A group of senior New Zealand business leaders wants every political party to promise, before the November election, that large employers will have to report their gender pay gap. The call turns a long running workplace debate into an election year test for National, ACT, New Zealand First, Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
The push comes from Global Women, a collective of some of the country’s most influential leaders working on equity for women. On Wednesday 22 July the group ran a full page open letter in The Post asking parties to commit, in their 2026 policies, to make gender pay gap reporting standard for employers with 150 or more staff. Smaller businesses would be left out entirely.
Reporting is voluntary in New Zealand now. A number of well known employers already publish their figures, but there is no legal requirement to measure the gap or say what is being done about it. Global Women wants that changed for the largest firms only, arguing the country is drifting behind Australia and the United Kingdom, which both require the biggest employers to report, and behind new European Union rules that force large employers to explain unexplained pay differences.
Global Women chair Dame Theresa Gattung framed the ask as a management tool rather than a burden. “Gender pay gap reporting is a practical tool that gives organisations the information they need to identify inequities and act on them,” she said. “Many of New Zealand’s leading employers already report voluntarily because they recognise that transparency is good for business. Making reporting standard for large employers would create a consistent expectation and ensure more organisations have the information needed to measure, manage and close their gaps.”
Chief executive Katie Bhreatnach put it more plainly. “Like all things in business, what gets measured gets managed,” she said. “Reporting gives organisations the transparency and accountability needed to identify inequities, understand what is driving them and take measurable action.” She added that “equality is good for business”, pointing to stronger retention and productivity when workplaces are seen as fair.
The group leaned on fresh research from economics consultancy BERL, published in June, to make the money case. BERL found that nearly half of surveyed firms that identified a gap went on to adjust salaries as a result. Under a central scenario where the national gender pay gap falls by a quarter, the report estimates roughly 1,300 dollars more per woman a year, about 1.8 billion dollars in extra earnings for women, and around 18 billion dollars in wider economic output from better staff retention and modest productivity gains. More than 80 percent of the firms already reporting said they faced no external costs, because the work draws on payroll data and staff time they already have.
New Zealand’s overall gender pay gap has narrowed to about 5.2 percent, but the averages hide sharper gaps for some groups. Traci Houpapa, chair of the Federation of Māori Authorities, said the gap sits at 12 percent for Māori women and 15.8 percent for Pacific women, with migrant and ethnic women facing persistent inequities. “Addressing the gender pay gap is not a cost, it’s an economic growth strategy,” she said. “We can no longer afford to ignore the economic potential of half our population.”
David McLean, chair of Kiwi Group Capital and independent chair of the Financial Services Council, called mandatory reporting “a low cost, high return policy” and stressed that it would apply only to the largest employers. “The proposal is targeted rather than sweeping,” he said. “It applies only to New Zealand’s largest employers, leaving small and medium businesses untouched. Many major employers already report voluntarily, which shows that the practice is workable at scale.” He noted New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote in 1893, but said that history was a reason to keep working, not a reason to relax.
Whether any of this lands as policy depends on the parties, and here the group faces a hard road. The National led government has moved in the opposite direction on pay. Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden pushed an overhaul of the Equal Pay Act through Parliament under urgency in 2025, which halted dozens of active pay equity claims and lifted the bar for proving that work had been historically undervalued. A government that tightened pay equity rules is unlikely to warm quickly to a new reporting mandate, even a narrow one. Labour and the Greens have long supported stronger transparency, so the letter effectively asks the coalition parties to move toward their opponents.
Business groups have made similar arguments before without a law change. The case for mandatory reporting has been raised repeatedly over the past decade, and the Ministry for Women has built voluntary tools to help employers measure their own gaps. What is different this time is the timing. By putting the request in an open letter three and a half months out from the 7 November vote, Global Women is trying to make each party say yes or no on the record while it still matters.
If you want to see where the parties stand on this and other issues before you vote, our voting tool lets you compare policies side by side.
Do you think large employers should have to report their gender pay gap, or should it stay voluntary? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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