Cathy Hendry: Strategic Pay managing director on the non-executive director gender pay gap closing

Strategic Pay’s latest Directors’ Fees Survey shows the non-executive director pay gap has narrowed to just 0.5 percent.

The findings highlight a significant narrowing of the gender pay gap across New Zealand boardrooms - with women earning 5.9 percent less than their male counterparts in 2025.

Strategic Pay managing director Cathy Hendry says growth in the public sector has helped move this change. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Ever due for ce Ellen.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
So the pay gap for female directors on company boards
has almost disappeared. This is the Strategic Pay Director's survey results.
Last year, women earned five point nine percent less than
their male counterparts. This year it's just zero point five percent.
Kathy Henry is the managing director of Strategic Pay and
with us Hi, Kathy, why is it now wrote so much?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Look, we believe the biggest contributor to it is we've
seen we saw large increases in the public sector and
these were sort of well overdue. At the same time,
we've had really flat movement and the private sector. So
that seems to be the you know, the biggest contributor
to why we're seeing this change.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
So basic because this was a government directive, wasn't it
to start paying the women equivalent to the men?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's illegal to pay men
and women different.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
No no, no, no, that same role. That's not what I'm saying. No, whatever,
wasn't this like I feel like in the recesses of
my mind, I remember one of the Ministers for Women
came out and made it a real big play of
paying the men, like really shutting down that gender pay
gap on board level in the public sector.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I mean what we're doing
is we're looking across the whole subset of the directors.
So this is sitting across all the boards, and we're
looking at that sample and seeing what the gap is there.
And the public sector typically has really high representation, but
they'd been really stagnant in their fees and that was

(01:34):
sort of keeping that pay gap across all the directors.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
So are you telling them? Okay, so more women sit
on public sector boards than on private sector boards, but
the public sector boards pay really badly, so as a
result of the pay gap. So it's because the taxpayer,
poor old taxpayer, is having to pay these boards more
to basically shut the gender pay gap down. Are we
getting value for money though, Kathi from these people? Are we?

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well? I think it wasn't a It was a well
needed adjustment because they hadn't seen any increase for a
long time, like a really long time. It was an adjustment.
And I think you know, what you're asking is complex
because you know, you're looking at increased complexity on the
at the board level, like you know, greater accountability, greater liability.

(02:26):
You know, you sort of see that all the time
in the news that you know, just it's not a
case of just sitting on the directors and getting sausage
rolls and attending a few meetings anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
You know, Yeah, hope not. Okay, So, why how do
we explain the eight percent gap for the chairs?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, so at the chair you know, you've only got
one chair obviously in every board, and we see a
lower representation of females at the cheer level, and then
you're seeing the men more likely to be in those
bigger boards higher pay. So that's what's still keeping that
up about higher It's really down to the representation more

(03:02):
than anything else.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Okay, So how like, what is the gap? What's the
difference between the number of women the proportion of women
who are on boards in the public sector and in
the private sector.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So you won't have to ask me a question I
don't have on the top of my but.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
It's no sorry, I know this is not on the
public sector.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
It is fifty to fifty on the public sector, and
it's considerably lower in the private sector. Like I think,
I think it's closer to more like a third when
you look across the Yeah, it's very close, right.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, Kathy, so if we're down to zero, but we
can stop talking about this now effect stay done finishing.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
There. Well, it's only at the board level, isn't it.
I mean it's great that at the governance level women,
if you've got a greater representation and fairness at that level,
it's likely to sort of feed down into the organization level.
But the thing is they're stubborn. So if the public

(04:03):
sector pay remains stagnant and women tend to not be
all on private sector boards and then we see some
big increases in private sector boards and the pay gap
will probably come back.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, all right, it's fair. Thank you very much, Kathy,
appreciate it. Look after yourself. Kathy Hendry, Strategic Pay Managing Director.
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