Suffrage Hutt Education (SHE) Trust

Soup and Sandwich evening 5.30pm Community Hall, Mabey Road, Lower Hutt

Rau rangatira maa,
tenei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te ra.
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

[Distinguished guests, greetings to you gathered here for this purpose today. Greetings once, twice, three times to you all.]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening.

While this evening is focussed on ensuring the scholarship continues its tradition of supporting local talented women, it’s a great opportunity to acknowledge those who keep the fund going. So congratulations, not only to those involved in the Trust, but to those dedicated to organising these important fundraising events. Just as you are here to recognise the importance of maintaining this fund, the scholarships have recognised many talented women, and hopefully, will continue to do so for many more years to come.

Speaking of talented women, I bring apologies from Prime Minister Helen Clark, who herself is a great supporter of any efforts our community makes to help remove the barriers that prevent women from realising their full potential.

If women (and in particular our young women) can’t realise their potential, they lose out as individuals – and our society also loses, because no country can afford to not fully use the talents of half its population.

And while the barriers may be more subtle than in the past, they still exist. I want to talk about some of those barriers and what our government is doing to address them, but first I wanted to acknowledge your work.

Improving the circumstances of women and giving us the opportunities we deserve requires action nationally, regionally, locally and personally.

Nationally, government has to develop and implement policies and laws that help all its citizens, not just women, to achieve full potential. And at the national level, we also have umbrella organisations like the National Council of Women, PACIFICA or the Mâori Women’s Welfare League; or organisations like Women’s Refuge which advocate and act to address particular issues.

These organisations have critical roles working in partnership with government – even when that sometimes means acting as a thorn in the government’s side, pointing out what is needed and pushing for change.

Then there are organisations like yours operating locally; local people helping local people. You see the potential of women whose frustrating circumstances prevent them from achieving their potential. You know the school kids and other young people who, with a little help, could go further and perhaps have a career that would otherwise have been beyond reach. You see the need, you say ‘I can help’, you organise, you fundraise, and you do it! I commend you for the difference you make the lives of many local women and their families.

You are changing lives locally and through that you are helping change New Zealand for the better.

That is no small feat, because ultimately it is the personal change that matters – change in what we believe to be possible and what we expect of ourselves. We don’t just see that in areas like second opportunity education, but also in issues such as family violence. Governments can put in place good policy, laws and enforcement, but our work has limited benefits if the community doesn’t become involved.

That will only change through better awareness of the impacts of our actions in our relationships; in the way we tolerate or ignore violence in our families and community; as parents on the sidelines at our kids’ sports matches, and in our attitudes towards bullying at work and in our schools.

Violence is one of those barriers I mentioned earlier, but women also still have yet to achieve full equality in employment and in areas like caring for dependents.

For instance, in employment, women’s participation in the paid workforce is characterised by part-time work, lower average pay, and marked occupational segregation. Women earn less than men, even when they work in the same professions.

The disparity widens when women take time away from the paid workforce to raise a family and so this often becomes the time when our choices are the most limited.

The New Zealand Childcare survey showed that access to childcare was a barrier to paid employment for one in five women . And when we did find work, the problem was finding balance between work and the rest of our lives.

The Time Use survey showed that while women increased participation in paid work, we continued to carry the lion’s share of unpaid work – whether looking after family members, picking up or dropping off kids, cooking, organising community fundraisers or delivering meals on wheels. How often have you wanted time for your own sporting interests, voluntary work, reading, playing an instrument now gathering dust, or just to watch tv by yourself?

These are issues that do need consideration and our government has taken a number of steps aimed at reducing those barriers.

We have an overarching plan to improve the circumstances of women, the Action Plan for New Zealand Women, which I launched in March last year.

The Action Plan is a five-year, whole-of-government plan that builds on the achievements we have already made; it gives us a vision for the future, and a framework for action.

Early in its second year, we will begin to see changes that will make a difference to our lives, although in the midst of everyday life, we may not realise these are part of the Plan.

There has been important progress in each of the Plan’s three focus areas of economic sustainability, work-life balance and well-being.

Economic sustainability is largely about having enough income to do the things we need to do to care for our families and ourselves. The concept covers a wide range of income, employment and educational issues, including equal pay for equal work and social assistance for women on low incomes.

Major recent changes in this area include the Working for Families Package, which specifically provides financial support to families with children. The package is already delivering extra money to around 200,000 families.

Reforms to the whole structure of the benefit system will make case management of clients back into work its central focus. This will deliver New Zealand a value-for-money social security system, designed to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

Government is also moving to address the pay equity issue to ensure that, as an employer, it leads the way.

The Pay and Employment Equity taskforce was set up in 2003 to advise the government on how the factors contributing to the gender pay gap apply in particular parts of the public service and public health and education sectors. Cabinet subsequently agreed to the taskforce’s five-year plan to address those factors and the Pay and Employment Equity Unit was established and is overseeing the roll-out of pay and employment equity audits across 35 core government agencies and the public health and public education sectors.

There have also been major initiatives in the second area of the Plan, which deals with the difficulties we have in balancing paid work with all the other things happening in our lives – given the disproportionate contribution of women to childcare and other forms of caring.

Our government is committing $1.8 million over the next three years for the groundwork towards achieving work-life balance – a critical factor in increasing both our quality of life and living standards.

We’re also committed to improving choices for parents. This year’s budget provides an extra $55 million over the next four years in childcare and employer support initiatives to enhance work choices for parents.

This includes extending eligibility for the childcare subsidy to include about 70 percent of families with children and is in addition to last year’s budget initiative to increase the childcare subsidy rate to $3.12 per hour by October 2005. Out-of-school care and recreation providers also receive increased funding.

Another key government policy is increasing access to affordable high quality early childhood education through:
·20 free hours of early childhood education in community-based centres from 2007 and full-cost funding for community-based services in targeted areas
·increased funding for early childhood education services to ensure costs of quality improvements, such as staff qualifications and reducing child to staff ratios, are not passed on to parents.

Later this year, I will be introducing legislation to extend paid parental leave to the self-employed and in December paid parental leave entitlement grows to 14 weeks.

Other measures are being considered to further improve options for parents and reduce barriers to participation in paid work.

The third area, well-being, covers issues such as violence and health issues such as New Zealand’s high teenage pregnancy rates.

Reducing the high rates of violence against women is also a very high priority for us. Opportunity for All New Zealanders (December 2004), a summary statement of the government's strategies to improve social outcomes, identified family violence as one of five critical social issues.

Opportunity for All will build upon the work already underway in Te Rito: New Zealand Family Violence Prevention Strategy, and highlights the seriousness of this issue for our desire to do even more to address family violence.

Running alongside the work underway in the area of family violence, the Safer Communities Action Plan to Reduce Community Violence and Sexual Violence has been developed in the context of the Crime Reduction Strategy to address identified gaps to reduce sexual violence and community violence in New Zealand. Safety is fundamental to our well-being, and it is clear that violence has a devastating impact on women’s well-being outcomes.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is devoting more resources to identify the complex factors that influence the level of violence and how the current legislation is working. Part of this work is assessing the impact that policies and legislation designed to reduce the incidence and impact of violence are having on women. Domestic violence is predominantly carried out against women, and so it’s important that gender analysis is used in policy development, implementation and evaluation.

All these policies, and a number of others that come under the Action Plan for New Zealand Women, work towards making New Zealand a place where all women can achieve their aspirations.

There is every reason for optimism when you look at the huge progress made since 1893 when the right to vote was won; or since 1933 when Elizabeth McCombs became the first female Member of Parliament; or since the 1970s when the burgeoning of the women’s movement gave rise to huge changes in attitude and a raft of new organisations promoting almost every aspect of women’s rights.

Considering the talent in this room and the work of organisations like the SHE Trust, there is every reason to be confident about the future. Initially, a candidate for the scholarships may just need a hand to complete her study for a qualification.

But the qualification will lead to a job and a means to support her family. And in time, it will have been the catalyst for improving her knowledge and skills, lifting her confidence, making her family or iwi proud and benefiting the wider community. There is no reason why she could not be counted amongst the leaders of the future, including entering our country’s boardrooms or the Beehive.

We certainly have some way to go in achieving equity in this area, although the nominations service run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is having a true impact. Perhaps this year’s scholarship winners will be some of the board members in the years to come or the perhaps they will be standing in my place speaking to a future fundraising event. Thank you for your work to support our young women and acknowledging the valuable contribution they make to our country.

Thank you, and have a great evening.