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There are more men named Mark than there are women chief executives of companies listed on the NZSX – despite one university professor saying young women are “significantly better” at business.
A survey of the companies listed on the NZX shows that there are nine that have a chief executive named Mark – Mark Freeman at the Australian Foundation Investment Company, Mark Francis at Asset Plus, Mark Aue at Chorus, Mark Heine at Eroad, Mark Troughyear at Freightways, Mark Turnbull at Foley Wines, Mark Winter at My Food Bag, Mark Peterson at the NZX and Mark Malpass at Steel & Tube.
There had been 10 – Mark Lucas was chief executive at beleaguered Cannasouth, until he resigned from the company in April.
In comparison, there are six women across the board – Carrie Hurihanganui at Auckland International Airport, Rachael Newfield at Greencross Health, Rosie Mercer at Marsden Maritime Holdings, Suzanne Dvorak at Oceania, Sophie Moloney at Sky TV, Jolie Hodson at Spark.
Naomi James will start in November at Ryman Health. Westpac and ANZ both have chief executives of their New Zealand businesses but the companies listed on the NZSX are their parents, which both have male chief executives.
There are also six Davids and six Michaels.
Todd Bridgman, head of the school of management at Victoria University, said it was not just a problem for New Zealand, and things were slowly improving.
“But clearly we should be doing much, much better.”
He said New Zealand had been much more progressive when it came to gender diversity in politics.
“New Zealand is one of only a handful of countries at the UN that have had more than two women leaders … it is interesting to me that there is real divergence between corporate leadership and political leadership. Corporate New Zealand is missing out through not having more women CEOs.”
He said all organisations should have leadership that represented their external stakeholders.
“We should have a parliament that reflects the diversity of the country’s population and when it comes to business we should have leadership that is representative of that company’s stakeholders, customers and employees. That’s clearly not the case in the corporate leadership in this country.”
He said some people argued that it was just a matter of time, and as more women went into executive teams, that would improve their representation in the top jobs, too.
“If you’ve got women occupying roles at the level below CEO that’s a good indication in future we will see more women at the very top. But we shouldn’t overplay that pipeline argument, that has been made for decades. To see such a low level of representation at the top in CEO roles says there’s something else at play here.”
He said in his teaching experience, young women “significantly outperform” men.
“They work harder, their analytical skills are better, they are better at communicating, better at critical thinking … when I see these students at 18 and 19, women are better as a cohort. It’s an absolutely travesty to see them not rising to the top in large numbers.”
He said business leaders had told him that women were smarter and more empathetic but lacked the “killer instinct ” – or just did not want to be chief executive.
“If they don’t want to be, we need to understand why that is.”
He said he suspected it could be something that Theresa Gattung mentioned in her book Bird on a Wire – she wrote that leaders needed to be confident, with a clear sense of where they were headed. But she said if a woman was too strong it came across as aggressive and off-putting.
“I think there is something in there. Women are more likely to be negatively evaluated than men displaying the same behaviours … If they are assertive they’re likely to be criticised for being aggressive. If they’re not they’re likely to be criticised for lacking killer instinct.”
He said society could think about how it defined strong leadership – and why things like being competitive and assertive were valued more than being empathetic.
“How are we defining leadership? Do we need to define it differently to encourage other forms of leadership to rise to the top?”
He said representation might improve if the way CEOs were selected changed. Because parliament was a democratic process, there was more emphasis on delivering diversity, whereas business leaders trended to be selected by small groups of people serving on boards.
Helen Roberts, from the Otago University department of accountancy and finance, said when leadership positions came up, there was often an understanding of who the next CEO should be and what they should look like.
“They already have the next CEO groomed and in place, there’s a process of the next person coming in and representing the person who’s just left.”
She said organisations sometimes needed a major culture shift to increase women’s representation across different management levels.
“You’re never going to get someone at CEO if you’ve never given them the opportunity to be in the c-suite. That only happens if you have a good supply of people coming in who are qualified to take these roles and given the opportunity to promote, to build into that strategy, time off to have children or more flexible workplaces that allow people to be able to manage multiple commitments and still deliver on time.”
Things like not requiring social gatherings late at night could be important, she said.
“Some of the cultural social norms that fit with what the CEO does during and outside regular work hours don’t lend themselves to someone who has dependent children or ageing parents they have to think about outside work.”
She said there was a sense that women might be soft or take the wrong point of view.
“But they bring a lot of valuable skills that are often lacking in our male counterparts. They’re good at monitoring, they take a lot of information on board when they advise.”
Roberts said sometimes women who succeeded felt they needed to be more like their male counterparts, rather than representing who they were.
“It’s a tricky one. We’re monocultural in the way progression happens, the way people with the power to make decisions view potential applicants. There’s unconscious bias – people will say that’s true but look at how these decisions are being made, the conversations being had – there’s still a lot of unconscious bias.”
NZX said it had no comment.