Census 2008

The Census report is increasingly used in New Zealand and overseas as a reference by agencies generating international comparisons, by politicians, policy-makers and academic researchers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and individual women. It has maintained the same categories of governance and public and professional spheres to provide longitudinal trends but has added new areas of focus each edition. Women’s progress in sport, science, the media and public relations, in trade unions, the armed forces and the police and in local government and its management have been added to public and private companies, the law, the judiciary, politics and university life.

The third census report evaluated the Agenda for Change recommendations and also moved to harder targets and benchmarks set for public and private agencies. It discussed Norway’s experiment with quotas on private sector boards. While New Zealanders are not receptive to quotas there needs to be radical culture change to improve the dismal female representation of women on private sector boards. Sixty of the top 100 companies have no women and female directors comprise only 8.65% of total directorships. The report also referred to and promoted the CEDAW committee’s concluding statement about New Zealand and what the state party should progress before its next report in due in 2010.