All I want for Christmas is a fairer deal

As a woman of a certain age, I expect there are scented candles, bath salts, and hand cream waiting for me under the Christmas tree. Don’t think me ungrateful. The gifter would have thoughtfully pictured me soaking in the tub and noticed my patches of dry skin. Indeed, that there are presents under our tree is something to be thankful for. Such luxuries are beyond too many families.

But I do already have more hand cream than I have surface area of skin left in my life.

And I have a wish list of things that I would really like for Christmas.

It’s only a short list, unlike the ones with which I am usually presented by my children (now complete with hyperlinks to online shopping sites).

Top of my list would be regulation introduced in the new year that requires all large organisations in New Zealand to publish their gender pay gaps, including their ethnic gender pay gaps.

Unwrapping that would mean that organisations first had to calculate their gaps, then publicly report them to shareholders, customers, and potential employees. Experience in other countries shows that, when this happens, leaders can not ‘‘unsee’’ the gap and will work to reduce it.

This means more families could have a better Christmas next year as their mothers and sisters would be paid fairly and offered more opportunities for promotion.

Iwould also like quotas introduced for corporate boards. Progress to increase diversity around the board tables of our large companies is glacially slow. Twenty-nine per cent of S&P/NZX50 board directors are currently women. Twenty-seven companies – nearly a fifth of all those listed on the NZX – have no women on their boards whatsoever.

But some of the biggest opponents of board quotas are women.

‘‘I don’t want to be the token women’’ is a statement I have heard often.

No-one is advocating for unqualified, inexperienced, or incompetent women or men to be appointed to any board or executive positions. There is no shortage of talented women, and Ma¯ ori and Pacific leaders who are and will be board and executive-level ready.

My reply to anyone who takes such a position is to suck up any short-term discomfort you might have. It is a small price to pay to ensure our daughters or granddaughters don’t face the same dismal statistics on women in leadership that we have now.

Diverse boards make better decisions and are more profitable. If Santa were to bring us quotas, we would be unwrapping increased productivity and growth, which is something we could all welcome in 2021.

Finally, if there also was a box of scorched almonds under the tree, I don’t think I could be happier.

While I know some of you chomp right through the whole almond, I am in the camp that sucks the chocolate off and then savours the nut.

Doing so, I propose, is one of the secrets to having a very Merry Christmas.