Women's Minister Julie Anne Genter says old white men need to "move on" from company boards to help close the gender pay gap.

Speaking to students at Christchurch's Cobham Intermediate School on Thursday, Genter said the private sector needed to address the low level of female representation on New Zealand company boards if more businesses were to be led by women.

About 85 per cent of board members were male, and many were "old white men in their 60s".

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Students at Cobham Intermediate take a selfie with Genter.

"Some of them need to move on and allow for diversity and new talent," she said, later clarifying she had "no problem with old white men" on company boards generally.

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Genter went to Cobham to visit 10-year-old Maia Devereaux, who sent the minister a pay equity petition after a class project on what a utopian society might look like.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Minister for Women Julie-Anne Genter looks at Maia Devereaux's petition for pay equity.

Maia said it was hard for her 40-odd signatories to refuse when the gender pay gap was presented to them on paper.

"I didn't really have people who said no but I think there are people out there who would."

Genter told about 60 students it was hard to address the pay gap, in part because female employees were often unaware of what their male colleagues earned for the same work.

She said before she entered politics, she learned a male colleague "who was brought in after me was being paid more than me, even though I was bringing in more work".

"I was going into [salary] negotiations saying 'do you really want to pay me that much?' Of course, he asked for a lot more and got it."

She said pay transparency – making companies report and measure their gender pay gaps – was an important step in enforcing the largely-ineffective Equal Pay Act 1972.

Historically, "there was a lot of progress in spurts" but work on closing the gap had "stalled" in the last decade, she said.

"The last few Ministers for Women weren't given a lot of priority and they were afraid to even call themselves feminists."

Louise Upston, who held the role between 2014 and 2016, said she was not a feminist and "not interested in being a flag waver" for feminism after being criticised for supporting beauty pageants. Previous Minister for Women Paula Bennett said she was a feminist "most days".

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