Hutt Valley National Council of Women

Waiwhetu Uniting Church

Waterloo, Lower Hutt

Rau rangatira mā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te rā – mana wahine. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā ra tātau katoa.

Thank you for the invitation. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak to an organisation that has made such a significant contribution to the advancement of women in New Zealand.

I am still fairly new as Minister of Women’s Affairs, but I am enjoying the portfolio and finding it has plenty of synergies with my other roles as Minster of Commerce and Minister of Small Business. It also allows me to be more involved in issues that have been important to me for many years.

My awareness of feminist issues arose in the 1980's when I became involved in the union movement. We debated the Working Women’s Charter and the relevance, or should I say irrelevance, of economic theory to the unpaid work of women in the home. And we grappled with how to respond to the reality of low-paid women workers who did not have the ‘industrial strength’ of their male counterparts, and the issue of women returning to the workforce after having a family.

I also attended one of the nationwide series of workshops in Christchurch that led to the establishment of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs by the 4th Labour government. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking then – other than that the Ministry was a damn good idea – but I am certain that I was not thinking that I would be the Minister of Women’s Affairs when the organisation celebrated the 20th anniversary, which it will do in just a few days time, on 6 May. The celebration will be low key, partially because although the 6th is the anniversary of the official opening of the Ministry by David Lange, the organisation was actually up-and-running by then, because the women involved did not muck around. The first chief executive, Mary O’Regan was appointed nearly a year earlier and the first Minister, Ann Hercus, shortly before that.

Nevertheless it’s a milestone worth marking and a good time to note both the progress that has been made in those 20 years and the fact that, despite that progress, many of the issues from that time are still with us. I have been asked to talk about plans and progress on some of those issues, including the ongoing gender pay gap, other employment issues as they affect women and progress in areas such as access to legal services, where women are currently disadvantaged.

I’ll start with equal pay, because it has been such a focus of interest over this whole period. Equal Pay legislation actually pre-dates the Ministry – the Equal Pay in Employment Act was implemented in annual steps to 1977. At this stage – nearly 30 years ago – most of the legal barriers to pay equity were removed; yet in June last year, women’s average hourly earnings were still 18 percent lower than those of men.

The fact that a gap remains – and that it is narrowing at such a slow rate – underscores how legislation alone does not solve problems that have complex causal and influencing factors. The government’s approach recognises this and we are addressing both the causes and the consequences in a number of ways.

One important decision by the current government was that the government sector had to itself show leadership as an employer. In 2003 we established a taskforce to explore pay and employment equity issues in the public service and public health and education sectors. Following the Taskforce report in March 2004, the government made a commitment to a five-year Plan of Action on Pay and Employment Equity to ensure that remuneration, job choice and job opportunities in the public service, public health and public education sectors are not affected by gender.

A Pay and Employment Equity Unit was established within the Department of Labour in 2004 to assist in developing a comprehensive and creative approach to finding out why gaps in pay and employment equity exist, and look for solutions that work for both employers and employees.

As a result of that work, over the next three years every government department will undertake a pay and employment equity review. The reviews will use a range of resources developed by the Unit, including a pay and employment equity review tool and a gender-neutral job evaluation tool (which is still under development). These tools will help organisations assess how well they are performing in gender equity and how they might ensure equitable outcomes for present and future employees.

Government has also set up a $1 million a year contestable fund that provides resources to build capacity for participating in pay and employment equity processes and a tripartite steering group, with government, employer and employee representatives, to lead and evaluate progress on the Plan.

The Plan of Action also calls for work to consider the scope for action to improve pay and employment equity in the wider state sector, including local government in phase two, and the whole economy in phase three.
The plan will go a long way towards eliminating the vestiges of inequity faced by women in the state sector and will show other parts of the economy that it can be done.

So that’s what government is doing to get its own house in order.
On the wider front, supporting women to balance paid work and family responsibilities is an important priority for this government. In doing this, the government recognises that there are a range of complex factors that affect the choices women make about employment. It therefore seeks to support women through providing families with real choices about balancing work and family life.

Progress has been made across a number of areas. Some recent major developments include:

• the Working for Families package, which significantly increases financial support for working families, including assistance with childcare costs
• the extension of paid parental leave from 13 to 14 weeks, and the introduction of legislation to extend the scheme to self-employed mothers
• the planned introduction in 2007 of 20 hours of free early childhood education for three- and four-year-old children in teacher-led services.

Gender stereotypes are more difficult for government to address because you can’t legislate for attitude change.

It is women themselves – and organisations such as NCW – that need to challenge those stereotypes. As we outlined in the CEDAW report, which has just been completed, there is evidence that beliefs about the roles of men and women in society are changing. A survey undertaken in 2002 by Massey University showed that a minority of New Zealanders – about 18 percent – supported the traditional view that a man’s job is to earn money while a woman’s is to look after a home and family. More than 50 percent of respondents agreed that men should do a larger share of housework and childcare than they do now.

As those attitudes change we should see positive changes in areas like occupational segregation. Increases in women’s educational attainment and increasing workforce participation are taking more women into traditionally male fields, such as law, and increases in the wages in traditionally female occupations – such as the government’s recent big pay boost for nurses – should make these professions more attractive to men.

Of course there is still a preponderance of women in low-paid and insecure work and that is an issue that concerns me as much as I know it concerns you.

Again the solutions are complex, but there are things government can do, and is doing.  Because women are over-represented amongst low and minimum wage workers, minimum employment provisions are therefore particularly important for women. 

The minimum adult wage, which applies to people over 18 years, increased from $9.50 to $10.25 an hour from 27 March 2006, the largest increase since the Labour-led government came into office in 1999.
The minimum youth wage - for workers aged 16 and 17 years –also increased by nearly eight percent, from $7.60 to $8.20 per hour, to stay at 80 percent of the adult minimum wage. The minimum training wage increased to the same rate.

The boost in the minimum wage will ensure that lower paid workers share the benefits of economic growth, encourage people to join the workforce and provide protection for some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable workers.  The latest increase will benefit around 91,000 adult workers, most of whom are women, and around 10,000 youth workers. It can be made with confidence in the current economic and labour market conditions, without being at the expense of jobs.

The government’s goal is for the adult minimum wage to reach $12 an hour by the end of 2008, if economic conditions permit. Earlier this year the government also introduced legislation to amend Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act, to clarify protections for employees who are affected by the sale or transfer of a business, or contracting out of work.

This legislation will give effect to the original policy intent of the 2004 amendments and overtake a 2005 Employment Court decision that said employees did not have employment protection in succession to contract situations.

This protection was provided to ensure that groups of vulnerable employees, such as cleaners, have the right to transfer to a new employer on their existing terms and conditions of employment when they are affected by restructuring situations. Of course, many of these employees will be women – at the time of the 2001 Census around two-thirds of cleaners were women, and it is unlikely that this has changed much since then.

Another area where women are sometimes disadvantaged is in access to services. One area of concern which government has recently addressed is access to legal aid.  Women make up 68 percent of family legal aid recipients and only 17 percent of criminal legal aid recipients.

In 2001, the Government agreed that the Ministry of Justice should review the eligibility criteria for legal aid. That review resulted in the Legal Services Amendment Act 2006, which was enacted just a few weeks ago and comes into force in March 2007.

The Act demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that an inability to afford a lawyer is not a barrier to accessing justice. It also aims to ensure that people seeking public assistance genuinely need it and will contribute to cost where possible. Under regulations to be made under the Legal Services Act, income thresholds for civil cases will be based on gross income and adjusted according to family size. For example, a family of two adults and one child will meet the criteria on earnings up to $36, 371. The current equivalent level is $19, 060. Income thresholds will also be inflation-indexed in the future to keep up with the increases in the cost of living.  Under these regulations, the pool of those who are eligible for legal aid will increase from 765,000 to 1.2 million.

The Amendment Act retains merits tests to ensure that legal aid is only provided where there are good grounds for the case to proceed, but there will be a new merits test for certain Family Court and Youth Court proceedings where the existing ‘prospects of success test’ is difficult to apply.

All these changes should improve access to legal services for women and especially those women on lower incomes.  These examples show the various ways in which government is working to remove barriers that still disadvantage some women and to provide ways that encourage and enable women and their families to achieve their potential.

As you well know, although we have made some remarkable progress over the past 20 years, there are still areas of real concern where further work is needed. I have touched on some of them, and have not even mentioned others – such as the level of violence against women.

As I mentioned earlier, many of the issues we are left with are complex in their causes and do not lend themselves to legislative or other solutions based largely on government intervention. This doesn’t mean that government doesn’t have a role – we need to get the law and the policy right, and ensure government interventions are well thought out. Rather it means that government can’t do it alone. We can’t legislate to change the attitudes that tolerate violence, or provide the subtle underpinning of continued under-valuing of women’s work – but attitudes can change if government, and organisations like NCW, and communities work together to bring about that change.

NCW has made a significant contribution to improving the lives of New Zealand women. I, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, look forward to continuing to work with you to achieve the change that is still needed.
Thank you.