Taking Further Action - Address to Pacific Women’s Watch

Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Kia orana, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Ni sa bula vinaka, Namaste, Ia Orana, Talofa ni, Talofa, Kia ora tatou and warm Pacific greetings to you all.

This is my first speaking engagement as Minister of Women’s Affairs and I am delighted it is to a group like Pacific Women’s Watch and on topics in which I have deep and long-standing interest.

I particularly wish to acknowledge Julia Parfitt, Deputy Mayor of North Shore City and MP Dr Jackie Blue who are both here today. Also Hon Judith Tizard sends her apologies as she is unable to attend but sends her best wishes for a successful seminar. I’m also delighted to see many groups represented here, including the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges, SHATKI and Women Against Violence, Youth Law, the Auckland City Mission and the New Zealand Public Service Association.

Because I have been Minister for less than a month, and many of you don’t know me, I thought I would tell you a little about my background so you can understand where I am coming from on the matters you have asked me to talk about today.

I’ve been working with women and thinking about the issues that affect women for most of my life. Underpinning my interest and values is my experience as a mother and grandmother with three children and three mokopuna. In my paid work I was a nurse and midwife and then manager of Women, Child and Family Services working in Rotorua for nearly 30 years. In those roles I saw women from all backgrounds, including those who were poor, or battered, or lacked the basic opportunities that most New Zealanders take for granted. Seeing the range and depth of women’s needs was one of the things that led me to become politically involved and to want to do things that would make a practical difference to women’s lives.

I joined the Women’s Electoral Lobby in the 1970s and helped that group start Rotorua’s first women’s refuge in 1978. That was a direct response to the number of battered women who were having babies under my care and, although we had no money when we decided to go ahead, we managed to get the refuge up-and-running.

A similar motivation also led me to help set up Rotorua’s first family planning clinic. I saw so many young girls having babies who didn’t have good family support or access to contraception that I felt that it just had to be done.

Since entering Parliament in 1999 I have continued to be deeply involved in issues that have a big impact on women’s lives, including health and development issues. I have been chair of the New Zealand Parliamentarians’ Group on Population and Development for the past eight years and am currently also the chair of the Standing Committee of Women parliamentarians from throughout Asia and the Pacific.

That group has a very strong focus on sexual and reproductive health, on HIV / AIDS, on youth health and on the elimination of violence against women. These are all important topics for Pacific women and the group’s work often took me to Pacific nations.

They are also topics that are important to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, both in its work on behalf of New Zealand women and in its international work, so in many areas there will be a natural flow from my work as a backbench MP into my work as Women’s Affairs Minister.

I bring to that role a commitment to continuing to implement the Action Plan for New Zealand Women with its three focus areas of economic sustainability, work-life balance, and well-being. One issue I have a strong interest in is eliminating violence against women. For instance, it should be much easier for women to report sexual abuse, to receive good assessment and treatment, and to be supported through the investigation and court process. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has recently started a research project on sexual violence that will examine the barriers to effective reporting of sexual violence and prosecution of offenders, so these are matters that are already firmly on the policy agenda.

The other area in which I already have a strong interest is New Zealand’s international obligations to uphold the rights of women both at home and by supporting efforts to bring change around the world.

My experience so far of CEDAW and the other important international agreements to which New Zealand is signatory, has been mostly through my roles in the Parliamentarians’ Group on Population and Development. Although I am sure that approaching these issues now as a Minister will bring a slightly different perspective, there are some things that will not change.

One thing I am certain about is the value of having NGO voices at international meetings. New Zealand is almost unique in both regularly including civil society representatives in official delegations and funding NGOs to attend events like CEDAW. A strong democracy needs to support diverse views and we should not be afraid to have those debates in international forums as well as at home. The government may not agree with everything that NGOs say at international meetings like CEDAW, but we still support you being there.

I see part of your role in a democracy as reinforcing some uncomfortable truths about where women are being failed. Generally we will agree about the problems and about what we want to achieve – because we are both working to improve women’s lives. Where there may be disagreement, it is usually about how to bring about the needed change. Any differences should not stop us from working together at home or at international meetings, because we are likely to get better outcomes if we are talking to each other and know where we agree and where we disagree before we take up public positions. Doing that does not stifle the debate about what we should be doing on very difficult issues like family violence. That debate is essential to us finding solutions that will work for all New Zealand’s communities.

And those communities are diverse with a wide range of contributions and needs.
Almost 23% of people living in New Zealand were born overseas and there are now over 200 different ethnic groups living in our country. While we manage relationships between these different groups better than in many countries, migrant groups still face prejudice and there is always potential for friction. While 80% of Kiwis believe migrants make an important contribution to New Zealand, 45% say we have too many from Asia and 39% say we have too many from the Pacific Islands.

As my colleague Chris Carter, the Minister for Ethnic Affairs, has pointed out: failure to recognise and value New Zealand’s ethnic and cultural diversity is failure to embrace the many benefits this diversity can bring and, as a nation, to put ourselves at a disadvantage internationally.

Valuing diversity can enable us to access new local and international markets, bring innovation, bring increased creativity and productivity in the workplace, bring multiple perspectives on problem solving, and help enrich cultural and social expression.

I value and celebrate that diversity and want to see greater recognition of it across government’s activities. I will also take this into account as I undertake my other important obligations as Minister, including my obligation to actively monitor our progress on responding to the matters raised by the CEDAW Committee.

Pacific Women’s Watch raised important concerns before the CEDAW Committee in New York earlier this year, and many of these were also highlighted in the questions to the New Zealand delegation from the Committee.

Most of your areas of concern are also areas where I acknowledge there is much more to be done, and where we are focusing significant government effort.

We agree that women in leadership should be a focus. Just because we have a few very prominent women in leadership positions, such as Prime Minister Helen Clark and the Chief Justice Sian Elias, does not mean that there are no barriers to women reaching the top. It is simply not good enough that only 7 percent of directors of our top 100 listed companies are women and, even in Parliament, only a third of Members are women.

It is not surprising the Committee also drew attention to the glaring lack of women’s participation in private sector boards.

Women on statutory boards is an area where the government is trying to lead by example and we hope the private sector will take up the challenge. In the state sector we have set ourselves a goal of equal numbers of men and women on boards and committees. As a result, we are doing much better than the private sector - the latest Ministry of Women’s Affairs Nominations Service stock-take of membership of state sector boards and committees found that women now represent 42 percent of the total government-appointed membership of those boards. Our target for 50 percent participation of women on state sector boards and committees is 2010 – around the time we will be filing our seventh periodic report to CEDAW. The Ministry’s Nominations Service plays an important role in supporting this process by identifying and putting forward suitably qualified women to serve on boards.

Motivated individuals and organisations like Pacific Women’s Watch also have a role in increasing women’s participation on boards. You can encourage suitably qualified women to put themselves forward and you can work to hold companies accountable for their lack of recognition of women’s skills by public scrutiny or by using your power as shareholders.

The gender pay gap is another area where we both know there is a problem. It has been illegal in New Zealand for the past 30 years to pay a woman less than a man but, despite this, women still have lower incomes than men on average. Some of this is due to the fact that women often work fewer hours, but about 12 percent of the gap can not be explained by legitimate differences in things like skill, experience or working hours. This is the gender pay gap, and it is proving extraordinarily difficult to eliminate.

Again this is an area where government is leading by example. The government is a very large employer and we decided that if we were going to tell the private sector they should be doing more to address women’s pay, we better make sure we were doing everything we should for the women who work for us. As some of you know, government agencies will all be required to undertake pay and employment equity reviews to identify any barriers to women in their employ – and then those government agencies have to design and implement a plan to address any issues they have identified. Most core government departments have undertaken these reviews over the past couple of years and we are in the process of rolling out the process to all other government owned and funded organisations, including the whole of the public health and education sectors.

At the same time the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is doing work to better understand the causes of the gender pay gap. One cause is something policy people call “occupational segregation”. This is where an occupation is dominated by one sex – for instance there are all too few women in the sciences, in engineering and the trades, and too few men in primary teaching and nursing. Occupational segregation matters, both because excluding women – or men – contributes to skill shortages in some critical areas, and because between 20 and 40 percent of the gender pay gap is due to occupational segregation.

Another area that Pacific Watch highlighted in New York, and where all New Zealanders need to meet the challenge, is ending the terrible scourge that is family violence.

By now almost every New Zealander must have heard the message “It’s not okay” that is at the heart of the television campaign to change attitudes towards family violence. They are also hearing the second part of the message – that it is okay to ask for help – judging by the numbers of calls to the helpline.

These ads are part of the Campaign for Action on Family Violence. The campaign is one of the initiatives of the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families set up by government in 2005 to co-ordinate and strengthen efforts to end family violence.

The Taskforce’s first report identified four action areas, one of which was ‘Changing attitudes and behaviour toward family violence’. Changing behaviour is always difficult, but government has shown that it can make a significant contribution to this process when it puts its mind to it. New Zealanders’ attitudes to drink-driving, wearing seatbelts, smoking and mental illness have been changed, in part because government has mounted effective, sustained campaigns. Those campaigns were led by national advertising, working in tandem with community action and with other initiatives such as education, tougher laws and better enforcement.

Family violence happens because we, as a society, tolerate it and changing that tolerance will be a long, hard road that will involve every New Zealander. As a first step the government has provided $14 million over four years for that nationwide campaign.

Research was undertaken to understand how to change perpetrator behaviour and this informed the key messages of the campaign.

Advertising is only part of the solution though. The other part is community ownership and action. The campaign has a very strong focus on community action and on supporting community initiatives that provide local solutions. The government has a role here, but it is more of a support role, providing funding and helping to make sure services are available where they are needed.

Government has not always been good at working closely with community organisations, but we know this is the only way that we will make progress in reducing family violence. One way we can do this is through another of the Taskforce’s initiatives, the Community Action Fund. This fund was launched last December to support communities that are taking the initiative to tackle family violence at a local level. The fund can make grants of up to $30,000 to support some of the great ideas and initiatives that are being developed at a community level to stop family violence. The first funding round saw grants made to 33 organisations.

Ending family violence is a huge challenge, but it is one that New Zealand finally seems prepared to accept. There are many other challenges, and generally the government, NGOs and the CEDAW committee agree on the priority areas for change. Generally too, we agree on the outcomes we want, which are to do with ensuring women are safe, have adequate income, do not face discrimination and have good opportunities in their everyday lives.

Where we may not always agree, is the best way to get there. The CEDAW Committee, for instance, favours special measures, such as setting quotas for women’s representation, whereas we do not believe New Zealanders would support government telling businesses who to have on their boards.

If we don’t accept such suggestions however, we have to find other ways to achieve similar results. We are determined to make progress in all the areas identified by the Committee. We will work with community organisations and NGOs like Pacific Women’s Watch who share our vision for a better life for all New Zealand women, including addressing the disparities between different groups of women.

Pacific Women’s Watch has an important role in following up on the recommendations and holding the government accountable for ensuring that progress is made in eliminating all forms of discrimination when New Zealand next reports to the Committee. You can also help raise New Zealander’s awareness of CEDAW and other international agreements on the rights of women and, by helping to change attitudes in your own communities, to eliminate negative stereotypes associated with men’s and women’s traditional roles in the family and in society.

I would like to end by thanking you for your work and for giving me the privilege of my first address as Minister of Women’s Affairs. I share your interest in raising the status of women and I look forward to working with you as Minister of Women’s Affairs.

Thank you.