Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Greens launch Pay Equity ecard campaign

From an excellent post by Green MP Catherine Delahunty at frogblog yesterday:
The Minister of Women’s Affairs is misdirecting her Ministry and the analysis is medieval. Women are the best advocates for themselves just like any other marginalised part of our society. If we had pay equity and Women’s Refuges were redundant we would still want to champion our own issues. We do need a proactive Ministry of Women’s Affairs but we doubt that the Government will let them act effectively on the important issues for all women.

A budget of $5 million dollars a year is not nothing, it’s more than women in the community can dream of and we want effective leadership on public policy.

But it looks like the sisters will have to do it for themselves all over again with the support of the brothers who know how to stand along us rather than speak for us at the top table.

So let’s remind the Prime Minister what the bottom line issues are. Sign the pay equity petition that Sue Moroney launched and add your comments to this brand new e-card on pay equity for women in the public sector and email it to John Key. PLEASE BE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL AND SEND ONLY ONE CARD. You can send the e-card from here. Thank you!
And here's what your ecard will look like:

I'm off to send mine now!

10 comments:

A Nonny Moose said...

While I was rather PO'd at the Greens this past election, and voted Labour instead, I'll get behind this!

Anonymous said...

NZers do not appreciate discrimination and unfairness - so lets abolish the Ministry of Womens Affairs.

I would be more than happy redirecting the savings towards womens and mens health issues.

Julie said...

Oh dear Anon you seem to have blundered into a feminist website and thought you were still at Kiwiblog! How sad for you. And how tiresome for us. Bye bye.

Anonymous said...

Ah no, I was just applying the commensense back to you Julie.

Feminism is stronger without Government pandering to us in the form of a department when we should be empowering ourselves. We are better than that and you should be encouraging that rather than thinking a Govt Dept would solve all our problems.

Anonymous said...

Anon may be trolling but he has a point - the Ministry of Women's Affairs has not served NZ well.

But rather than abolishing it, we need to be pushing for it to get more funding and support. How are less than 30 staff supposed to look after the needs of NZ women? It's sad that the Treasury has hundreds of employees and women's affairs so few. A pretty clear sign that the government values money over women.

Anonymous said...

Anon - errr no. If they wanted equality they could abolish the Dept or set up one for men as well.

What is more important? Economic equality for all NZers or a department full of women who have achieved hardly anything we can stand back and be proud of for decades? Treasury cannot be compared to the Womens Affairs dept.

stargazer said...

treasury working/pusing for economic equality for all nz'ers? ok, i just about fell off my chair for laughing. i've yet to see one report from them suggesting the state take over all private enterprise, and distribute the economic gains equally across the population.

some of their recommendations, including the famed "ideological burp" in 2005, would lead to the exact opposite of economic equality.

Anonymous said...

Stargazer you appear to be saying that the only way to achieve equality is total state control of the economy. Is this accurate, or am I misunderstanding you?

stargazer said...

no, i'm saying economic equality would mean everyone had the same amount of economic resources, and i haven't seen treasury pursuing that.

Anonymous said...

So redistribution? Err, that has failed and will continue to fail in any state.

No economist in their right mind would every suggest your idea for equality. But you're not an economist so we should probably leave it at that or I too will probably die laughing :)