Assertion needed as women suffer "dramatic" absence around NZ board tables

Why New Zealand business women have to be more assertive if they want to arrest the alarming drop in their numbers in senior management roles across the country...

Meanwhile, thirty three percent of our Australian female counterparts feel that there are barriers to women entering senior roles.

“None of the New Zealand women surveyed perceived a gender bias, however 7 percent of the male sample saw a gender bias,” Davies adds.

“The global average of women who feel there is gender bias is 19 percent, which is the same in Australia.

“Perhaps this suggests some element of naivety in New Zealand around gender bias.

“A Google search for “gender bias in the workplace” brings up more than 1.2M hits in 0.29 seconds. There is clearly a lot of data around this.”

Consequently, Davies believes the issue of gender bias in an interesting one, as a lot of it probably goes by unnoticed.

“Research has shown that women’s leadership styles and mistakes are judged more harshly than men’s by their peers and that men are promoted based on potential, while women are promoted based on past accomplishments,” she adds.

“The bias can be covert from the questions asked in interviews, to subtly undermining women’s abilities by calling them ‘girls’.

“Similarly, many of the female leaders spoken to in the survey wanted to be known not as female business leaders, but simply business leaders, successful in their own right.”

Twenty-three percent of New Zealand women surveyed also see the lack of female role models as a barrier and given the relatively small number of women in senior management, and in fact declining numbers, this result is not surprising.

The question of introducing a quota system to guarantee a percentage of women in senior management or board positions was also surveyed - in New Zealand support for quotas is 40 percent, down from where it was two years ago at 44 percent, and still behind the global average.

“The business world remains broadly split on the introduction of quotas - 47 percent globally support the idea, up from 37 percent two years ago,” Davies adds.

“They may not be the correct solution in every country, and I have mixed feelings about quotas, but given the absence of progress perhaps legislation can create the “step change” that is needed to facilitate future female advancement.

“It is well proven that greater diversity in decision making produces better outcomes. If an economy is only using half of its most talented people then it immediately cuts its growth potential.”

Davies says businesses need to think about how they access different skillsets.

“Diversity leads to better decisions in all walks of life,” she adds. “Business growth comes from diversity of opinion. By thinking and acting differently from the competition, businesses can unlock their potential for growth."

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