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Download AudioA new study has found almost 40 percent of Māori-owned businesses have wahine Māori as owners, and those businesses have a higher percentage of Māori employees than male-owned Māori businesses.
The second Te Matapaeroa report released by Te Puni Kokiri identified 23,300 economically significant Māori-owned businesses for the year ending March 2020, or 8.8 percent of all businesses.
This compares with about 10,200 Māori-owned businesses in the earlier Te Matapaeroa 2019 report, after a change in the definition of a Māori business.
Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson says the high percentage of wahine Māori business reflects the increased number in leadership positions in te ao Māori – and also highlights some of the challenges where business can be part of the solution.
“Māori women lead all the worst statistics in society and that’s not good. In the health side, in the incarceration side in prison, 65 percent of the (female) prison population are Māori women for goodness sake. Who better to lead this rebellion than our wahine Māori,” he says.
The largest number of significant employers of Māori was in Tāmaki Makaurau, while Gisborne had the highest proportion of significant employers of Māori.
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