Is NZ more sexist than Oz?

Companies across the Tasman are twice as likely to have female directors. Tim Hunter looks at why.

Australians, long our staunch rivals in macho sporting encounters, have clearly been working on their softer side.

How else to explain the huge difference in the number of women populating the senior corporate ranks on either side of the Tasman?

Despite Australia's famously sexist culture, the top 50 listed companies in Australia are twice as likely to have female directors around the board table than their counterparts in New Zealand.

The Sunday Star-Times compared the board composition of companies in the NZX50 with those in the ASX50 and found 46% of the New Zealand companies had female directors. For the Australian companies the figure was 83%. There are 45 women directors in the ASX50 in 57 directorships. In New Zealand, 21 women fill 24 directors posts.

These figures don't count chairmen, or CEO/managing directors, but it wouldn't make any difference in New Zealand because there aren't any women in those jobs in the top 50. The resignations this year of Theresa Gattung at Telecom and Diane Humphries at Hallenstein Glasson have made the figures look worse than they would have last year.

Australia is not much better, with just one female CEO Kerrie Mather of Macquarie Airports and two chairmen Margaret Jackson of Qantas and Elizabeth Alexander of biopharmaceutical group CSL.

How sexist is Australia? In a report on the US/Australia free trade agreement for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, an American advertising executive illustrated Australia's business culture by saying "Australians are outrageously sexist by any American standard, and things happened to me every day that would not only be politically incorrect, but also illegal (in the US)".

A survey produced on Wednesday by Australian recruitment website LinkMe found half of Australians surveyed thought women were not treated equally in the workplace. But LinkMe CEO Campbell Sallabank said women seemed able to battle on. "The statistics also reveal that despite women being exposed to sexist treatment, many are still managing to become highly successful. "

Perhaps it's not really that bad. One executive polled by the Star-Times said, "I don't think the Australians are more sexist (than New Zealanders), but if anything the corporate environment is more aggressive."

Nicki Crauford, chief executive of the New Zealand Institute of Directors, is mystified by disparity between Kiwi and Australian boards.

"Australia has a reputation for being incredibly sexist and a really difficult environment for women to get on, so (the result) doesn't appear to make sense."

Crauford said there was a relationship between the number of women in senior executive jobs and the number emerging as directors, so small numbers of one group would lead to small numbers of the other.

Also, "whether we like it or not, the traditional ways of recruiting (directors) predominate. It's no longer who you play golf with, but it's still who you know, who you worked with, who you trust, and often those people are other men".

Joan Withers, Auckland Airport director and CEO of Star-Times owner Fairfax NZ, said recruitment was not the problem.

"Most of the bigger boards have very robust processes," she said, which involved using consultants such as Sheffield or Korn/Ferry to source board candidates.

"I don't think there's anything systematic causing fewer women to come through," she said. "I'm increasingly frustrated because I can't really come up with an answer."

If it was simply a matter of the decision about moving from the executive ranks to the boardroom, she said, there could be another reason.

"The dollars are an issue. Even with a full portfolio (of directorships) I think the discount rate is about 50% (to an executive income)... There's not a lot of us who can afford that."

Boards are also becoming more prepared to take risks, said Jane Allen of recruitment consultancy Egon Zehnder. Patty Akopiantz, a former McKinsey consultant and marketing executive, joined the Coles board aged 37, a move Allen described as "a huge leap of faith".

"Chairmen will meet who we want them to meet. We always throw in somebody from the emerging set because it is good for the candidates, and it is also good for the chairmen to be exposed to a diversity of options."

- © Fairfax NZ News