by Catherine Delahunty
Late last week Women’s Affairs Minister Pansy Wong told the Institute of Directors that New Zealand’s “dismal record” of just 8.6 percent women directors in our top 100 listed companies needs to be changed. She wants to be a “catalyst” for that change.
I couldn’t agree more, but she won’t get very far convincing companies of “the business case” for putting women on their boards when her own Government won’t appoint them to its high powered think tanks. I asked Pansy series of questions about this in February and she couldn’t give a meaningful answer.
Catherine Delahunty: How can women and men stand shoulder to shoulder on Don Brash’s 2025 Taskforce, when it consists of five men and only one woman?
Hon PANSY WONG: It just shows that one good woman is worth more than four men.
Just this week her colleague Steven Joyce made his Ministerial appoitments to Polytechnic Councils and included only 20 women out of 78. The only notable exception is Paula Bennett’s Welfare Working Group, which consists of 6 women and 4 men. It’s telling that it’s “only” welfare where women’s contributions are seen to be valuable, and even more telling that one of those women is the former president of the Act Party.
Whether it’s belittling comments making a joke out of a serious gender gap, or empty threats to business breakfasts, Pansy is doing next to nothing to actually redress the situation, let alone address the even more signficant problem of gender pay equity.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Justice & Democracy | Parliament | Society & Culture by Catherine Delahunty on Mon, April 19th, 2010
Tags: pansy wong, pay equity, women's affairs
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Merit not gender should be the only appointment criteria.
If that criteria is meet then the current ratios would be roughly correct.
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Wanted: Wet Nurse
(Gender of applicant will not be considered)
Address applications to ‘Pentwig’.
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“8.6 percent women directors in our top 100 listed countries needs to be changed”
So who is listing these countries and what for? Proof reading helps..
More to the point, would the Greens make it illegal to not appoint a sex balanced board? Do the Greens think boards are appointed not on merit but on sex? What qualified women are demanding they be given a helping hand to be on boards by politicians? Indeed, who would ever want to be appointed to any position to fill a quota of characteristics that you are not responsible for having?
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Shunda – can loan you mine as I need my 1970′s ‘Miami Vice’ specs just now…
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“Why” he demanded, “does NZ keep attacking the way that we treat our women and keep them in order? If we allowed them the free rein that you do our country would become immoral and depraved just like yours”.
Our co-PMs arose as one to reply. “Don’t take any notice of what we say in public, that’s mainly domestic politics. It’s to our business advantage to have you continue repressing your women; in that way not only do you loose the productivity contributions of half your population, you also expend considerable energy in maintaining that situation, energy that would otherwise be used in growing your economy. Furthermore, not only do we double our productivity relative to you, we get the synergistic effects of having gender parity, especially in lateral thinking. This effect is why most of our high level positions are filled by male/female teams. One of the things that we’ve found is that women make much better negotiators, managers and diplomats, hence diplomatic missions and negotiating teams are usually led by women.
Our social scientists have recently elucidated the behavioural mechanisms of social synergism processes and we are now patenting the knowledge. This means that we will have a monopoly in at least tripling our productivity growth over the next fifty years. With such a competitive advantage we’ve already surpassed the Australian economy and expect to overtake China as the world’s dominant economy within twenty five years”.
Afterwards I realised that that any country, organisation or community that fails to make full and proper use of its entire human capital is wilfully foregoing a considerable competitive advantage in all spheres of human endeavour.
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Shunda – pull your upper eyelids down til you’ve got the ‘Roger Douglas Droop’, then you’ll see the world the way he does.
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Wanted: Wet Nurse
I think merit criteria would work quite well here too, Greenfly.
I might get my man-boobs out!
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We’re not talking heads here stephensmikm, as samiam will attest.
samiam – I’ve a potential applicant here, who’s willing to go head to head with you for the job … oh, hang on…
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what should be addressed is why there aren’t enough women being qualified- that’s the issue
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@ sprout – I think I detect some slight satire in there but that’s all good
battle axe thatcher!!!!!
I have actually heard some quiet whisperings from some individuals that they believe the gender wage gap may be based on the Maternal (primary caregiver) question – that under the law the primary caregiver must get a fairly big amount of time off while being paid – ie the Mum (generally whoever’s the other parent gets about 2-4 weeks as opposed to 6-12 months)subsequently employers factor in the problem that they may lose an employee for up to a year and be unable to refill that role – temp employees cannot really be paid highly if a company is still paying for the Maternity leave, and actually from my experience temp workers are actually alot of the time Mothers trying to re-renter the workforce creating a cycle of problems – some people could probably extend from that that is the reason why there is a gender pay gap, an unofficial, unintentional cycle but I highly doubt it could be a really successful argument after taking into account other factors
I agree with the Maternity/Paternity leave of course because who in their right minds wouldn’t want to spend as much time with their children as possible and they need to know that by doing so they won’t lose their careers but I can kinda understand where employers are coming from if they are a small-middle size business where paying wages to employees does have a drastic effect- I suppose it’s all about balance , if more Fathers/husbands/partners etc stayed at home then the wage gap might change but generally the Male half of a conventional family takes the primary monetary role even in the 21st century
just some things to think about I suppose when looking at this issue I guess.. I do believe NZ is long past the age of hiring Men because they are men and women because they are women (maybe not in the forestry sector )
but that’s just an alternative to the other ideas of merit, of gender inequality I suppose…
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Greenfly
I only want to bath in virgins milk.
Please ensure your applicant has the correct qualification.
Thanks.
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Sprout spoke against women, sprout is a misogynist.
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Shunda barunda, the mental visions I have of the women I described do things to me I couldn’t possibly describe in this forum.
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What? like convulsions or something?
What happens when aunty Shipley appears on the tele?
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Shunda barunda-I couldn’t possibly say, but I do have to have a cup of tea and a wee lie down afterwards.
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On the one hand, there is ‘affirmative action’.. all things being equal appoint from so-called ‘minority groups’ or increase gender equality.. on the other hand there is the ‘old boys club’.. which do I think the Nats adhere to ? Isn’t it obvious……!!
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And women are more qualified – over 60% of the graduates are women – and yet at the end of their first year working they’re paid, on average, 8% less than their male counterparts, well, thats discrimination.
The correct term is parental leave – and those that apply for it, women or men, are only paid for 14 weeks, and can take up to 12months leave – the balance being unpaid.
Who do we value? Certainly not our women…
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@Mamabear
That’s exactly why it’s quiet – they aren’t going to publicly say it – it follows almost along the exact same lines why people with full face moko are going to be discriminated against in hiring in almost every area of the tertiary workforce sector – It all comes down to economic for them
I think that there must be a way around that but it’d be hard to make , It’d involve resetting societal mindset not just legislation – you can always find someone equally qualified that does not have hinderences..
but only one spouse can usually apply for leave (the Primary caregiver) the other is offered a token amount (unless they’ve got a sweet boss and contract) , but I can understand where employers are coming from if that job is going to be frozen up for 12 months
It may have something to do with it if they’re balancing an insurance into their work
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Oh dearie me…
I’m supposed to be finishing some submissions and packing my bags (hey, ‘fly, how’s the weather? I may get that far, but South Cant’y is my first call!), but this really does need some attention.
Where to begin?
Lol, Sam, Sprout, ‘fly, points for satire & entertainment value, altho’ some demerits for ‘off-topic’ mammary-obsessions…
Michaela – do I detect a residue of Margaret Atwood in your dsytopic visions? Well put, however, although I suspect a little over the heads of the locals.
StephenM
- well, you’ve just about as roundly as can possibly be done put the case for why women need assistance to get on Boards, without realising what you’d done.
Yes, current legislation allows for paid parental leave, but most women who are currently in a position to get on Boards (say, ‘mid-career’, if evaluated in life process alongside men) would have had their children when just leaving work & having no pay compensation was what happened when one procreated.
Then when she eventually re-entered the workforce (childcare being problemmatic in many provincial areas, and even in some urban areas), a woman suffered from that 5-year gap in her work record, spent doing the nappy years and waiting for the ultimate in freely available childcare, primary school, to kick in.
Most women over 40 have had to juggle this, some with better family resources than others (a retired granma was worth her weight in childcare fees at one time…), and consequently missed out on experience and network forming years in the paid workforce.
I emphasize ‘paid’, because most of us who spent years in the jobless wilderness ended up on kindy committees, school fundraising committees, local community organisations or suchlike, voluntarily using our former work-related skills to keep our neighbourhoods ticking over, especially during the 90′s when there was such a huge female unemployment rate (unacknowledged because most of us had earning partners, therefore were ‘informally unemployed’ according to the offical statistics).
Most employers, and generally all of the Boards I’ve seen (with possible exceptions amongst Boards of Trustees for schools) do not count a woman’s unpaid work as life experience that counts.
Even if it includes helping to balance the books at the local community childcare centre, or fundraising to keep the low-decile local state primary school going.
It’s just been assumed that one spent the years on the couch, watching daytime tv with a box of chocolates nearby, while the preschoolers played on the floor. As if…
There are several informative sources who have crunched the numbers on this stuff, if you wish to be further elucidated.
I recommend firstly Marilyn Waring’s foundational work on the topic, Counting for Nothing, which brings up the issue of a household wage for mothers for the first time in NZ policy discussions. [This was first mooted by Simone de Beauvoir in the 1940's in France, in her work The Second Sex, which was unfortunately heavily expurgated of 'socialism' in the Penguin text published in America in the 1950's - later english-language texts re-inserted about 300 pages that the McCarthy-ists removed.]
Then for other NZ contexts, I recommend Prue Hyman’s Women and Economics, published in 1994 but also a very good source on issues around women’s employment, superannuation provison and participation in business and boards. Was a set text at VUW, maybe can be found at Vic Books still, but definitely held in the library in multiple copies.
Both Dr Waring and Ms Hyman have taught economics at University level around the country, and Dr Waring is probaly best known for being an MP who was thrown out of the then National Government by Sir Robert Muldoon, an accomplishment that I consider recommends her highly.
They have both published other works which are also germaine to the issues of women’s participation in the economy. If you claim to understand women’s issues and have not read any of these writings, you are merely deluding yourself.
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Katie, I’ll take my demerits like a man (can’t say the same for samiam though).
The weather here … blustery but sunny. If you’re keen to venture further south, let me know (Frog’ll pass on my e-address). I hope you’re going to cause a ruckus in Canterbury while you’re there. I met some very ruffled Canterbrian conservationists on Stewart Island at the weekend – all with details of the dirty deeds done real quick in and around Chch. Toad’s uncovered some septic stuff too – that amphibian deserves a commendation (or a slug, depending on his want).
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I’ll accept spanking with a feather duster.
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Katie-Well stated. I hope the fact that the growing percentage of men staying at home to care for their children, while their partners are out earning the family income, will eventually bring about a mind shift. Just as important as the valuing of parental childcare and voluntary service is the need to increase the value of remuneration for those who work in jobs that are generally held by women; teacher aids, care givers and the like. The battle is ongoing.
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Feathered end, samiam, or the stick?
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.
I tried that once (tear comes to eye, eye starts twitching, now feeling dizzy, need to sit down, opens bottle of Gin)
What a nightmare!!
my wife is AWESOME! she is one of those mothers that is like the human equivalent of a Swiss army knife.
I’m more like a rusty fork.
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Shunda barunda-I am attempting the same at the moment and am having similar difficulties with multi-tasking. How does one spend hours on blogs and Facebook and yet still have time to hang out washing, cook meals, make compost and manage children?
I may have to make some tough decisions….
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Famous novelist Ian McEwan (Atonement,Amsterdam, Saturday etc) has written a wonderful and hilariously funny book called Solar – its about a Nobel Prize winning physicist working in climate change.
It is a wonderful dark satire on all manner of human fixations and fads – including airports and other horrors.
Jokes about science are in short supply but there are a few nice ones here to add to your collection, such as:
When the cheated wife discovers her husband (a physicist specialising in string theory) in bed with another woman, he naturally says “Look, I can explain everything.”
One of the many themes is the debate about “gender science”.
Not many novelists acknowledge their debt to an exchange between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke at
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
Well worth reading. Two great minds in a well mannered contest.
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