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| Members of the Ministry of Education PaEE Review Committee at their meeting in August. Other sectors, such as the Primary sector, are scheduled to undergo reviews from next year. |
Pay and Employment Equity
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 mid-2005.
If a woman works full-time throughout her career, without taking breaks, that differential translates into $450,000 over her working life.
But equity in employment isn't just about pay. What about access to professional development opportunities, promotions, or how our jobs are valued? Why, for example, are police paid more than social workers, when social work is just as challenging and complex, and just as necessary?
In order to assess these problems 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.
The education sector is one of the first to be in the review. Group Special Education reviews are currently underway, and reviews will be carried out in schools next year.
Compulsory Education Sector Pay and Employment Equity Review Update
See Compulsory Education Sector Pay and Employment Equity Review Update
About PaEE
The Department of Labour's Pay and Employment Equity Steering Group Newsletter - June 2008
What's happening in my sector?
Primary Teachers and Principals and Support Staff
Early Childhood Education Centres
New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation
If New Zealand aspires to being a highly-skilled economy in the modern, global marketplace we need to maximise the talent pool of both men and women at work. We also need both men and women to contribute to building strong and cohesive communities and for both to be well represented in public and political life.
The New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation 2008 shows how we are responding to these challenges. The results reveal a worrying report card for women’s equality. Some areas of the public sector which have traditionally made positive, incremental progress in the past have now slowed or stalled. The corporate sector’s performance in the appointment of women to the boardrooms of major listed New Zealand companies remains dismal.
The data published in the New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation shows unequivocally that gender equality is still far from realised in New Zealand’s boardrooms, businesses, schools, universities, and unions, and that we lag behind other similar developed nations despite our hard-won reputation for gender progress.
Link to the New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation.
Progress of women to senior academic positions glacial, says university staff union
Although the number of women holding senior academic positions in New Zealand universities has increased in the last year, progress toward equity is still glacial according to the Association of University Staff (AUS).
AUS National President, Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery, said that the New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation 2008, released by the Human Rights Commission today, revealed that women held just under 20 percent of senior academic position in New Zealand universities in 2007, up by 2.28 percent from the year before.
Despite the fact that women make up nearly half the academic workforce in universities, they remain clustered in the lower academic rankings. The proportion of women professors is only 15.1 percent and women associate professors 23.19 percent. Six universities improved their proportion of women in senior academic positions, while two, AUT and Massey, lost ground.
Associate Professor Montgomery said that, while there was no quick fix to improving the proportion of women employed in senior academic positions, New Zealand universities could look to Australia, where that country’s vice-chancellors had undertaken some solid initiatives towards improving the under representation of women in senior academia. “What is needed in this country is a sophisticated and multi-faceted approach to promoting equity,” she said. “We need to examine both structural and cultural barriers, and it would be a welcome sign if New Zealand vice-chancellors demonstrated the same level of collective commitment to reducing such barriers as their Australian counterparts were doing.”
The proportion of women filling ministerial appointments on university councils ranged from 75 percent (or three out of four positions) at AUT, to none out of four at the University of Waikato.
For further information or comment please contact:
Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery
Phone (03) 364 2488 (Work)
Email: maureen.montgomery@canterbury.ac.nz