A diversity advocacy group says New Zealand is still lagging behind when it comes to the gender pay gap.
Global Women, an organisation championing diversity in leadership, has calculated a 9.1 percent pay deficit - meaning women will be working for free until the end of the year from Monday.
The organisation is calling for the gender pay gap to end.
"We're not really leading at the moment. There are other countries - the UK and Australia - that actually require companies to report on their gender pay gap," Global Women chair Theresa Gattung told The AM Show.
"It is true that a large percentage of the gap is unexplained and that's where the issue comes about; could it be bias even if that's unconscious bias?
"Regardless of how we've got a gap… the much more important thing is, what are we going to do about it?"
Global Women is calling for working women to down tools on Monday to raise awareness about the issue.
"We want to find a way to draw attention to this and have a conversation about it - in a relatable way," said Gattung, the former boss of Telecom - now known as Spark. "We wanted to have a way to bring it to the floor - to actually have a conversation about it as a country; what can we do about this? What can we collectively do?"
Gattung said the easiest way to start making a dent in the gender pay gap was to measure it.
"There are about half a dozen companies in New Zealand measuring their gender pay gaps… So the first thing is, we're calling on more companies to measure their gender pay gap and we - Global Women - work with them on how to do that.
"If you're a company out there listening and want to do something about this, come and become a Global Women partner - learn from companies that are working on this.
"There are people of goodwill everywhere who want to do something about this but unless we share our collective learnings about what works, we're going to stay stuck at this level."
The World Economic Forum has said it could take over 130 years to close the gender pay gap globally.
