Which Gender Pay Gap?

Media release for immediate use
6 November 2009

Which Gender Pay Gap?

“Which gender pay gap?” asks Angela McLeod, President of the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women (BPWNZ), “the 12% per hour worked OR the 42% median weekly income?”

“Which one does the majority of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee think they can sweep under the carpet?”  In the report released by this select committee this week it was stated that ‘the majority of us have no matters to bring to the attention of the House’.

The government have acknowledged that there is a gender gap through the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Hon Pansy Wong who has said that women “should enjoy equal pay and employment opportunities”. 

There are many pieces of research, here and internationally, stating the many ways women are disadvantaged in the workplace including the findings of the Department of Labour’s Pay and Employment Equity Unit (now defunct) and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs publication ‘Indicators for Change’. 

New Zealand has also signed international agreements such as CEDAW, ILO Convention 100 and MDG 3, all of which outlaw pay inequity. 

“We are not meeting our international obligations”.

“The Minister is right when she says “the gender pay gap is clearly one of the main challenges we face” but the government is wrong to dismiss, in a one page statement, 15,808 signatures asking the government, among other things, to develop a strategy to eliminate the gender pay gap in New Zealand” states Mrs McLeod.

ENDS

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