by Catherine Delahunty
Today the Biennial New Zealand Census on Women’s Participation in 2010 was released. It shows that women’s participation in governance, professional and public life is backsliding, and that we’re losing ground on the gender pay gap, with 24 public service departments having gender pay gaps greater than the total labour force.
Depending on how you read the reporting on the gender pay gap, it’s 15.4 percent in the public sector (according to this report), and 12.4 percent across the board (according to the Quarterly Employment Survey that came out last week). If you believe the Minister of women’s Affairs it’s 10.6 percent, but actually whichever figures we use it’s a disgrace.
The Minister of Women’s Affairs’ response to the new Census data on women is fascinating. She says the Government is working on getting more women on boards. Now, the census shows that of the only 9.3 percent of directors of the top 100 companies on the stock exchange are women – a figure that has barely moved since 2008. Even on Government boards, which the Government has control over, the percentage of women has slipped back half a percent. So despite this apparently being the Minister’s focus, we’re going backwards.
Furthermore, while it would be great to see more women on boards, it’s hard to escape seeing this focus on the elite level of boards of directors as tokenistic. How will this close the gender pay gap for school support workers and social workers in the public sector? What evidence is there that more women on boards results in pay increases for low-paid women workers?
The Minister also says getting more women to be plumbers and into other male-dominated professions will close the gender pay gap. Her theory is that women should abandon the low-paid caring professions and get into the male-dominated trades. I would love a woman plumber in my bathroom but that still doesn’t fix the gender pay gap for aged care workers in rest homes and residential care facilities. Furthermore, if women abandoned the caring professions the world will cease to function! Even a National Government might notice that.
As for flexible working hours, that law was developed by the indomitable Sue Kedgley and is a great innovation. But it doesn’t result in gender pay equity and shouldn’t be confused with it. It’s about working hours not hourly rates.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs are also apparently “working to create pathways for women in low paid sectors to move upwards” and “tracking male and female graduate incomes”.
I would love to see these “pathways to move upwards” during this recession. I’m glad the Ministry produced research showing that after one year the pay gap between male and female graduates with the same qualifications was 6 percent, and after five years it was 17 percent, but research is not action!
Face facts Minister, we’re going backwards here.
Women are being discriminated against, and your Government axed the Pay and Employment Equity Unit.
The Green Party supports the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition in their call for a plan for meaningful action on these issue not irrelevant strategies which have no mandate from women’s organisations involved in gender equity.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Justice & Democracy | Parliament by Catherine Delahunty on Mon, November 8th, 2010
Tags: feminism, gender pay gap, human rights commission, Ministry of Women's Affairs, pay equity, Pay Equity Coalition, women's affairs
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
I have two comments, one serious, one less so.
I work for an organisation that the report has noted has improved its percentage of women in higher places. Our division has a new woman leader, and she is pretty much everything I would hope for someone in such a position. But reading this report, I am now left wondering if she was actually the best candidate for the job, or the best female candidate, and there was a better candidate who had the less preferred gender, and was thus excluded, just to get the numbers up.
If so, is that acceptable?
Secondly, I am perturbed that the Film and Video Labelling Body is entirely headed by women; blokes have a distinct interest in this subject!
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I’m going out on a whim with this comment, but this morning I’ve wondered if part of the pay-gap problem is that there’s so much emphasis on trying to get women into jobs that men dominate, but very little on the other way around.
Looking around my workplace, certain classes of work are heavily dominated by women. Personal Assistants are a biggie, and because of the nature of the job, I’m guessing they’re likely to be paid less than an executive or an engineering profession-style of job. If there’s no emphasis on getting men into something like a Personal Assistant role, then that will always be dominated by women. Even if you get some of those women out into higher paid roles, the positions will be filled again, and right now it’s very likely they’ll be filled by more women simply because men won’t apply for them. It’ll always be reflected by the pay gap of an organisation, unless there’s another high-paying class of job that also doesn’t interest men.
Anyway, it feels weird to argue that a way to fix the pay-gap problem could be to encourage more men into lower-paying work. Or is the problem that the work should be paid better?
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Thanks for the comments, there is a reason men don’t apply for the low paid feminised jobs. They are low status and badly paid. We need to change the way we value caring for people and also create fair and equitable wages but judging from my questions in the House today to the Ministry of Womens Affairs it’s not on the agenda!
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