12.00pm, Student Union Building, Victoria University

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 invitation to speak today – it’s great to be here with so many energetic women committed to improving the lives of working women.

I notice that you have shown real commitment to your theme – ‘Union women’s power: measuring and achieving success for women workers’ – by looking at your own organisation, in the form of a gender audit to identify the number and role of women at various levels within the CTU affiliated unions. I look forward to hearing about the results of the next audit when it is completed in 2006.

I want to talk today about a number of issues related to women’s participation in the labour market, but before I begin I would like to acknowledge at least a few of the significant women here today, particularly:

·Carol Beaumont – my long time colleague and CTU Secretary and a crucial member of the Taskforce on Pay and Employment Equity that provided government with such sound advice last year;
·Julie Mellor – Chair of the United Kingdom’s Equal Opportunities Commission who is speaking later today (welcome to New Zealand Julie);
·Luci Highfield and Eileen Brown; the co-convenors of the CTU Women’s Council and
·Jack Byrne and the committee as organisers of this very important conference and all the participants here today whose vision and energy has contributed to the progress women have made over the past 30 years.

We should be rightly celebrating our achievements under this Labour-led Government but I also want to say that women's issues and particularly the needs of working women are very much a key part of our government's agenda. We have delivered some very significant changes for working women, including the introduction and extensions to paid parental leave, the Working for Families package; the nurses’ pay settlement and the many improvements in child-care and early childhood education subsidies.

This is a focus that is not going to change, but despite these big improvements there is still work to be done. I am thinking here about issues such as:

·the pay and employment disparities that still exist, despite the huge strides made by women in recent years; and
·the disproportionate responsibilities for caring borne by women, and the implications that has for our well-being as we try to juggle the needs of ourselves and our families with the demands of paid work; and
·the implications for women regarding the impact of student loans on their future lives.

At the risk of preaching to the converted, I think it is worth briefly reminding ourselves that these concerns are based on clear evidence of continuing disparity.

Pay and employment equity

When we look at pay and employment equity we see that last year the average hourly earnings for women for wage and salary jobs was 85.6 percent of the equivalent men’s earnings. This gap is closing gradually – in 1997 women’s average hourly rates were 82 percent of men’s – but the pace is slow.

All of you here today probably know better than most people that those differences are not just to do with pay-rates.

They exist for a complex set of reasons including:
·our position in the workforce, in terms of the type of work that we do - women are more likely to be nurses than doctors, teachers than principals
·our position in private and public sector organisations - women are more likely to be junior managers than chief executives
·the nature of jobs – particularly the relationship between the structure of paid work with our job choices and progression, as well as workplace support – or lack of it - for women to balance family responsibilities; and finally
·undervaluing of work that women generally do.

Our government is committed to pay and employment equity and is focusing on achieving a reasonable balance in employment relations, ensuring fair minimum employment standards for all.

The Employment Relations Act 2000 was a cornerstone of this work, providing for fair and productive employment relationships and requiring parties to employment relationships to deal with each other in good faith. This is very important to pay and employment equity in encouraging employers to see all employees as partners, and not just as staff.

In addition, we undertook a review of minimum employment standards. This resulted, in particular, in the Holidays Act, the introduction of paid parental leave as mentioned earlier, and increases in the minimum wage - all of which have contributed to improving pay and employment equity for women.

Steps have also been taken to address EEO issues through the establishment of an EEO Commissioner within the Human Rights Commission. The Commissioner, Judy McGregor is currently expanding the categories in the next Census of Women's Participation in Governance and Professional Life to include women in unions.

This will provide us with an analysis of women in the New Zealand trade union movement including total membership, percentage of women, percentage of women on executive structures, delegates and so forth. The results will be published in early 2006 and will provide a comparison with the 2004 results.

And government has moved 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 in public health and education sectors. Cabinet subsequently agreed to the taskforce’s five-year plan to address those factors.

You are probably pretty familiar with that work, but what you may not know is that we are also working hard to ensure women are fully participating at the board level in the state sector. Our government is committed to achieving 50 percent representation for women on statutory boards by 2010. There is progress in achieving this target – the percentage of women gaining appointments and reappointments has risen from just 25 percent in 1993 to 43 percent last year. The
Ministry of Women’s Affairs’ Nominations Service contributes to this outcome by putting forward suitably qualified women.

Last year, the Ministry was consulted on appointments to 200 boards and 130 of its nominees were appointed or reappointed.

The other area where government has undertaken considerable work is ‘life balance’ and participation, which is an area of particular difficulty for women. Internationally, slow and uneven progress in gaining a share of managerial positions for women has often resulted in women needing to make a choice between a successful career and family. A recent US study found 49 percent of high-achieving women were childless, compared with 19 percent of high-achieving men. Although there is no comparable information related to New Zealand women, there is no reason to believe that large numbers of high achieving local women also have to make that choice.

Women’s share of caring

The other challenge I mentioned earlier is the unequal burden of caring borne by women. We see this in the caring professions, which have traditionally been characterised by low pay and, in many areas, precarious work. The CTU has rightly been very active in fighting for better pay and conditions for workers in areas such as aged care.

But this is not just an issue in paid work - when it comes to caring in the home and community, the evidence is that women still do the lion’s share, despite our increasing involvement in the paid workforce.

The time use survey, Around the Clock, published in May 2001, found the responsibility of doing most unpaid work is with women, even when we women undertake full-time or part-time paid work. We have increased our participation in paid work but have continued to carry the major responsibility for unpaid work as well.

In the recent Budget our government allocated $1.8 million over the next three years for an initiative to help achieve work-life balance – a critical factor in increasing both our quality of life and living standards. Issues it will consider are likely to include flexible working arrangements, staff retention, training and out-of-school childcare.

Budget 2005 provides an extra $55 million over the next four years in childcare and employer support initiatives to enhance 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 measures contained in last year’s budget increasing the rate of childcare subsidy to $3.12 per hour by October this year 2005.

Another key government policy is increasing access to affordable high quality early childhood education which we are achieving through:

·a commitment to 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.

And later this year, we will introduce legislation to extend paid parental eave to the self-employed and in December, paid parental leave for employees is being increased to 14 weeks.

Mothers who participated in a 2003 evaluation of paid parental leave reported that the benefits of the scheme included greater peace of mind about income and the ability to stay home longer with their baby. Two-third of mothers thought the scheme had no drawbacks.

Taken together, all these initiatives contribute to a better deal for working women and their kids and families. You would think they would be universally acclaimed, but some people have reacted as if government is forcing unwilling mothers back into the workforce.

There are three particular things I would like to say about that:

First, the policies are about creating choice, not directing choice. The only person who can and should make a decision about whether or when to return to the paid workforce after having a child is the women herself, in discussion with her family or whânau. Our policies benefit both mothers who make the choice to return to work and mothers for whom staying at home is a viable choice.

Which brings me to the second point: What seems to have been lost in some of the public debate over the past few months is that for many women, returning to work after childbirth is not a lifestyle choice, but often an economic necessity. If you are a solo mum or the main breadwinner, or from a lower income family with many commitments, you simply need the money. Cheap, high quality child-care and early childhood education are not luxuries, but practical necessities to enable working women to earn a living without facing unreasonable barriers or disadvantaging their kids.

Financial security is absolutely fundamental to well-being and the third thing I would like to say is that it is not just lower income women who benefit from involvement in the workforce.

Sure, money is very, very important, as is the stimulation that comes from interesting work and good relationships with workmates. However, the other benefits and having financial independence seem to have been overlooked in the debate about women’s participation in the workforce and we should be able to talk about those positives without being accused of forcing mums into factories while their kids suffer.

Student Loan Issues for Women

I know an area of concern is the significant influence of student loans on young women's lives as they continue to impact in many ways including delaying entry to home ownership or parenthood. Data from the Ministry of Education finds that:

·a higher proportion of women students have a debt compared to men and their median debt is 6% higher than men and
·overall the higher the debt by women, the longer they take to repay. For example, for student loans over $25,000 only 24% of women had repaid their loan after seven years compared with 34% of men.

Although Budget 2005 announced a package of improvements supporting students totalling $57 million over 4 years there is pressure for allowances to be made for women to opt out of repaying student loans whilst child rearing. I am meeting with the New Zealand University Students Association, Ministry of Women's Affairs, the Minister for Tertiary Education, and Minister of Education Officials to look at these issues to see if progress can be made.

Whilst achieving full pay equity would make a significant difference, it will not fully overcome women’s lower average lifetime income because our number of years spent in the workforce is a big factor. The impacts of lower lifetime earnings for women are significant –including the reduced ability to become home owners, taking longer to pay off student loans and difficulty in saving for retirement.

These are not simple problems and they require a co-ordinated set of policies that will bring about positive change over time.

That is why I launched the Action Plan for New Zealand Women last year – the first ever whole-of-government plan to improve the circumstances of New Zealand women.

That is why we have introduced the changes I have outlined today – all of which are part of that five-year Action Plan.

And that is why we will continue to identify and address the barriers that still hinder working women from achieving their full potential.

The CTU is an important partner in that process and I thank you again for the opportunity to be part of your programme today.