Gender Perspective

Why New Zealand is Not an Equal Country

Even though New Zealand was “the first country to give women the right to vote in 1893”, and be one of the “first countries to have a woman as prime minister” (1999 Helen Clark) it seems that nowadays people still need to state those facts to prove a point about gender equality when bigger issues are being undermined.

The universal declaration of human and civil rights states “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” yet it has never been the case for women.

Before the 1960s women were expected to be wives, mothers and homemakers, abortion was illegal, and divorcing your husbands was near impossible. Rape in Marriage was not even recognized as a crime up until 1985.

Before the 19th century women did not even receive an education and even in during the 20th century women were only taught home sciences ( cooking, cleaning, sewing)

It was not up until the end of the 19th century and more precisely 1893 that women were given the right to vote in New Zealand, even now a days the ratio of men to women in the New Zealand parliament is 69 to 31, as of 2014, this is not representative of the population, this has been an issue for decades.

 However Politics is not the only issue here. A gender pay gap is noticeable too. In 2015 the pay gap between men and women based on hourly earnings was of 11.8%.

-          In 2014 a survey showed that women earned $300 less per week than men and also had lower lifetime incomes compared to men.

 This is partly due to an unconscious bias. Stereotypical views on gender roles and about what women can and cannot do have had a strong negative influence on women’s careers in the workforce. ( women have for a long time worked low paid jobs ).

-          All these inequalities have and are limiting women’s role in society.

Results from the Human Rights Commission’s Tracking Equality at Work report are shameful and show we need to do more to help women in the workplace, says the National Council of Women of New Zealand National President Rae Duff.

The report shows women have higher unemployment and underemployment than men. Woman  are underrepresented in leadership roles in the public and private sectors, and make up two thirds of those earning the minimum wages.

“It’s not good enough that the representation of women in senior management positions in the private sector has sharply declined, from 31 per cent in 2014 to 19 per cent in 2015. Women’s representation on private sector boards also lags and sits at 14.4 per cent.

Pacific and Māori women are paid less per hour than European women, and disabled women have lower incomes than disabled men. This is a shame on our country and we need to reduce these inequalities for the sake of these individuals, their families and communities and for our economy.

“It is alarming that around two thirds of minimum wage earners over 25 years are women, which reflects the critical work that needs to be done to get equal pay for work of equal value and for more women to enter a wider range of professions and attain more senior roles.

“On the positive, there does seem to be a current upswing in awareness of gender issues and more employers taking action to ensure their policies and practices around recruitment and promotion, pay and conditions support diversity in the workplace. But it’s clearly not enough and more people need to do more.

Zealand women are among the most educated in the world, a new report shows, but there is a growing gap between economic opportunities for men and women - including their pay packets.

The World Economic Forum's annual report on the gender gap shows New Zealand has dropped in global rankings from seventh last year to 13th this year.

The Global Gender Gap Index ranks countries on the gap between men and women on health, education, economic and political indicators. New Zealand has improved or stayed the same on all indicators except for economic participation and opportunities, where the gap has widened. For pay equality, the country ranks 33rd out of 142 countries.

Dame Jenny Shipley, the country's first female Prime Minister and chairwoman of Global Women NZ, said the report showed there was "so much to do" to reach equality.

It was "inexcusable" for a woman to graduate from secondary or tertiary education with equal qualifications to a man and enter the workforce, only to be paid less.

The OECD's Gender Equality in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship: Final Report also states that Woman in New Zealand do more unpaid work than paid work, gain more tertiary qualifications than men and women-owned new enterprises outperform men-owned enterprises.

Although wage inequality between men and woman has been slowly dropping, the report finds that the government funding allocated to reduce inequality in New Zealand is on the low side in comparison to other OECD countries.

So basically woman are getting a raw deal. In fact the gender pay gap in the public sector was 14.4% in 2010. If we include all areas of the workforce, woman on average earn around $10,000 less per year.