A recent study from the University of Otago has shown that women need to be appointed to management positions, particularly at a higher level, to create a pipeline of women’s representation.
While having women on boards was important for increasing top management-level representation, without women present at the top management level there was "no evidence" that having women on boards influenced the number of women in general, lower or middle management, the study found.
Marks & Worth Lawyers & IP Specialists director Sally Peart said the study’s findings made sense, as managers slightly lower in the pecking order were likely to be the ones recruiting for roles, and would not necessarily be influenced unless there was a clear direction from the board that could flow through to lower levels of management.
While she did not think the study would have a great correlation to a firm of their size — and would matter more in larger organisations with more layers of management — she believed there would have been an increase in women applicants at their firm after other women filled top management posts.
It was very important for any prospective employee to be able to see themselves "as fitting in to the work environment", Ms Peart said.
"They want to feel like they’re a good fit and so they’re going to be influenced by other people that are in that organisation — it’s just human nature.
"If you’ve got a workplace for example that’s dominated by men, then that’s a harder environment for women to see themselves fitting in to because they might feel that they’re in a very strong minority and so they might be less willing to apply for that role."
Co-author of the study, University of Otago department of accountancy and finance associate professor Helen Roberts, said it was also important to have women moving up into managerial-level appointments from lower-level positions, instead of remaining stuck in entry-level positions with no possibility of promotion.
"So there is both a trickle-down and pipeline effect needed to create greater workplace diversity."
The research also found that having a woman manager immediately above or below the managerial level for appointment increased the likelihood of a woman being appointed to that role.
Ms Peart — who started the firm — said that while their firm was comprised of exclusively women, this had not been by design and had come about by employing based on merit.
Because their firm appeared to be women-led, they had "a lot fewer men" applying than women, and those women had been better candidates anyway.
She believed New Zealand had a much better attitude towards women’s representation than other places.
But it was also about diversity in a broader sense — such as with regard to age, gender and ethnicity, she said.
"I think that in some ways those other areas, we’ve got more challenges there than we have just with women.
"When you look at diversity, looking at men and women is a very narrow approach compared to what we face, so we’ve been very conscious of that as well."
