Feminist Election Stuff - Women's Choice & Vote Equal Pay

Two big Auckland opportunities coming up in August

Women's Choice Election Forum - 7th August, 7pm, University of Auckland
Held every three years, an opportunity to hear the major parties debate on women's issues.

Facebook event for all the latest info and to share/invite others.

Chair will be Judy McGregor, stalls for organisations and cool stuff (eg Women's Bookshop) before hand, and reps from

• Labour - Jacinda Ardern MP
• Greens - Jan Logie MP
• NZ First - Tracey Martin MP
• Maori Party Cinnamon Whitlock (Ngapuhi, Ngati-Kahu ki Whangaroa, Te Rarawa) 
• Mana Party - Tracey-lee Repia · (Ngapuhi, Ngati Porou, Uenuku nga Iwi) 
• National - Erica Stanford

Vote Equal Pay March & Rally - 12th August, 11am, Britomart
Organised by the Pay Equity Coalition, a chance to show your support for pay equity and also hear from political parties on how they will tackle the gender pay gap.

Facebook event for updates and to spread the word.



Do feel free to email me about any other relevant feminist election stuff julie dot fairey at gmail dot com to promote and share :-)

Rage post about the gender pay gap: warning contains ALL CAPS

So there's new local research out today that the gender pay gap is a) real and b) primarily due to conscious and unconscious bias.

Firstly YES.

And also: it is good to have this in the public arena and being discussed, and for the Minister for Women to accept the findings as opposed to going "but we really need more research to be sure".   It is a victory for all those good folks who have been fighting to get this issue looked at on the facts, for many years now.

Because it is undeniable, it really is, that there is a gender pay gap.  There has always been a gender pay gap.  It was a little smaller a few years ago (went down to 11%, now back up to 12%) but it has ALWAYS BEEN THERE.

And yet people have sought to deny it, explain it away, it's because women want to be paid less, take time out for children, aren't as qualified as men, don't need as much income because the man of the house is the breadwinner.  WRONG.

And we knew these dismissals were wrong.  Lots and lots of us.  Not just from lived experience or from observing others around us but from the other many ways that workplaces, and society, treats women as less than men apart from pay, and from statistics, and from court cases and union agitation.  WE KNEW THIS ALREADY.

A little digression about "conscious and unconscious bias".  Can we please just call it what it is?  SEXISM.  That's what you call it when people are intentionally or unintentionally discriminating against women, individually or collectively, because they are women.  It's sexism, it's always been sexism - even the other explanations (now proven to have had only a small impact) like time out for childcare, taking jobs with lower responsibilities, not asking for promotion or pay increases blah blah blah all have a basis in sexism.

So how do we stop sexism, vis a vis the gender pay gap?  Apparently we need to raise awareness.

This is the point at which I start to get a certain song from That Bloody Woman (NSFW lyrics) stuck in my head.

See para 5:  WE KNEW THIS ALREADY

Yes, it probably will help, and it will give the many many organisations that ALREADY KNEW THIS new strength to push for implementation actual practical measures that will close the gap and treat workers fairly.

But excuse me for a moment while I rage inwardly against the people who only now see the truth that was there the whole time, and pledge to eliminate this Awful New Injustice They Had Never Heard Of Before Today.

I heard someone on the radio saying there is a strong business case to pay women fairly.  Of course there is, there always was.  Just as there are strong economic arguments to support the Living Wage, paying teachers more, showing that cleaners bring more value to society than hedge fund managers.

Again, WE KNEW THIS ALREADY.

Because businesses who get to pay lower wages save money in the short term.  Anyone who has ever worked in the union movement or a strongly unionised workplace will be able to tell you this -  for too many in management and above keeping the quarterlywage bill low is seen as essential, even when it undermines longer term benefits like staff retention, and increased productivity.

The tyranny of a corporate approach (in government too) that demands the lowest possible wage bill, and the lowest possible number of staff, will continue unless we ACTUALLY MAKE IT STOP.

That means legislation folks, not just raising awareness.  LAW CHANGES, sweet sweet law changes that make it necessary to STOP paying people less based on irrelevancies like gender identity and race.

We've asked nicely for pay equity for many years.  We've even asked assertively and with facts, like men do (eye roll).

CAN WE JUST DO THIS ALREADY?  (PLEASE)


I don't do comments anymore.  You can find me on Twitter or FB under juliefairey.

questions that were never asked

since there's no avoiding it, i thought i may as well do a post about a certain mr prosser.  contrary to what it might, my post of yesterday at my own blog wasn't actually about him.  but having listened to various media interviews over the last couple of days, i'm surprised that there are a whole range of questions nobody is asking mr prosser.

given that he wrote this:

“I will not stand by while their [his daughters'] rights and freedoms of other New Zealanders and Westerners are denigrated by a sorry pack of misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan"

i thought some of the following questions might be appropriate:

- if you are concerned about your daughters' rights & freedoms, do you support pay equity legislation, and do you commit to bringing back the pay equity unit that was housed in the former department of labour?  and what other policies will you actively pursue to reduce the gender pay gap?

- what actions have you taken to promote women's leadership, and in particular, the very small numbers of women appointed to the boards of directors in nz private sector companies?  what would you do to improve women's participation in governance and leadership in all sectors of nz society?

-  do you support greater gender balance in parliament and in cabinet?  and if so, can you point to any past statements you've made to indicate such support?

- women's refuge have struggled with funding in the past few years, to the extent that were relying on a donation from a pizza chain in order to function.  since you've become an MP, what steps have you taken to increase the level of funding to providers of support services for women who are abused in their own homes?

- rape crisis centres and other services for victims of sexual violence and abuse have struggled even more in the past couple of decades.  what effort are you making to ensure that sufficient funding is provided so the those who suffer from sexual violence and abuse are able to get the support they need in a timely fashion/

-  did you make any public statements when ACC introduced new procedures that severely restricted the provision of services to victims of sexual violence and abuse?  surely you were outraged at the huge drop in the numbers of women able to access the counselling they needed, and you would have had plenty to say about it?

- what are you views about women having the right to make decisions about their reproductive health?  are you prepared to advocate for women's right to make decisions about their own bodies?

- what changes to the justice system have you advocated to ensure greater access to justice for victims of sexual violence and abuse?  more than that, how have you worked to  change to our current culture which blames victims of violence for the crimes against them and where actively seeking consent is seen as  being a boner-killer or akin to asking for a signed contract prior to any sexual activity?  in fact, have you ever, even once, talked about rape culture and it's destructive effects?

 - how do intend to improve women's participation in non-traditional subjects like computer programming, engineering and the like?  at many high schools today, it is still common to only have 2 girls out of a class of 20 for subjects like IT programming.  and one of the reasons i've commonly heard from young women who chose not to take them is that they don't want to be in a class of mostly boys.  a related question:  how will you make the trades more accessible as a profession for women, and a safer environment for them to work in?

- have you ever used the words "feminazi", "sisterhood" or other derogatory terms, or ever complained about the feminisation of society, particularly when writing for investigate magazine?  how is it, if you care about the rights and freedoms of women, that you can bear to be published in a publication where such statements are common?


so, ok, these are just some things off the top of my head.  i'm sure some of you can come up with other and better questions.  but you get my point.  the basic question is this: if you are concerned about the rights and freedoms of women, where is the evidence that you have in any way advocated for women's rights and freedoms in this country? because if that is one of your basic values, then you should be widely known for it (your public advocacy that is), without anyone having to go looking.

ETA:  i forgot that i also wanted to link to this piece, which says a lot of things very well.  thanks to soraiya for pointing me towrards it.

The stubborn gender gap - the Market is not providing

Bad news on the gender pay gap today, as reported in the NZ Herald:

The gender pay gap is the biggest it has been in 10 years, according to new data from Statistic New Zealand.

The quarterly employment survey shows the gender gap has increased in the year to September by 1.3 per cent, from 12.85 per cent to 14.18 per cent.

Pay Equity Challenge Coalition said it was the biggest gap it had seen in a decade.

Contrary to the delightful picture the Herald have chosen to illustrate their story (a white man and a white woman, both in suits, arm-wrestling) the gender pay gap is not a zero sum game, where men will lose out if women gain, and it is also not predominantly the concern of those in the higher paid roles where suit-wearing is expected.  In March 2009 I wrote a longish post about what I see are the reasons for the gender pay gap.  I'm not going to rehash that again here, because I agree with our guest poster from March 2010, Rebecca Matthews, who wrote then:

It seems to me that there are too many people, and particularly in this government, who use further research and analysis as a shield to hide behind, because they actually don’t view the gender pay gap as a problem and don’t want to commit to doing anything about it..

The only people who have ever made real progress towards pay equity for women, or indeed for other group disadvantaged by not being older middle-class or above white men who appear straight, have been workers' groups and movements led by those who deserve the improvements.  Employers do not magnanimously pass on fair pay, they only do it when they are forced to.  This is why we have a minimum wage; because otherwise employers would pay some people below it and as a society we have decided that is not fair. Some employers are fair, that's true, but they don't appear to be the majority, and the Market doesn't encourage that behaviour.

In other areas we have significant gender gaps too - particularly in political representation of women and appointments to boards.  Talk about quotas has been slowly building for some years, in response to the inability of political parties and organisations to deal with it voluntarily and effectively.  I used to be pretty anti-quota; I thought that it would undermine those women appointed or elected.  But, having heard from Judy McGregor on the topic, I've changed my mind. 

It is not as if there is a shortage of women who would be good in senior roles, on boards, as political decision-makers.  Indeed there is some contention that more women on the boards of major financial institutions may have meant we didn't end up with all that global financial meltdown stuff.  Without a TARDIS, I don't feel I can say for sure.

The shortage is instead in the area of those willing to appoint women.  And if they won't start doing it, despite all the evidence of the value of diversity at the decision-making level, and decades of working to change attitudes, then maybe it is time to regulate.

and he's gone

i know i'm a bit late for this post, but never mind. i have to say i'm very glad to see that alisdair thompson is no longer in a position to make public statements for the EMA. of course he can still make public statements, but they won't mean as much.

i am actually an employer in a voluntary capacity, being on the board of a couple of NGOs. one of these is a women's organisation, and i know that we need support as employers. the EMA should be an option for us, but until now, i really haven't felt that they are - given that their public positions and lobbying haven't been consistent with good employment policy. an employer's organisation that advocates the youth wage or that won't take more concrete actions for equality in the work place is not one that i can justify giving money to. especially from an NGO that is working to improve the lives of people in this community. to belong to that organisation in its current state is to betray the very people our organisation serves. i'm pretty sure that the rest of the board agrees with me on this.

the sacking of mr thompson is a big step but still not good enough. if this organisation really wants to represent employers, it needs to make itself accessible to all types of organisations. i don't believe it's accessable to NGOs in the way it currently operates, but NGOs employ a considerable number of staff. chambers of commerce actually do tend to be a lot better, and have managed to do some progressive things. perhaps EMA could look to them for some ideas on how to actually serve the needs of their community.

on another note, there has been some great writing on the whole alisdair thompson thing from various bloggers, but also in the MSM. there was a good piece by denise irvine in the waikato times yesterday, but i can't find it online. this there's also this one from mai chen, which is very good. and not just because it happens to mention my sister!! who is absolutely as awesome as mai chen thinks she is:

My concern is that stereotyping may stop you from hiring the best staff. New Zealand is a small country.

I had a call some years back from a law professor who asked if I would hire her top student. Despite a stellar academic record, and a formidable work ethic, no one would hire this lawyer because she was Muslim, wore a hijab and prayed five times a day facing Mecca. The woman interviewed well, so I hired her and found she was the best law clerk I had ever had.

please ignore my bias and read the whole thing - it's worth it!

then there is this article about the low number of women on nz boards:

Korn/Ferry surveyed the top 100 boards by market capitalisation in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia China, and New Zealand, finding 65% of New Zealand boards had no women directors compared to 29% in Asia-Pacific leader Australia. In Singapore, 59% of boards had no women members, 57% in India, 56% in Malaysia, 43% in Hong Kong and 39% in China.

The news gets even worse, with the Asia-Pacific region lagging Europe and America, an imbalance report author Alicia Yi describes as "stark".

the difference in figures for asia can be explained by the low wages there, making it much more affordable to hire domestic staff for housework & child-rearing. also the cheaper & greater variety of food, making takeaways and eating out a much more affordable option. these are not things that we want to be emulating.

however, there is no reason we should be lagging behind australia, europe & america. many of these countries have government policies that help to improve equality, particularly in europe. as usual, our government is not prepared to look at these. although i will be impressed if they do something about removing secrecy re wages as was mentioned not too long ago. or even ask companies to report on gender payrates within their organisations.

finally, i'm currently awaiting brian edwards' defense of john ansell. based on past form, i'm sure it will be forthcoming.

Quick bits & pieces

The pay equity discussion continues, with the Prime Minister saying there shouldn't be pay discrimination on the basis of pay and he's unaware of any evidence that there is, despite all the evidence that there is.

Hannah Tamaki has been disqualified from running for the leadership of the Maori Women's Welfare League.  More at Maui Street on this.

I did an interview for an article on feminism that was in the Herald on Sunday on the weekend but it isn't online yet.  They also talked to other online feministy types Alana and Coley.

Lots of discussion about the issue of bus drivers turning away women in burqa.  

There's a new (historic) rape complaint being laid against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

alisdair thompson must go

i don't know if it's possible to embed tv3 clips (can't find any codes) so you'll have to go over to their place to watch the abomination fo an interview with alaisdair thompson. it's almost 28 minutes long, so you may not want to waste so much of your life on such a thing. the last 5 minutes is hugely illuminating, but the full things give more insights (as if his press release and tweets hadn't already) into how truly misguided this man really is.

a brief rundown of the interview: mr thompson starts by dictating the terms of the interview and how it is to be conducted. you see, he has been gracious enough to grant the interview in the first place, so it should be entirely on his terms. it's not like he has any responsibility to explain himself or anything like that. it's not like he made some atrocious public comments, or holds a role that requires him to make media statements which he should then be accountable for. oh no, he has "granted" an interview out of the goodness of his heart. he does state that he doesn't mind being asked "the most difficult questions you like" and assures the interviewer he will answer them. bear that in mind when you see his meltdown in the last 5 minutes.

once he has done that, he proceeds to tell us about his extremely busy life, with extremely important people. about his late nights and early mornings, because mr thompson is a hugely productive man who has no time to be taking sick days for weak womanly purposes. he's the man, the very important and busy man, who was pretty worn out by the time he go to the interview where he made his insightful remarks. not that he's making excuses of course. he just wants to impress on us how very busy and well-connected he is.

oh, and i missed the bit where he fusses about his appearance. because for some reason, people will be more interested in the tie and the hair than in what he's going to say.

mr thompson is prepared to apologise and does apologise. even though he's "not that unhappy" with what he's said. he gives us the apology, directly looking at the camera . hint 1: if you follow your apology with the word "but" and then go on to say a whole lot of other stuff, it shows you aren't actually sorry. so it really isn't an apology. hint 2: if you keep reiterating and reinforcing the thing you said which was offensive, then what exactly is it you're apologising for?

he reminds us that "fortunately" women are different to men and men are different to women. great insight there. women take more leave, as records show - although there aren't actually any stats on it (i've deliberately avoided writing the word out in full, in consideration of the fact that mr thompson so struggles with it). but he's the full expert now on what women do, how women manage (mostly with tablets, didn't you know).

and to show us how super non-sexist he is, he assures us that most women are more productive than most men, because of all the housework and childcare they do as well as work. he has been listening to the criticism he's been receiving all day, you see. he's showing us that he's taken it on board, that he's totally not sexist at all, because women are so different and so wonderful. it still doesn't occur to him to state that it's wrong for women to have to be the ones to take time off when their children are sick. he concedes later on that it's wrong for women to be doing more of the unpaid work in the home but can't think whose fault it might be. hint 3: if you want to convince us about how non-sexist you are, it pays not to use a hugely sexist term like nanny-state.

he thinks we need to take the emotion out of this. all this talk of menstruation and baby-making makes women so very emotional, obviously. it isn't helpful. let's all be non-emotional and just talk about productivity.

the bit that really gets me is the discussion of the personal lives of his two top women lawyers. the interviewer asks if they have children - relevant because he's so busy praising their productivity - and he answers in the negative. but then he goes on to discuss their marital status. how is that even relevant? and are those employees happy to have their personal lives thrown out into the public arena, just so he can make some tragically useless point about productivity? if i was them (& particularly since they are lawyers), i'd be filing some kind of complaint with the privacy commisioner pretty promptly.

as should all the other female employees who get to be used as examples of his "records" that are supposed to prove his point about the reasons for leave. we see the meltdown begin when he's asked for the research to support his assertions. he then decides that he should tell the interviewer what the question should be. she's apparently only there to do as she's told, not to hold him accountable. he knows he can't answer the question about research, because there isn't any. so he expects her to ask a differently worded question.

and when she does ask a pretty reasonable question about women giving heavy periods as the reason for taking sick leave, he has a complete meltdown. it's not even a difficult question, it's certainly not an offensive one, and it's asked in a completely polite and calm manner. his behaviour is shocking, and clearly bullying (but we're supposed to take the emotion out of the situation and be all rational-like). he knows it's being filmed - he specifically gave permission by saying "you can roll the camera now" a few minutes earlier.

his comments of earlier in the day were enough of a reason for him to step down from his position. but this? i really can't see how he can continue.

Is it just me or did the EMA just reinforce their sexism?

Very quick post from me on the Issue of the Morning - Alasdair Thompson's incredibly sexist comments that women are paid less because of taking sick leave off for periods and childcare.

 This would be worrying on it's own, but the fact that Thompson leads the major employer body in New Zealand, the EMA, leaves me chilled.  These are the views he encounters when he talks to the employers he represents, and what echoes around the EMA and thus to other bodies it has a close relationship with like other employer bodies, the Business Round Table, and so on.

I wonder what it feels like today to be a woman employed by Thompson?  Or a woman in his family?

There are some great posts out there about this already by others, here's just a few of them, feel free to add more in comments.

unequal pay is ok with employers & manufacturers association - stargazer
This is what makes periods painful - stef
I'm sick of this bullshit. Period. -Tallulah Spankhead

I would like to add one thing to this discussion - which is to point to the EMA's media statement which went up on Scoop around ten minutes ago.  I believe this statement makes things worse, because it includes this kind of rubbish:

"Alasdair Thompson, chief executive of the Employers & Manufacturers Association, says its only right that women should be paid more than men when their output and productivity is greater than men.


We back higher pay for women when they're doing a better job than men, he said."

We are not talking about higher pay for women, we are talking about equal pay.  The problem is now that men are getting higher pay, as a group, and if you turn Thompson's statement above around then assumedly he means that men get higher pay than women because they're doing a better job than women.  Is it just me or did he just say something incredibly sexist?  Again.

ARGH!

unequal pay is ok with employers & manufacturers association

great. alisdair thomson's response to catherine delahunty's equal pay bill:

... EMA chief executive Alasdair Thompson today admitted there was a gender pay gap -- 12 per cent according to figures -- but said women took the most sick days.

"Why? Because once a month they have sick problems. Not all women, but some do, they have children they have to take time off to go home and take leave," he told NewstalkZB.
Therefore their productivity was lower.

"I don't like saying these things because it sounds like I'm sexist, but it's a fact of life."

once again, i'm refraining from swearing because of internet filters, but really? all you ladies are taking sick days once a month? how come no-one told me? i'll have to start doing that immediately.

aside from the stupidity of the comments, he doesn't want to consider (and actually advocate for) the possibility that men who have children be taking time off around the birth to be active fathers. he's not interested in promoting policies that would make workplaces more family-friendly. he doesn't consider that many women are being more productive on a daily basis than their male counterparts.

nope, he's happy with the gender pay gap & wants it to stay. because heavens forbid that employers be faced with the costs of paying people equally for the same level of work.

i'm with helen kelly - the man has to go.

Interesting read on mothering and working

Thanks to a FB friend for directing me towards this thought-provoking column at Salon, including:

When Paul Krugman warns that many of the currently jobless "will never work again," I am petrified -- hello, 3 a.m.! -- that he means me. I long ago lost track of how many jobs I have applied for, including some I wouldn't have looked twice at in my 20s, but I can count the resulting interviews and have fingers left to twiddle idly. Before I left full-time work in 1996, my then-husband and I, both reporters at the same newspaper, earned the exact same salary. Now my ex, still a reporter, is making $30,000 a year more than that, while I have been passed over for jobs paying $20,000 less.

Quite terrifying reading, although I think the author's situation may be a bit exacerbated by the industry she is in (journalism).  At least that's what I'm telling myself as I contemplate my return to the paid work that pays most of our bills in less than two months, when Snuffly will be a little over six months old. 

The article is of course quite US-centric, but I suspect many of the troubles Read is facing may translate here.  I haven't job-hunted for six years, so I'm totally out of touch with the realities of that quest - what are your experiences, whether you are seeking to mix paid work with child-rearing or not.

Made in Dagenham

Today I saw Made in Dagenham, a film about the 1968 strike by 187 car-seat women machinists at the Ford plant outside London, which led ultimately to the British government passing the equal pay law. I've just been trawling through the British reviews. All of them by men, they range from condescending to sneering, with lots of nudge-nudge references to that hoary British sit-com, The Rag Trade, as well as to director Nigel Cole's previous hit, Calendar Girls.


I think you should see Made in Dagenham, and take your daughters and grand-daughters. First, it captures brilliantly the pervasive, blatant, smug, completely taken-for-granted sexism underpinning those far from distant days. The two things the men who ran the unions and the companies could agree on was the male right to be paid more than women, and be fully serviced by women at home.

The women working at Ford were probably better paid than most women factory hands, but they still earned less than the men and worked in a leaky, run-down, hot building (so hot, according to the film, they commonly took their tops off and worked in their bras). The strike began when Ford reclassified their work as unskilled, meaning, of course, less pay (though the actual details of their hours, rates, etc are far too tedious to be covered on film).

Despite union leaders' attempts to get them to back off and behave, they instead upped the ante, demanding equal pay with men. The women won the support of the union members, the Labour Government's Barbara Castle met the strike leaders, and after a partial victory for these women, two years later Britain passed a law bringing in equal pay - though still, of course, only for "equal work".

All this has been turned into a great story which will have huge popular appeal. The script, by Billy Ivory, never once made me cringe - except maybe when Barbara and Rita swap clothes chat just before their big moment with the press. It shows what the women are up against, at home as well as at work. Their uncomprehending menfolk are staunch unionists until it comes to being laid off when the lack of car-seats brings the plant to a standstill - and then having to get their own dinners and mind their own kids, because their wives are off demonstrating and negotiating.

The film has understandably collapsed the group of women who led the strike into one, the young, attractive Rita O'Grady, played by Sally Hawkins (who starred in Ken Loach's Happy-Go-Lucky). There has to be, I suppose, one heroine, even though that wasn't how it happened.

One other thing brought home to me how much liberty most historical films take. At the end, as the credits roll, there are side-clips of the actual women involved talking about the strike - they must have been interviewed by the makers, I wish we could have a documentary as well. There's also archival news footage of them in 1968, with Barbara Castle.

The factory women look absolutely nothing like the mini-skirted, mostly young, often busty and peroxided, swinging sixties women in the film. They're a bunch of extremely respectable-looking, often middle-aged women with perms and neat cardies. They reminded me more of the women in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake. Now there was one film that really did manage to look like the times it was recreating on screen, and very grim it was too.

Still, it's much better to have this film than none, and I'm sure it will draw far bigger audiences than Vera Drake, precisely because it's a lot more entertaining to watch. Unlike most of the overseas reviewers, Charlie Gates of The Press, Christchurch, understands what it's doing:

"When was the last time you saw a film with a strong female protagonist? A proper film that wasn’t about shopping, getting a man, climbing the corporate ladder or all three. Made in Dagenham is one of these rarities and it is a pleasure to watch...Made in Dagenham is full of warmth, humanity, humour and genuine drama...It keeps a perfect balance between the intimate and the turbulent sweep of history."

Even more unusual, Gates actually checked out how true-to-life the film was. "My partner's Nan, Flo Patston, lived near the Dagenham plant during the strike and her husband, Johnny, worked at the plant in the 1960s. I knew Flo had already seen the film, so I called her in England to see what she thought. She said it was a 'brilliant film' and gave it 'four stars and more'."

And Flo also said all the strong language the women go in for was perfectly genuine: "That’s what you heard on the factory floor. That’s how working class people spoke."

Four stars to you, too, Charlie, for your fine review. Go and see this film for yourself.