Women on the boards of the top 100 NZX companies has passed a quarter for the first time, a survey out this morning shows.
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It showed women now hold 25.9 percent of the board roles, compared with 24.1 last year and 22.1 in 2017.
However, that still means only 164 of the 631 directors on the boards are women and of the top 100 companies, 11 have no female directors at all (down from 20 in 2018).
AUT's School of Social Sciences and Public Policy head Judy McGregor told RNZ Nine To Noon's Kathryn Ryan she believed the push for gender parity in boardrooms was stalling.
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She said while there was a lot of discussion to include more women, the rhetoric was not followed by actions.
She said corporates were setting low targets - such as the 25 percent club movement - which called on boardrooms to have a quarter of their directors women - though that compared to 30 percent clubs in both the United Kingdom and United States.
Dr McGregor said the private sector particularly was lagging behind in embracing diversity compared to the public sector.
"If you look at government statutory bodies, we are up to 47.7 percent," she said.
"We are praised worldwide and globally for that achievement. It's not quite 50 percent yet but it will be soon. So we can do it when we are looking at the public sector."
The survey found that telecommunications company Spark was the "standout exception" compared to other companies on the NZX's top 100, with women making up 50 percent of its board of directors.
"There are far too many companies, I think, with only one female and that is a sort of 'one and done' attitude," Dr McGregor said.
"We've been very strong on rhetoric, and much feebler and weaker on implementation."
Six of the top 100 companies had female chief executives, meaning 94 percent of chief executives were male.
The survey also found the top 100 company boards were "overwhelmingly Pākehā".
The survey asked each of the top 100 companies for ethnicity information, but only 44 percent responded. It said some companies deflected the question by using the Privacy or Human Rights Act.
Dr McGregor said when she began conducting similar work in the 1990s, only 4.4 percent of board directors in the country's top 200 companies were women.
"We've travelled a way in 20 years but it's only one or two percentage point increases every year. And there are far too many companies with one female director, I think, it's a one and done attitude which is a worry too, because all of the research shows that a critical mass is required for companies to benefit from true diversity."
She predicted reaching 50 percent female directors could take at least another decade.