Suffrage Day: Bold leaders wanted (no pay-gap shirkers may apply)

It’s Suffrage Day, and here I am complaining again. I don’t like having to do this. I’m an optimist, and also as patient as the next person – I would much rather be dressed in white muslin, dancing around the maypole celebrating Aotearoa New Zealand’s world-beating progress on fairness and equity, honest.

But it just isn’t true.

We lean very heavily on our past achievements in this country. They’re knitted into our vision of ourselves as a gritty young nation that punches above its weight on the world stage, yada yada.

You can find examples in all aspects of life (but particularly sport!) and on days like today, when we reflect on how fairly we treat half the population, you tend to hear mention of New Zealand’s accomplishments for women, sprayed around like Roundup.

Two in particular: we were the first country to ‘‘give’’ women the vote, and, at one stage the five ‘‘big’’ jobs – prime minister, opposition leader, governor-general, chief justice and attorney-general – were all held by women.

These are not myths – they did happen. We can be proud that they did. But the first of those took place 128 years ago, the second, 20 years ago. Excuse me for my impatience, but really, it’s time we took off that set of rose-coloured glasses and had a proper look at the progress we haven’t made.

Let’s keep it simple, and take just one example. Women still don’t have pay equity with men. We are getting closer to pay equality, but that is a different thing. If that’s a surprise to you, you’re not alone, and you’re not being dim. The two things sound similar, but they’re different in an important way: pay equality means paying men and women the same amount for the same work (it doesn’t have to be identical). For example, two salespeople with similar experience and who do a largely similar job, are paid the same regardless of their gender or ethnicity or other personal identity markers.

Pay equity adds a bunch more stuff to the equation – it looks at why there are fewer women in high-paying roles, why women take (through necessity or otherwise) more flexible working options, and bias in hiring and promotion practices, educational and career advancement opportunities.

Case in point – when Westpac investigated its pay gap, it found no problem with pay equality within roles at the bank. But its overall pay gap was a whopping 30 per cent, mainly because most of its women were employed in lower-paid roles. The bank realised that, to fix this, it had to work harder to get women into IT and senior banking roles.

Fixing this starts with paying attention to it. Sounds easy, huh? But there are still only a tiny handful of private sector companies that actually do.

I think every single person I’ve spoken to about this subject has used the same phrase: ‘‘What gets measured, gets done.’’ An Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility survey found 80 per cent of companies who fully analysed their gender pay gaps, went on to do something about it. When it comes to the pay gap, it may be that some companies are simply blind to their failings because they haven’t had a proper look.

I read through the 2021 annual reports of the NZX50 top 10 companies (you’re welcome) and followed up with them to see how much attention our best-performers pay to this stuff.

Only three of them – Spark, Fletcher Building and Auckland Airport – were a confirmed ‘‘yes’’ for full company-wide pay-gap analysis. Others such as Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Meridian and Contact Energy survey pay in like-for-like roles but not their company-wide pay gaps. F&P Healthcare told me this was a conscious decision ‘‘because we don’t think it provides much useful insight given the composition of our workforce’’.

Mainfreight, Ryman Healthcare, Infratil and EBOS didn’t respond. Although some were paying close attention to gender balance in board and executive roles, none of them included pay gap figures.

There are companies a bit further down the NZX50 list that have joined Spark and Fletcher Building in leading the way: Genesis Energy, Westpac and SkyCity were all early adopters of voluntary reporting.

This appears to be an issue of leadership. The strong, enlightened leaders – leaders who are willing to stand up and do what is right in this space – are willing to stick their necks out.

One of those is SkyCity CEO Rob Campbell. I asked, what’s the roadblock for most?

‘‘I do know there are a lot of people with genuine goodwill in business that are not comfortable with the gender pay gap, but they find it hard to speak out because they think it will affect their careers,’’ Campbell told me.

‘‘It’s easier for a crazy old man [like me] to tell them. I find when I take a stand on some social issues, there’s an enormous number of people – directors, managers and staff – who say, ‘thank you for saying that, I wish I could say it’. That’s sad. There’s all the more responsibility on you, when you’ve got a leadership position.’’

Rob Campbell despairs a bit about the attitudes to the pay gap in this country.

‘‘The female Ma¯ ori or Pacific Island cleaner isn’t gaining an awful lot from the top three or four positions in the country being women, are they?

‘‘Pay is so important to full participation in society. And isn’t it ironic that [pay gaps] still persist even when we officially label a lot of those people on low wages, as essential.’’

While Campbell is at the ‘big end of town’, Wyndi Tagi (Ati-Hau-Nui-A-Paparangi), cofounder of WE Accounting, works at the other end. Most of her clients are small and medium businesses and the bulk of them are Ma¯ ori and Pasifika businesses – a choice she and her partner Eli Tagi made four years ago. WE is a finalist in Westpac’s 2021 Employer of the Year awards.

Tagi encourages her own staff to challenge her on pay in ‘‘mana-enhancing’’ negotiations. She pays attention to pay issues because she says it’s good business, and good for the economy – it improves team culture, and helps her attract and retain staff; a really important factor with the current talent shortage.

Tagi agrees with Campbell that there’s reticence among leaders who don’t want to stand out ‘‘because they might upset their shareholders, or just their friends. Not enough Pa¯ keha men, let’s be real, have stood up for this. Once they do, people will follow.’’

Today, 128 years after Aoteaora’s breakthrough moment for women, the hold-outs on pay-gap reporting might want to consider this: There are bold leaders in your midst who have voluntarily done this work and guess what? The sky has not fallen in.

It’s time we took off our rosecoloured glasses and had a proper look at the progress we haven’t made.