Noise - Out There

If you are interested in politics or are passionate about political issues such as GE crops & food, America's "War Against Terrorism", nuclear weapons, the situation in Israel & Palestine, Prostitution Law Reform, bringing no-smoking regulations into New Zealand cafes and bars, teacher's pay dispute.....  etc etc ..... this is a page for YOU!

Get your views out there or use this chance to let other young NZ women know what's happening out there - in your town, in Aotearoa and in the world.
Email us if you're keen to submit an article or opinion piece.

Letters from Palestine

Because the YWCA is a global organisation, we sometimes receive letters from our collegues overseas telling us about issues in their country. In 2002, as Israel's invasion of Palestine grew more and more intensive, we received several moving emails from the YWCA of Palestine. The letters describe what is happening in Palestine at the time they were written and are a thought-provoking reminder of the real stories behind the news clips. 

To read the letters from Jerusalem click dates July 6, 2002, April 2, 2002

Articles & Opinions

This section will be made up of political pieces from young women all over NZ - we have one article at the moment so have a read and then write one of your own!

Monthly Column

Ana Gilling, a young Wellington woman, is Y-Dub's Political Columnist. This month's column is on pay equity in New Zealand. Next month she will be discussing how new adoption laws in Florida are an attack on women's privacy.

Also check out the Hon Ruth Dysons first public speech as the Minister of Women's Affairs.

Women and Pay Equity in New Zealand

Do you earn the same as the men at your work? Yes? You're very lucky - and very unusual. The vast majority of women in New Zealand earn significantly less than their male counterparts - even if they have the same qualifications and work experience.

 On average women in New Zealand earn only 84.3 percent of men's average hourly earnings. In March 2001 Statistics NZ noted men earn approximately $20 an hour, compared with $16.95 for women. For Maori and Pacific Island women the pay gap is even worse - Maori women on average earn 74 per cent and Pacific women 70 per cent of men's average hourly earnings.

So why do New Zealand women earn less than men ?

In part the gender pay gap can be explained by women who choose to work part-time, or not at all, because they want / need to combine paid work with family responsibilities. The gap can also be explained by women taking jobs that pay less than men's. For example, jobs women have traditionally done are invariably paid less than men's traditional jobs. For instance, nurses and primary school teachers not only pay for their own training but are paid far less than police, who are paid to train. A first-year nurse begins on around $24,000, a teacher $29,000 and a new constable $46,000.

Amongst other recent graduates, the average salaries of men are higher than for women with the same qualifications, regardless of their field of study. For example, university graduate surveys show that male commerce graduates start out in their careers earning on average nearly $5000 more a year than women of the same age with the same qualifications.

Trudi McNaughton, executive director of the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust, notes that the pay gap between male and female graduates is in part because women, particularly young women, are far less forthright when it comes to negotiating their salaries. McNaughton notes that when male job applicants demand more money they are viewed as just the sort of ambitious person the organisation needs. "But if women negotiate hard, a number of male managers have told me they find that intimidating."

 From her experience of interviewing eager young job-seekers, Maureen Eardley-Wilmot, co-owner of a city-based computer firm, has seen women's inability to negotiate good pay. Eardley-Wilmot describes how a young woman will apply for a job with the firm, say she is earning $28,000 but is prepared to drop to $25,000 to get the job. The male applicant will announce that he expects to be paid $35,000. If the firm wants to hire the young man, it will usually offer him $30,000. He will most likely accept, "but he'll let you know he expected $35,000 and that you're lucky to get him". The woman will be grateful to have been offered the job.

But perhaps the most significant reason for the gender pay gap is the distribution of paid and unpaid work in New Zealand. Though women and men earn about the same amount when they start out in the workforce, by the their late twenties women will start to fall behind men in the salary stakes. When women take time out of the workforce to have children, they stop gaining the years of work experience which are so important for gaining promotions later on. By the time women start to rejoin the paid workforce in their thirties they are well behind men in terms of salary - and will continue to fall behind if they work part time, or don't work long hours because of their family responsibilities.

So what can be done to address the gender pay gap in New Zealand ?

The Ministry of Women's Affairs have just released 'Next Steps Towards Pay Equity: A Discussion Document'. The Discussion Document provides information on the gender pay gap and the current range of government policies which address men and women's pay. The document also includes discussion of the principle of 'equal pay for work of equal value'. New Zealand has no current policy on this, just equal pay laws if women and men are doing exactly the same job. The Ministry of Women's Affairs hope that women's organisations (such as YWCA), and individual women read the discussion document and add their comments / questions / ideas to the public discussion on the gender pay gap and pay equity.

For a copy of the 'Next Steps Towards Pay Equity: A Discussion Document', and a more detailed, fully referenced background paper, 'Next Steps Towards Pay Equity: A Background Paper on Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value' (which will be released in late September), contact the Ministry of Women's Affairs;

Ministry of Women's Affairs
PO Box 10 049
Wellington          

Email: mwa@mwa.govt.nz mailto:mwa@mwa.govt.nz
Fax: (04) 472 0961

Submissions on the Discussion Document (by post or e-mail) are due 30 November 2002.

Hon Ruth Dyson  
Address for Women's Suffrage Day ~ 19 September 2002

Wahine ma. Tena koutou.  Tena koutou i nga wahine toa i para te ara kia riro i a tatou, te wahine te taonga nei a - te pooti. Anei tatou e whakanui nei i taua ra, e whakanui nei i aua wahine. Na reira, tena tatou katoa.

Greetings, women.  Greetings to you and to those brave women who paved the way so that we women were able to achieve that which we treasure (in a democracy) - the vote. Here we are celebrating suffrage day and honouring those women. Therefore greetings.

Good morning. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you all here to celebrate the 109th anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand.

The purpose of this morning's breakfast is to celebrate our history, our achievements and our diversity. As I look around me, I see women who have made a contribution in every walk of life - politics, central and local government, business, for Maori and Pacific people, and in the community sector. There are too many of you to name individually, but I appreciate the effort each of you has made to be here. In particular, I want to thank Judy Lawrence and her team from the Ministry of Women's Affairs for organising this breakfast.

The special focus of our celebration today is women in the community. It is easy to bemoan the fact that women's work is never done; that, in general, we are the carers, the teachers, the people who raise the children, look after our most vulnerable citizens, and do most of the unpaid work.

We do need to address this imbalance - and I will come back to that - but we also need to celebrate the contribution we make. If we don't value the work we do, who will?

Today has special significance for me because it is my first public appearance as Minister for Women's Affairs.  It would be fair to say that I owe my political career to women. I became involved in the Labour Party because of women's support and encouragement. My first elected position in the party was onto the Labour Women's Council. At that time, I worked with women like Helen Clark, Liz Tennent, and then party president Margaret Wilson, while Laila Harre was the youth rep.

Since then, I have forged strong friendships with other women colleagues, many of whom are here this morning. When you consider the line-up and the  support they have given me for the last 20 years, it's not surprising that I have stuck around!

I am very proud to have followed in the footsteps of some great women in history too. Elizabeth McCombs, the first female MP, was elected in 1933 in the seat of Lyttelton. My entry into Parliament was also through the Lyttelton electorate, and it is an area I continue to represent as the MP for Banks Peninsula.  In fact, Lyttelton has had five women MPs, the greatest number of any electorate, and two Ministers of Women's Affairs, Dame Ann Hercus and myself. It must be the bracing sea air that makes the voters there so astute!

In the current Labour-led government, women make up around a third of MPs(17) and roughly the same proportion of ministers (8). While this is significantly better than any of the other political parties, we are still too light on the ground.

Which reminds me of Glenda Jackson's impressions when she became a new MP.
 "People have said to me that your first week in the Commons is like your first week at school," she said. "My school was never like this. People told you what to do, they were less friendly and there were more girls."

The only way to ensure that there are plenty of girls at the top in politics and indeed everywhere, is to ensure that organisations' structures promote women's involvement at all levels. New Zealand women are great leaders - there's plenty of evidence of that in this room - and we must work hard to encourage and support each other in leadership roles.

 The Loaves and Fishes is a great venue to celebrate Suffrage Day. Just through the doors that link to Wellington Cathedral is a national monument to New Zealand women, called the Trail of Light - the first of a three-part Landmarks Project that came out of the Suffrage Centennial Year celebrations.

This evening, Prime Minister Helen Clark is speaking at the screening of the documentary, Coffee, Tea or Me?, which looks at the history of New Zealand flight attendants from the 1950s through to their court battles for equal employment opportunities in the 1980s. The funds from that event will go towards the second stage of the Landmarks Project - the recording of 50 significant dates in New Zealand women's history - and I urge as many of you as possible to get along there and make today a double celebration.

We should all be proud of the fact that New Zealand was the first nation to bring in universal adult suffrage in 1893.

 Today's focus on women in the community is particularly fitting when we  remember that the fight for the vote was spearheaded by community-based organisations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. As well as organising the political campaign for women's right to vote, these women were also heavily involved in community activities like running soup kitchens, visiting prisons and hospitals, and youth work. Some things never change!

Maori women were also influential in providing political impetus for universal suffrage. At the same time that the suffrage movement was reaching a climax, large sections of the Maori community established their own parliament.

In May 1893 Meri Te Tai Mangakahia presented a motion to this parliament to enable women to vote for, and sit in, it. She based her claim, and it was well received, on Maori women's experience owning and managing their own land.

 The combined efforts of both Maori and Pakeha women meant that when the Electoral Act was passed on 19 September 1893, it gave all women in New Zealand the right to vote.

In the process, they had had to overcome attitudes such as those of parliamentarian Henry Smith Fish, who was of the view that "bringing women into contact with politics will destroy that refinement, that delicacy of character, which has been her greatest charm hitherto". A woman, he said, would go straight from being "an angel of the house" to joining "the shrieking sisterhood".

There are still a few Henry Smith Fishes out there, judging from some of the letters to the editor in response to the New Zealand Herald's recent focus on women. But overall it's hard to believe that women were ever denied the right to vote. Or that men thought that it would ruin our delicate characters. I hope that the issues facing women now - such as how we earn enough money to support ourselves while raising our families - will seem equally incomprehensible to future generations.

Since becoming Minister of Women's Affairs, I've been asked if I've been disappointed in the progress women have made since feminism took off in the 1970s.

The answer is 'no'. I think we have made huge progress. What I am disappointed in are some of the outcomes of our struggles. We have worked hard for women's participation, particularly in the paid labour market, and there have been great improvements in that area. What we haven't done yet is get the right balance between paid and unpaid work.

This is not just an issue for women. Overall, a decade of a deregulated and competitive environment has reduced the quality of life for many workers of both sexes. A lot of men also have more stress in their lives than is healthy. But women have paid the greater price because of the additional level of stress that accompanies our role as carers.

Women make up 47 per cent of the paid workforce and 43 per cent of the self-employed. Yet society still expects us to have children, care for whanau and families, and do much of the unpaid work in our communities.

Maori and Pacific women face particular stresses because of their broader  family responsibilities, concentration in low paid work, higher level of community work, and the younger age structure of their population groups.

There is a lot of talk about the need for a work/life balance. It's a debate that hasn't been properly had yet. Unions are leading the way with research like the Council of Trade Unions' Thirty Families Project looking at the impact of work hours on New Zealand workers and their families, and its Get a Life campaign to achieve a more reasonable balance between people's work and their lives with their families and in their communities.  As part of its Future of Work Project, the Department of Labour is also undertaking a two-stage programme on work-life balance.

Women have fought hard for the right to do anything. Now we must fight for the right not to have to do everything - at least, not all at the same time.

I want to assure you that I am committed to policies that will enable women to achieve balance in their lives. As my staff will tell you, one of my nicknames in Parliament is 'Minister for the 40 hour week'. However, central government can do only so much. Change is never achieved without political support in the community. That's why I'd like to spend a few minutes outlining our achievements and our future programme of work - and when I say 'our', I mean yours and mine.

It's not an exhaustive list - it is only breakfast, after all - but I would  be keen to get your feedback and your backing.

Paid parental leave

Paid parental leave, introduced on 1 July, is one area where we have made significant progress. It recognises that childbirth requires time off work, and should be treated in the same way as other essential time off work - that is, it should be paid. More than 6000 people have applied for paid parental leave since its introduction on 1 July. That's 6000 parents who can now afford to take the time to adjust to the birth of a new child without having to rush back to work, with all the associated social and health benefits for both mother and baby.

The scheme is in its early phases and we do not intend resting on our laurels. As Helen Clark said in the Speech from the Throne in August, the aid parental leave scheme "will be comprehensively reviewed after one year' operation, with a view to expanding the scheme as resources permit.

Priorities will include extending coverage to those with more than one employer in the previous year, the self-employed, and extending the period of leave."

Pay equity

Pay equity is also back on the agenda for the first time since the National Government repealed the Employment Equity Act when they came to power in 1990. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has now prepared a discussion document on the issue, and is seeking public comment until the end of November. Please make sure you have your say.

Pay equity recognises the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. Research has shown that there are two main contributors to the gender pay gap - the time women take out of the workforce to bear and rear children,  and the lower levels of pay for the occupations where women are more likely to work.

If true equity is to be achieved in the workplace, the undervaluing ofwomen's work in general needs to be addressed, as do the particular inequities that face Maori, Pacific, migrant, young and disabled workers.

Home care is a good example - it is a triple whammy where workers are undervalued because they are primarily women, the type of work they do is undervalued, and the older people and people with disabilities they care for are also undervalued. Addressing these issues is a priority for me that spans several of my portfolio areas.

Bicultural solutions

Underlying all our discussions we must acknowledge that one size does not fit all. For Maori women, in particular, not only are some of the issues different, but also some of the solutions.

Nowhere has this become clearer to me than in my discussions as Minister for Disability Issues about whether family members who provide care for people with disabilities should be paid. Most Pakeha favour independent living arrangements for adult family members. However, this view is not shared by Maori, for whom caring for whanau is part and parcel of nga tikanga Maori. Bicultural problems require bicultural solutions. We must also ensure that the views of Maori women are taken into account when we are setting the agenda in the first place.

Achievements

The Labour-led government has achieved many things for women in the last three years. As well as introducing paid parental leave and re-opening discussions about pay equity, we have:

• improved access to childcare and out of school care;
• produced a 10-year plan to increase the participation of Maori, Pacific,
• low income and rural children in early childhood education;
• removed the work test for sole parents receiving benefits, giving them more flexibility around parenting;
• addressed economic disparities between partners that arise when a marriage or relationship breaks down;
• encouraged more women into industry training, so that women now make up 23 per cent of all trainees, compared   with 13 per cent in 1996;
• launched Te Rito: New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy; and d
• developed strategies in disability issues, health, and positive ageing that will have a positive impact on women.
• but don't worry - there's still plenty left to do!

What is coming up in the short-term? By Christmas ??????

We will have circulated a discussion document on a Women's Strategy for New Zealand. The aim of the strategy is to take a whole of government approach with goals and policy priorities for women. Thousands more parents will be benefiting from paid parental leave, and the review of the scheme will be taking shape. We will have received your submissions on pay equity and will be developing an appropriate course of action. We will have improved the Ministry of Women's Affairs nominations service to get better representation of women on statutory boards and committees. And we will have completed our latest report to CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, noting the progress New Zealand women have made since our last presentation in 1998.

In conclusion, I want to say that this is a great time to be the Minister for Women's Affairs. In the recent Herald feature on women, EEO Trust executive director Trudi McNaughton said her response to the question of how well New Zealand is advancing the status of women read like a fourth form report card.

"Has made significant advances. Doing well compared with peers but potential still not realised. Will have to work hard not to rest on laurels." 

I can assure you that I have no intention of resting on our laurels, and I invite you to work in partnership with me on a clear focused plan of action for the future.  The success of the suffragettes - and our many successes since - have been due to the women's movement working together, setting priorities, and making strong and steady progress.

I am keen to meet a wide range of women's groups, not only in Wellington, but throughout the country. I undertake to maintain an open and direct dialogue with you on women's issues. I appreciate the support and the challenges that the movement offers. I look forward to meeting those challenges and to sharing the many victories we have ahead of us.

Thank you.