South Canterbury National Council of Women

Timaru

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. I'm always pleased to be able to meet with such a diverse, dedicated group of women who make such a useful contribution to women's issues in New Zealand.

Your national conference in Invercargill in September provided an excellent snapshot of this diversity and dedication. It is always good to be able to go back to Wellington in the knowledge that women do care about what's going on in Parliament. I can assure you that your voices are being heard and that you are continuing the valuable advocacy traditions of your forebears in the NCW.

As I pointed out to the national conference delegates, the NCW was an early campaigner for equality between men and women under the law in areas such as marriage and employment. They urged that women be able to be elected to Parliament and to be appointed to public offices, such as the police, and to be able to serve on juries.

They argued for free and longer education for children, and they advocated for universal old age pensions, prison reform, and the abolition of capital punishment.

Now, all these demands have been met, although some, such as equal pay, took more than 80 years to get on the statute books and are taking much longer to achieve in practice.

It seems to me that most young women today simply don't realise how much we owe to those women who went before us. Their vision anticipated the ongoing struggle, but they were also women of an era that believed that women had an innate morality that could –and should – be used to civilise society.

NCW continues to work at grassroots level to address the real needs and concerns of women. Some key issues you have raised with government are works-in-progress such as addressing the needs of kinship carers, travel costs for home-based carers, overseas development aid, and specific issues around education and health. The Labour-led government has made some progress, partly as a result of the concerns raised by NCW, but also as a result of a genuine coincidence of interest.

What I like about the NCW is the fact that your membership allows for what is often the moderate voice of reason to emerge to lead debate on what can be quite controversial matters. Even when you cannot reach consensus, you present your arguments for and against with integrity and it is always a valuable contribution.

I am often asked why we need a Ministry of Women's Affairs when women are "running the country". This perception is based on the presence of a group of very talented high profile women in the top echelons of our society, such as the Prime Minister, the Speaker, the Chief Justice, the immediate past governor general, and a chief executive of a major company.

I see the risk that this becomes a singular moment in history rather than a turning point, because when I look down through the layers I see that the women are simply not there in large enough numbers to ensure women are the leaders of the future. The fact that a few have made it should not be an excuse to rest on our laurels and think our work is done. It clearly is not.

If we as women have to stand our ground just to protect what we have, then how are we ever going to advance our cause?

I am thinking here of issues such as equal pay for work of equal value; of occupational segregation; and of New Zealand’s intolerable record of family violence, the vast majority of the victims of which are women and children. This latter issue is particularly relevant this week as we lead up to White Ribbon Day on November 25.

The seemingly intractable issues demonstrate that simply changing the law does not, in itself, change the attitudes and behaviours that gave rise to the discrimination in the first place, and which continue to underpin ongoing discrimination.

The government is committed to putting its own house in order on all of these issues before we ask others to look at themselves; although, to be fair, there are many who are already doing so in order to stay ahead of the game. Many employers realise that work-life balance means as much to their male employees as it does to their female employees, especially when they are committed to sharing parenting and household responsibilities. Family-friendly workplaces will be nothing more than a slogan if the needs of both parents are not genuinely respected.

On the equal pay issue we decided that the government sector had to itself show leadership as an employer. Through a five-year Plan of Action on Pay and Employment Equity we are committed to ensure that remuneration, job choice and job opportunities in the public service, public health and public education sectors are not affected by gender. Over the next three years every government department will undertake a pay and employment equity review and develop and implement an organisation-specific programme to address any issues found.

We also have our own house in order on the issue of women on boards, where determination by this government, backed by a very effective Nominations Service run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, should see us achieve our target of broadly equal participation of men and women on state sector boards and committees by 2010.

41 per cent versus 7 per cent in the private sector is too big a gap to easily explain. I'm pleased that three private sector databases are now being set up to provide a similar service for women and the private sector. Overseas research indicates that diversity on boards is good for business and, besides, it seems ludicrous to ignore the undoubted talents that 50 per cent of our population have to offer.

We are also putting our own house in order by addressing occupational segregation, which is simply policy-speak for looking at why jobs that have been traditionally done by women tend to be lower paid.

One example is that government is working hard to encourage more women into the Modern Apprentices Scheme where currently women make up just 9 per cent.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs has undertaken some interesting research that I released at the start of this month, showing that young women could be up to $15,000 a year better off if they decided to become a sparky or a plumber or a builder – those male-dominated trade-related occupations that usually involve an earn-as-you-learn apprenticeship structure.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is going to do some further work on this to assess whether, and how, having such information affects the decisions young people make about what types of work to enter; and to assess whether gender-based occupational segregation has wider economic impacts, such as on productivity levels and the responsiveness of the labour market to skill shortages.

There are still significant barriers to women achieving economic independence, work-life balance, health and well-being, but increasingly the barriers are ones that government cannot address on its own. The barriers that remain are more about attitudes and behaviour, and I cannot legislate for attitudes.

The progress we make over the coming decades will increasingly be the result of much closer co-operation within government – the whole-of-government approach we have been promoting – and between government, non-government organisations such as NCW, and the wider community.

That is why the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families included the judiciary and the police, together with representatives of government and non-government organisations. It is a good example of what can be achieved with a very high level of co-ordination between government agencies and non-government organisations working in the area.

It is certainly no time to rest, or to assume that gains so recently made, and with so much effort, cannot be readily reversed. In international forums on the rights of women, New Zealand increasingly finds itself fighting to retain advances won in the 1980s and 1990s rather than having the opportunity to promote further progress. There is a type of conservatism influencing the international agenda that hides behind the banner of family values. These are values we are all committed to, but those of us who wish to advance the place of women, not see us regress, uphold family values in a form that is respectful of everyone's human rights, not just those of a privileged few.

The suffragists who fought for the vote in the 19th century knew that the struggle was ultimately to change hearts and minds, and not just change the law. That struggle is still with us today.

We must remind ourselves just how many of our rights have been gained in our lifetime and ensure that today's young women, who are growing up in a generation that has not had to struggle for those rights, learn the lessons of the past and take nothing for granted.

Thank you.