Old white men must ‘move on’
Women’s Minister Julie Anne Genter says old white men need to ‘‘move on’’ from company boards to help close the gender pay gap.
Speaking to students at Christchurch’s Cobham Intermediate School yesterday, Genter said the private sector needed to address the low level of female representation on New Zealand company boards.
About 85 per cent of board members were male, and many were ‘‘old white men in their 60s’’.
‘‘Some need to move on and allow for diversity and new talent,’’ she said, later clarifying she had ‘‘no problem with old white men’’ on company boards generally.
Genter went to Cobham to visit 10-year-old Maia Devereaux, who sent her a pay equity petition after a class project on what a utopian society might look like.
Maia said it was hard for her 40-odd signatories to refuse when the gender pay gap was presented to them on paper.
‘‘I didn’t really have people who said no but I think there are people out there who would.’’
Genter told about 60 students it was hard to address the pay gap, in part because female employees were often unaware of what their male colleagues earned for the same work.
Pay transparency – making companies report and measure gender pay gaps – was important in enforcing the largely ineffective Equal Pay Act 1972, she said.