of women in horticulture as men, just not at the board table.

At the conference it was very eloquently noted that the women in horticulture session was held at 8am, after the gala dinner, and only about a third of the conference participants were there.

I have implemented a policy that if my staff are on maternity leave, they don't miss out on pay rises. So if they are on leave during our annual pay round, their salary on return will include the increase they would have received if they were working.

That's the law in Germany, and a very good one I think, so we stop that issue of women ending up on a lower pay rate than their male counterparts who haven't taken maternity leave. Obviously that would work for males taking paternity leave as well.

I'm not proposing legislative change or quota systems. I am proposing that we really think about who we have representing us in organisations we are part of, how we should change that, and how important it is to think of governance as gender neutral. I did rather like the tweet I saw suggesting that "it's not a glass ceiling that stops women getting to the top, it's a thick layer of men".