Whole-of-government annual gender stocktake
A whole-of-government annual gender stocktake of statutory bodies found women made up 41 percent of Ministerial appointees as of December 2005.
The results were collected and released by the Nominations Service of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, which is responsible for supporting the achievement of a government-endorsed goal of achieving gender balance on government statutory bodies by the year 2010.
For the purposes of the stocktake, 'statutory bodies' were defined as government bodies that have Ministerial appointments made through the Cabinet Appointments and Honours Committee. As at December 2005, 410 statutory bodies had a total of 2683 ministerial appointees, of which 1098 were women.
"Before we introduced the stocktake, there was no way of reliably assessing progress towards our 2010 goal," nominations adviser Sean Molloy said. "We can now measure our progress, but more importantly the stocktake is a powerful driver for achieving change in women’s representation in public sector governance."
Detailed results have been sent to the Chief Executives and Ministers responsible for the 27 agencies that administer appointments in the public sector, so that agencies and Ministers can assess the gender balance on the bodies they are responsible for.
Agencies working in sectors with a traditionally high proportion of women's involvement such as the health, social development, and community sectors, have the highest representation of women.
The 41 percent figure has drawn comparison with the private sector, where women made up 7.13 percent of the top 100 boards on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (New Zealand Census of Women's Participation 2006, released by the Human Rights Commission and the New Zealand Centre for Women and Leadership).
The Service does not see the 41 percent figure as a reason for complacency however. "We suspect that the 9 percent remaining may be the hardest to crack," says Sean, "We’re now trying to particularly increase women's representation in sectors where they've been traditionally under-represented."
The stocktake is a major exercise for the team of three staff at the Nominations Service. The data needs to be collected, entered, and checked. The results are then checked with the 27 different agencies, involving contact with around 50 different analysts.
