Rau rangatira mā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te rā – mana wahine. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā ra tātau katoa.

You have asked me to talk about the work of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs – and it’s a topic I could talk about for hours! But this evening I’ll limit myself to an overview of the Ministry’s work and a couple of important issues the Ministry is working on.

As I know they are for you; women’s issues are a passion for me. The health, well-being and equality of women and girls are the foundation of a just and functional society. We have come a long way but we still have a way to go. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is a key player in addressing the ongoing work of equality and equity for New Zealand women.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs provides sound, well-researched advice to government on a vast range of issues that impact on women in New Zealand.

It runs a Nominations Service aimed at increasing the number of women on government boards and committees.

And it is responsible for New Zealand’s international obligations in relation to the status of women, through treaties such as the CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Ministry’s high priority areas include issues like eliminating the gender pay gap; understanding how occupational segregation impacts on women and the economy; and improving the quality of childcare and early childhood education.

The two issues I want to focus on tonight are: women in leadership, and how we are working together to end violence against women.

These are two areas where we are making a practical difference that will result in better lives for many New Zealand women.

Women in Leadership
Depending on where you look, you may think that New Zealand is doing pretty well when it comes to women’s participation. You sometimes still hear the ‘women are running the country’ mantra based on the fact that we have a woman Prime Minister, a woman Speaker of the House of Representatives and a woman Chief Justice.

New Zealand rates pretty well in international measures of gender parity.
In The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 –New Zealand ranks fifth in the world (behind Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland, and ahead of the Philippines, Germany and Denmark).

We may rank fifth in the world but the reality is that women are still not getting the opportunities they deserve to participate in leadership. There are almost no women on the boards of our largest companies.

The latest Census of Women’s Participation will be released on Monday. I can’t give you the latest figures, but I can tell you not to expect much improvement on the dismal 2006 results which showed fewer than one-in-14 directors in the top 100 companies listed on the New Zealand stock exchange were women.

The state sector is doing better, with more than one-in-three directors on Crown companies being women, and with women making up 42 percent of all government appointed boards and committees.

We have set ourselves a target of 50 percent women’s participation on these boards and committees by 2010. It is going to be a real stretch to meet that target, but we are committed to doing our best to achieve it. No other country has so far reached full gender equality in this area and the few that are as close as us, like Denmark, are finding that it’s easier to make the big leaps when the gap is large, but harder to close the final few percentage points. We find the same challenge in other areas too, like the gender pay gap, where the last 12 percent difference is proving very hard to shift.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs’ Nominations Service is working hard to close the gap on state sector boards. The service puts forward women with the right skills and experience for appointment, matched to the needs of particular boards. The Ministry has a large (and growing) database of suitable women and an excellent understanding of the requirements of the appointing agencies.

The Nominations Service operates as a kind of ‘super-recruiter’ and it has been very successful at helping government increase the number of women directors. It is always looking for women with board skills, so if you are interested, or know someone who is, I encourage you to visit the ‘women on boards’ section of the Women’s Affairs website.

Violence against Women
I am sure that we are all aware of the terrible statistics about violence against women and children. It’s horrifying and I sometimes feel helpless when I hear another tragic and preventable story.

The Labour-led government is working hard with local communities and non government organisations to try to turn this around. It takes a long time to change attitudes and trends of domestic violence or sexual abuse and that’s why collaboration is so important from all sides. Our government leads this work, but change has to be brought about also through organisations like yours, community groups, schools; everyone in our society must join us to make the change.

Women are overwhelmingly the primary victims of family violence – one in four women have experienced violence at the hands of a male partner at some stage in their lifetime. Between 2000 and 2004, 45 women were murdered by their male partner or ex-partner, which is deeply upsetting and concerning.

‘It’s not ok’
The government is working hard to try to change attitudes towards family violence. We have just launched the second phase of the ‘Campaign for Action on Family Violence’. This involves TV ads in which men who have been violent to their partners or whanau in the past talk about how they were able to change their behaviour.

These men have been very courageous to come on national TV and own up to their abusive past, and it’s through people like this that others will be inspired to change their behaviour also.

The campaign, which was originally launched last September, has already been successful in raising awareness that family violence is not ok – it’s a personal responsibility and a community responsibility.

We need high impact campaigns like this if we are to change our culture, but we also need to do the hard work behind the scenes to change the things that make it hard for victims to go and get help, and hard for offenders to accept responsibility and to change their behaviour.

Everyone sees the television ads, but far fewer people are aware of the range and depth of the work being undertaken by the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families or by the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence.

Another important area my Ministry is working on is research into the very high personal cost to victims in bringing rape complaints, the very low conviction rates for rape, and the consequent re-victimisation of some women.

These are not new problems: The 2006 New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey estimated that only 9 percent of sexual violence offences are reported to the police.

By looking at research done in the United Kingdom on rates of conviction for rape and sexual abuse we can estimate that the chances of an offender being tried and convicted of a sexual assault in New Zealand are probably less than 1 percent.
It’s not ok!

There are four main research areas that will give us a much better understanding of why the system is failing so many victims and what might be done to improve things.

1) Support services

The first area of work is a survey of people who work with victims of sexual violence to get better information on the ability of our services to respond to their needs. Some reasons that deter victims from reporting sexual violence include lack of confidentiality and inaccessible services. In-depth case-studies will find out the impact of these factors on the reporting of sexual violence.

2) Seeking help

The second area of work involves interviewing victims of sexual violence to try to understand what influenced their decision to seek help or not to seek help.

3) Conviction rates

The third work stream aims to uncover and properly analyse attrition and conviction rates for sexual violation cases in New Zealand. That involves analysis of existing information that has been collected, but not yet collated, in a form that gives us a useful national picture of how difficult it is to prosecute and convict.

4) International research

And finally we are interested in whether we can learn from other countries that might be better at looking after the victims of sexual violence. We will review international and New Zealand research on best practice in victim support, and the challenges to implementing this in New Zealand.

Despite the huge gains that New Zealand women have made in recent decades, in some areas we are still struggling to understand why women are disadvantaged.

The fact is, the government can’t develop better policies and deliver better services unless we understand the causes and the barriers to change.

I’m very encouraged by this research and by the other projects and programmes that will save women in the future from violence and fear.

We also need to recognise the many groups, organisations and individuals who work in communities to speak out, challenge, support and create waves of change.
We need these champions.
We can all speak out.
All of us here tonight can make a difference.

Working together, I believe we can make family violence a thing of the past because, as women, we have already demonstrated we can change the world in other ways.

I want to be part of making that difference and I know you do too.

Kia Ora.