The path to more women in governance

The evidence has been clear for years: boards with greater gender diversity make better decisions, are more attuned to risk and deliver stronger organisational outcomes. Yet in Aotearoa New Zealand’s private sector, women hold just 31% of director positions on NZX-listed companies – a gap the public sector closed years ago.

This International Women’s Day (8 March), I invite boards to reflect on how we can better support women into governance and recognise the benefits. With research consistently pointing to systemic barriers rather than a shortage of capable women, the question for boards is no longer whether to act, but how.

Research shows gender-diverse boards enhance decision-making (Wiersema & Mors, 2023), take a broader view of risk and respond more strongly to corporate social responsibility. These factors can positively influence financial performance and share price (Li et al., 2022).

Yet in New Zealand, the picture remains uneven. As of the last measurement (December 2024), women hold 52.1% of public sector board roles – an equality milestone maintained for five consecutive years. Meanwhile, women represent only 31% of director positions across NZX-listed companies.

The IoD’s Director Sentiment Survey shows 44% of members believe shareholder or member activism will affect their board or organisation. This suggests growing pressure for boards to consider whether they represent a broad range of experiences and create conditions for the full range of talent to step forward.

The public sector’s achievement of gender parity on boards did not happen by accident. It was the result of deliberate government targets, proactive nominations and a long-term commitment to gender balance. As Minister for Women Hon Nicola Grigg noted when the 2024 board composition results were announced: “It’s taken a deliberate and coordinated effort to achieve this result.”

The private sector, by contrast, has moved more slowly, with many firms lacking equivalent diversity mandates or structured processes for intentional recruitment. The gap between 52% and 31% is not a gap in the quality of women available – it is a gap in process, expectation and accountability.  

Barriers in the pathway to governance

In 2024, I led research with the Ministry for Women interviewing women serving on boards across New Zealand to map pathways into board roles. The experiences of these women were candid and consistent with international evidence. The barriers women face are not primarily about capability or confidence – they are structural.

Board recruitment in the private sector still relies heavily on informal networks and personal referrals. As one of the women interviewed put it: roles are often introduced through existing connections, and those who are not part of those circles simply miss out – regardless of their experience or skill.

Research by Young et al. (2024) confirms this: recruitment through social networks systematically disadvantages women who are not embedded in those networks, and appointment decisions often reflect ‘socially constructed ideologies’ rather than a clear-eyed assessment of governance capability.

A second barrier is the narrow definition of what ‘board-ready’ looks like. Boards that privilege C-suite, finance or legal backgrounds are, in practice, recruiting from pools where women remain underrepresented. Decision-makers favouring current or former CEOs can inadvertently exclude a significant proportion of highly capable women (Young et al., 2024). 
Broadening what counts as relevant experience –including expertise in people, strategy, sustainability and risk – is not about lowering the bar. It is about raising the quality of the board.

The boardroom experience

A third barrier is more subtle: the additional labour women carry to establish and maintain their credibility once they are in the room. The women I interviewed described having their voices overlooked, needing to work harder to be taken seriously, and navigating expectations unrelated to governance capability.

Research by Trzebiatowski et al. (2023) describes this as the ‘warmth-competence dilemma’ – a double bind where women face scrutiny for being either too assertive or not authoritative enough. This is not a personal problem for individual women to manage; it is a culture issue for boards to address.

Trina Tamati

Trina Tamati – the Kindness Collective Foundation (board member), College Sport Auckland (board director) and Global Youth Sevens (board advisor) – captured this dynamic well: “You can say the same thing five times as a female, and it won’t be heard. A male can say the same thing once and somehow it has cut through.” What particularly stood out from these interviews was a recognition that the value these women brought to their respective board tables was precisely because of their differences.

Research by Wiersema and Mors (2023) backs this up –- finding that women on boards improve decision-making not despite their differences, but because of them.

Jennifer Caldwell

Jennifer Caldwell – Partner and former board chair at Buddle Findlay – noted Buddle Findlay’s progress in achieving a board of four women out of seven members. Greater diversity followed a shift to a broader partner performance evaluation process. Highlighting how - when boards create the conditions to recognise a more rounded range of contributions - the people who bring those contributions become more visible.

My recent Women in Leadership: Insights to Impact survey, with results from 410 women across Aotearoa New Zealand, reveals that sponsorship was one of the four factors with the strongest impact on progression into boards roles.  
Sponsorship is where senior leaders actively advocate for women, put their names forward and open doors. It is distinct from mentoring. Mentors provide advice; sponsors provide access. In a governance context, where shoulder-tapping remains one of the most common appointment pathways (IoD Directors’ Fees Report), sponsorship is not a nice-to-have. It is a primary mechanism through which board candidates become visible.

What boards can do

The evidence points clearly to where boards and those who recruit for them can make the most difference. None of it requires waiting for the pipeline to fix itself.

Broaden recruitment beyond your existing networks

If your board has consistently recruited through personal referrals and existing connections, you are not accessing the full depth of talent available. Active outreach through governance registers, diversity-focused search firms and sector networks will surface candidates who are equally capable but less visible through informal channels.

Rethink what ‘board-ready’ means

Boards that define experience too narrowly will continue to reproduce themselves. Consider whether the skills your board needs in the next five years – in areas such as people strategy, technology, sustainability or stakeholder engagement – might be held by people who have not followed the traditional executive path. This is about asking whether your current standards are genuinely aligned with your future governance needs.

Sponsor, not just mentor

If you are a board chair or experienced director, consider who you are actively opening doors for. Mentoring is valuable; sponsorship is transformative. For women who have the capability but lack the visibility, active advocacy from respected governance leaders can be the difference between being considered and being overlooked. This means putting names forward, making introductions and using your own network on behalf of others.

Create conditions where different voices are heard

Boards that actively shape their culture – through induction practices, chairing style and the norms they model – are more likely to realise the full value of diverse perspectives. This includes attending to whether all directors have equal opportunity to contribute and whether the burden of establishing credibility falls disproportionately on some members. Where boards invest in evaluation and self-reflection, they tend to perform better and to attract a wider range of capable candidates.

International Women’s Day is a moment to reflect – not just on how far we’ve come, but on the distance still to travel. In New Zealand, we have demonstrated through the public sector that gender balance on boards is achievable when it is prioritised deliberately. The question for the private sector is whether boards are willing to apply the same level of intentionality. 
 

Dr Amanda Sterling

Dr Amanda Sterling is a principal director and award-winning consultant who partners with organisations to remove barriers for women into leadership and create inclusive workplaces where people and businesses thrive. A summary of her Women in Leadership: Insights to Impact report is available for download at www.dramandasterling.com