Speech to open women parliamentarians' conference

Speech notes for address to 4th Asian-Pacific Women Parliamentarians' & Ministers' Conference, "Gender Responsive Governance – the key to the population & development agenda."
Parliament BuildingsWellington9.00am – 10.00am

Maori Greeting - I have greeted the building within which our discussions will take place; I have greeted the land; I have acknowledged those who have gone before us, for they are with us, and I have greeted each and every one of you individually and collectively and welcomed you to this place.

It is my privilege and my pleasure to welcome so many of you to our place – to the NZ Parliament, especially those who have travelled from afar –from nga hau e wha – from the direction of the four winds - to Aotearoa, New Zealand. New Zealand is a young country when viewed in terms of my ancestry – I can trace one quarter of my heritage to 1863, but of course the tangata whenua – our first nation's peoples were here centuries before that. And the Treaty between Maori Tribes and the Crown was signed 23 years before the arrival of my first ancestors. That is why we in New Zealand seek to pay respect to those traditions that are integral to our national identity.

The Conference agenda that we have before us is a challenging one indeed and that is why it is so important that we have so many prominent parliamentarians and ministers here from all around the Asia-Pacific regions. As New Zealand's Minister of Women's Affairs, Commerce and Small Business, I am personally looking forward to sharing with you some of the things New Zealand has been doing to improve opportunities for women and also to learn of your experiences. While women around the world have made great progress in the past few decades, no one could say that we have achieved equality.

I attended the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and picked up a UNIFEM brochure, which proclaimed that women were one half of the world's population, perform two-third's of the world's work, receive one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property.

Although there may have been percentage movements here and there, that remains the seemingly insurmountable challenge. However this region has never shirked challenges and this Conference is an important part of sharing information with each other about what we have done in our own countries in order that we may make progress together.

Even in a country such as New Zealand, where women seemingly dominate the most senior positions, I have had to challenge our young women that unless they wake up to the reality of the fragility of some of the gains that have been made, the beginning of the 21st Century may become a fleeting moment in New Zealand's history, remembered as the time when women ran the country, rather than as a historical turning point.

I have expressed to them my own desire that history would define this time in New Zealand as a turning point leading to a future where leadership qualities are defined by a capacity to share power, not divide and rule, and where gender becomes irrelevant to the question of in whom leadership qualities reside. I hope this Conference tells us that this is achievable not only in New Zealand but throughout the world.

Before I explore this theme further can I first acknowledge a few of the people here. Of course when we have an event like this it is hard to single out individuals, but it is important that we acknowledge the leadership of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population & Development:

• Secretary-General Senator Malinee Sukavejworakit
• Chairman, Mr Yasuo Fukuda
• Executive Director, Shiv Khare

And in particular I want to thank an extraordinary New Zealand Parliamentarian, Steve Chadwick, who has made this event possible. Steve has the rare ability to bring together a team when a job needs doing, and whenever she sets her sights on achieving things she is unstoppable. So thank you Steve for your dedication and commitment – it is valued and appreciated.

May I also particularly acknowledge Mr Najeeb Assiffi from the office of the Asia & Pacific Division, UN Population Fund and Mrs Valerie DeFillippo, Director of External Affairs of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation.

I would also like to acknowledge all of my NZ parliamentary colleagues, who are here and those who will be contributing over the next two days, especially the Speaker of the House, the Hon Margaret Wilson, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Hon Winston Peters and our own Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark.

The underlying issues that challenge women in New Zealand are no different than those that challenge women around the world – the only difference perhaps is one of scale and scope:

• how do we ensure that women are able to gain economic independence?
• how do we ensure women and men have balance in their lives and the contribution that women and men make to their contribution to the home, community and workplace are valued?
• And, how do we ensure all women have real choices in their lives? How do we make real the catch cry of the 1990s – that women's rights are human rights.

I think that the theme for this Conference challenges us to think about these questions from a higher level. "Gender Responsive Governance" speaks to me of leadership and direction that recognises that there are systemic barriers to women achieving equality. That is why New Zealand takes its reporting obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) so seriously.

New Zealand women have full equality before the law, but what we know – as many of you will too – is that legal equality does not translate into equality in fact. Improving the status of women, even in a country that was the first to grant women the right to vote, needs to see attitudinal change before that will be achieved. Where people take the blinkers off and are prepared to say that yes men and women are equally violent to each other on a knock for knock basis, but ask who is frightened of whom. Of all the partner deaths in this country, how many of the victims are men and how many are women? There is no comparison.

Do we understand fully the effects on babies and young children of their being 'incubated in terror' as one visiting expert described the experience for those born into violent households? Do we know how many workdays are lost from bullying, at the hands of those who are the dominating wielders of power and control, who have one face for their victim and another for everyone else?

Why do we tolerate lower pay for women at any level, but especially in salaries for women in the professional sectors like law and accountancy, where the gender segregation is by specialty rather than occupation? Why does Business New Zealand say we don't need legislation to encourage flexible hours of work in the workplace when the Business & Professional Women's Association says we do? Why is their experience so different?

I raise these questions because we in New Zealand could give the appearance of complacency with a woman Prime Minister, a woman Governor-General, and a woman Chief Justice. Women chair the two most powerful regulators in the country, the Commerce Commission and the Securities Commission. But although it has made a difference having women as role models, who have broken through the glass ceiling, we still have some way to go. Looking down through the next layers of government, the judiciary and the business world, I am concerned about where that leadership will come from in the future.

The fact is, in business, and in many other areas, women are not given the opportunity to contribute in leadership roles. This is particularly true at the board level in private sector companies. The most recent data shows that only seven percent of board members on the top 100 NZX-listed companies are women; that only 17 percent of University professors & associate professors are women; only 19% are mayors.

On the positive side the fact that 35 percent of the boards of government owned companies are women shows that we can make a difference and I will come back to that this afternoon in the workshop.

When Hillary Clinton gave her speech at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 – the meeting that gave rise to the Beijing Platform for Action - she stated the simple truth that women’s rights were human rights.

When I was young I used to say that women's liberation was men's liberation too and I still believe that. Men can be just as stuck in sex-role stereotyping that limits their choices as much as women can. Imagine the effect of losing your job as a man when you have been brought up to believe that it is your job to support your wife and children and that there is shame in you staying at home while your wife goes out to work.

We need people at every level of governance to understand that equality doesn't mean the same and that gender doesn't just mean women.

"Different but equal" as a slogan got a bad name in the apartheid era, when there was no commitment to the "equal" side of the equation. Let us reclaim the language – different but equal – recognising that there gender differences, but we are equally human and equally committed to our communities, our families, our countries and our planet.

I hope that the next two days challenges you and rewards you and you always remember that you came here to Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand to participate in a small conference that will make a big difference.