Definitions
Pay Equity: Women getting the same pay as men for the same work or work of equal value.
Employment Equity: The removal of barriers to equality for women in employment, including access to recruitment and promotion; professional development and training; and pay and conditions.
Pay and Employment Equity (PaEE): A systematic approach to identifying and eliminating causes of inequality in pay and employment.
What is PaEE?
The following is an article from NZEI Rourou in March 2006, detailing the PaEE process and how NZEI is involved.
With its all-women line-up of Prime Minister, Governor General, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Speaker of the House, New Zealand is often cited as model of gender equality.
But it may surprise some to know that the New Zealand pay gap – the gap between what a woman working full-time and a man working full-time get paid per hour – was still at 16% as of last June.
If a woman works full-time throughout her career, without taking breaks, that differential translates into $450,000 over her working life.
In order to assess this problem of Pay and Employment Equity (PaEE), the Government has put together a five-year plan to assess and correct inequities in New Zealand employment, starting in public sectors and eventually moving to private.
Nanette Cormack, of the Council of Trade Unions, is currently working on the first phase of this plan, which aims to work with unions and employers in the public sector.
Nanette says her task is answer three questions for each sector. First: is there a pay gap? Second: if there is a pay gap, why? Third: what can we do about it?
While the gap may never completely disappear, says Nanette, “the outcome, hopefully, is that the gap will narrow”.
Pay and Employment Equity is not just about measuring inequities within each sector, however. A large part of the project is to compare jobs across sectors.
“Valuing work is a cultural thing,” notes Nanette’s colleague, Anthea Raven. “It’s about what and who we appreciate in our society. Why, for instance, are police paid more than social workers? Social working is as challenging and complex as policing, and just as necessary.”
Many may ask the same about educationalists. The teaching profession has long been dominated by women, partly because the care and education of children was traditionally seen as “women’s work”. Early childhood teachers are still fighting to have their roles as professionals fully recognised, and many school support staff – also a female-dominated workforce – make little more than the minimum wage, despite being qualified and in skilled positions.
As such, Nanette believes the Pay and Employment Equity project may have large implications for the education sector.
“Whatever areas there are that can be developed by employers – development opportunities, promotions, appointments, jobs being undervalued – we will address those,” says Nanette.
NZEI has been an active participant in the PaEE process since 2003, when we made a substantial submission to the Women’s Action Plan development. We continued to work in this area and contributed to the development of the five-year Plan of Action. PaEE reviews will begin in 2006 in the Ministry of Education and later this year in the tertiary, compulsory (primary and secondary) and kindergarten sectors. Information for members will circulated over the next few months.