CEDAW 2010 Key Facts

Status of New Zealand Women in 2010

Key CEDAW 2010 Facts

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New Zealand continues to lead internationally in gender equality

• New Zealand is ranked fifth in the Global Gender Gap Report which measures gender disparities across economic, educational, political and health indicators. 
• New Zealand ranked below the Scandinavian countries and we outperformed the United Kingdom (15th), United States (19th) and Australia (23rd).

Women continue to outperform men in education

• The rate at which Māori women are gaining secondary school qualifications is increasing more quickly than for other women - from 2005 to 2008, the number of young Māori women leaving school with NCEA Level 2 grew by 47.8 percent.  
• Māori women are still (54.4 percent) less likely than European women (80.6 percent) to leave school with at least NCEA Level 2 in 2008.
• For graduates in 2009 with at least a bachelor degree, 63.2 percent were female.
• In 2006, more women (396,075) aged under 50 had a tertiary qualification than men aged under 50 (368,424).

Women have high labour force participation rates

• In 2009, New Zealand had the ninth-highest female labour force participation rate in the OECD.
• However, this is highly variable by age with lower rates of labour force participation for women in the 25 to 34 age bracket – placing New Zealand twenty-third in the OECD for this age group.
• Over a third of women work part-time - 35.0 percent of women and 12.4 percent of men work part time.
• Gender-based occupational segregation still persists – roughly 50 percent of women and men work in an occupation where at least 70 percent of the workforce are of the same gender.

 Women’s leadership skills are under-utilised

• Only 9.3 percent of board members on the top 100 listed companies on the New Zealand Stock Market are women.
• In comparison, 41.5 percent of positions on state sector boards and committees are held by women.

Women are more likely to undertake unpaid work

• In 2006, 20.6 percent of women and 10.6 percent of men cared for a child who did not live in their house.
• In addition, 11.5 percent of women provided care for a non-household person who was ill or had a disability compared to just 6.5 percent of men.

Violence against women continues to be a concern

• At least one-third of women in New Zealand will be victims of violence in their lifetime.
• Three-quarters of sexual assaults against women are perpetrated by people they know.
• Of the estimated 9 percent of sexual offences that are known to police, only 13 percent result in a conviction.