Women returning to work

Napier Cosmopolitan Club
Napier

Members of Zonta, Ladies & Gentlemen;

Thank you for the invitation to share this evening with you, and thank you for the work that Zonta does in Hawke’s Bay to support women returning to education. I am pleased to be accompanied by my colleague Russell Fairbrother MP and his wife Pam.

The Catherine Charman Memorial Award is a very practical way to support the courageous women who take that big step of returning to education as adults. Congratulations go especially to Vivienne, but also to all 38 applicants who deserve our support and encouragement for their future. Second chance education can be tough, but the rewards are huge for women and for their families, both in terms of personal satisfaction and in terms of income.

Education has always been one of the keys to the advancement of women. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Suffrage Day - the 113th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. Those early suffragists who fought so hard for political rights also realised the importance of education for women.

The first girls' secondary schools were opened in New Zealand during the 1870s and a few women were admitted to universities, but at the time that women gained the vote in 1893 there were still only a handful of women university graduates, and no women doctors or lawyers.

Even when I studied law in the early 1980s there were many more male faces than female. It was then only a decade since the first woman had been appointed to teach law and the first Mâori woman was appointed to the Bar.

Not so now. During my working life, we have gone from a situation where appointments of women lawyers were noted as ‘world firsts’ to a situation where the majority of graduates from our law schools are now women.

By 2001, women made up 60 percent of all new admissions to the Bar, and about four out of ten practising lawyers were women. In law, as in other professions though, more graduates and more women working does not translate very quickly into more women in senior roles. In the Census of Women’s Participation published by the Human Rights Commission earlier this year, women still only made up a little over 17 percent of the partners in top legal firms and just under a quarter of judges.

To paraphrase a UK pay equity expert: ‘the glass ceiling may have disappeared, but there often seems to be a remarkably sticky floor’.

I have used the example of law because it is a profession I know and because it is fairly typical of the way that women have been embracing education, and then using that education to advance themselves and transform parts of the economy. Women now make up around 60 per cent of students enrolled in tertiary education organisations, compared with 52 percent in 1994.

Women still earn less than similarly qualified men though. The New Zealand University Graduate Report shows in general, females in full-time employment six months after graduation earned less than their male counterparts. Of the females for whom salary information was available, nearly half earned $35,000 or less, compared to only one third of males.

This is typical of the wage gap almost all women face. The good news is that research indicates that women benefit by having tertiary qualifications, because the percentage pay gap between men and women reduces with higher qualifications. And there’s lots of other evidence that education brings you more rewarding work and better incomes.

But there are always two sides to every coin. And we have too few women in the sciences, in engineering and the trades, and too few men in primary teaching and nursing.

I recently spoke at the launch of another Human Rights Commission report called Give Girls A Go. That report was on female Modern Apprentices in New Zealand and it outlines the patterns, causes and possible solutions in addressing the gender segregation, which is prevalent in work-based training and non-traditional work. This disparity is one of the major issues in New Zealand’s gender pay gap. In fact, the report says that between 20 and 40 per cent of the gender pay gap is due to occupational segregation.

There are now nearly 9000 apprentices in the Modern Apprentices scheme, but just 8.5 per cent of them are women. There are great opportunities and very good incomes to be made in trades such as plumbing, carpentry and motor mechanics, and I hope many more young women will take up a trade. Overseas research has indicated that up to 70% of young women might have chosen non-traditional careers in trades if they had know what the comparative salaries and opportunities would have been. This suggests that we need to get more of this information into schools when our young people are making choices about their future.

Over the last quarter of a century there have been significant changes to
New Zealand’s labour force and women now make up almost 50 per cent of all those in paid employment. We are beginning to make fuller use of women’s talents in the economy and women are using education to build better lives for themselves and their families.

The young women graduating over the next few years will enter a workforce that, while it is still not quite fair for women given the continuing pay gap, is certainly one which has many more opportunities then when I graduated 20 or so years ago.

I hope that those inequalities that remain will slowly be squeezed out of the system as the talented, well-qualified women currently in the workforce take more senior roles. I look forward to the day when around half of the directors on our top 100 listed companies are women, rather than the mere seven per cent we have today.

I want to end with a story, which is not a woman's story but it is relevant because it is an adult learner's story. It is my husband's story. He was a train driver in the 1980s and could see the writing on the wall. He had left school the day he turned 15 years, but needed to think of another career. He studied for a liberal studies certificate at University and then enrolled for and completed a degree in law, which he practises today. His is an inspirational story, but one that could not have been achieved without the considerable support that he received. With the right supports in place anything is possible.

So can I congratulate Zonta Hawke's Bay for the Catherine Charman Memorial Award; it is a great initiative with a very practical focus. Although it comes down to the drive and enthusiasm of individual women – women who decide that, the sacrifice is worth it for themselves and for their families – supports like these make a real difference.

So well done to Vivienne Herries, the recipient of the Award, and to the 38 women who applied for the award. They are all champions and I wish them all the best for their study and for the rewarding careers that will be more achievable due to the investment they are making in themselves and their families.

Thank you.