Gender quotas?

New Zealand has been urged at the Human Rights Council in Geneva to start discussions on introducing gender quotas on the boards of public companies.

Norway stated in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of New Zealand at the United Nations this month (May) that women’s under-representation in leadership and governance positions in the public and private sector needed improvement.

“The call for quotas will be a wake-up call for the 60 companies in New Zealand’s top 100 with no women on their boards”, said New Zealand’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor who regularly publishes a benchmark Census report monitoring women’s progress

Norway was one of a number of countries at the United Nations to recommend further measures to improve New Zealand women’s progress.
• Brazil recommended that the rights of New Zealand women in the labour market needed to be reinforced, regardless of age or ethnicity.
• Canada asked for targets to be established for improving the representation of women in senior management in the public service and for measurable targets to realise gender pay equality.
• Argentina wanted active policies to increase the numbers of women in local government, the judiciary and the health sector.
• Angola asked New Zealand to continue to adopt policies in order to achieve full gender parity.

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission in its report on the country’s human rights progress recommended that the government establish targets for improving representation of women in senior management in the public service. It also asked for a minimum target of halving the gender pay gap of 12 per cent between men and women by 2012 and eliminating it by 2020.

“We are pleased that the new UPR process allowed other countries to comment not only on the positive progress made by New Zealand women but also on the embarrassingly low proportion of women, 8.65%, who are directors of listed companies.” States are reviewed every four years under the UPR mechanism.

Norway introduced gender quotas with controversial legislation in 2003. In six years the number of women on publicly listed companies increased 600% from 6% in 2001 to more than 37%.

Business case arguments for women on boards have been produced by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs at http://www.mwa.govt.nz/women-on-boards/women-on-boards-why-women-on-company-boards-are-good-for-business-1