Many women I know are livid that the NZ coalition government’s Pay Equity Amendment Bill was passed this week by Parliament.[i] This has brought back Fair Pay Agreement processes, as previously laid out in the Equal Pay Act, to a grinding halt. The outcome is the cancellation of 33 claims being currently negotiated, along with several tighter restrictions making it much harder to make such claims in future.
Employers and business owners, who wish to extract maximum profits by paying their lowest ranked and most precariously employed workers a pittance, are the people most likely to welcome the new right wing coalition government’s repealing of NZ’s Fair Pay Agreement. Unsurprisingly, given the long history of women being an exploited sex-class, there tends to be a disproportionally high percentage of women in such low paid positions.
NZ Labour, Te Pāti Māori, The Opportunities Party and the Women’s Rights Party all have some policies that will benefit women, especially those on low incomes. I would prefer any of them to form a government compared with National, ACT and NZ First.
But, which one could I vote for?
The NZ Green Party have some very good policies for women and low-income people, particularly ones that will help a fair number of women struggling to pay essential bills. However, they have significant silences, confusions, and/or contradictions in their policies and plans that will have a negative impact on females.
We are living through a time of turbulence, instability, and uncertainty. The decades long neoliberal dominance within Western-European patriarchal capitalism is under extreme pressure. The four biggest political parties in NZ have all been infected to a greater or lesser degree by neoliberalism, with National and the ACT parties being the most deeply contaminated.
This is the WLA submission to the NZ government, Safer Online Practices and Media Platforms Consultation. The government was asking for feedback on their proposal, which is to be made into a Bill in 2024.
They are proposing to have a government appointed regulator to set codes of practice for social media and the NZ media. But, who will be watching the watchers?
It is surprising that transwomen have been the main focus of transactivist lobbying for their inclusion in female sports, when it is fair treatment for trans identified females (transmen), and some people with Difference/Variations of Sex Development (DSDs) that really is the difficult issue. This is glaring evidence of yet another form of sex-based inequality.
The World Athletics Council are to be congratulated for recently joining international organisations, like World Rugby and swimming’s Fina, in restricting competition in the international women’s athletic division to those who have not gone through male puberty. It’s not banning trans identified males from competition as some of NZ’s media has hysterically proclaimed. Transwomen can compete in the category designated for their sex, subject to further revisions of the policy. It is up to men to make transwomen welcome, safe, and accepted in their competitions.
I’m excited about the women’s Super Rugby Aupiki semi-final games on Sunday (19 March 2023), in spite of the small number of teams competing in the current competition. ed the top slot in the HSBC international rankings, winning the last 4 tournaments on the circuit. The domestic Super Rugby Aupiki competition shows a vast improvement in skills and tactics from last year.
The gender and sexuality questions in the NZ 2023 census are a bit of a muddle. Some of the definitions provided by the NZ Census and Statistics NZ departments add to the confusion. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to answer the questions truthfully. It’s causing concern for many feminists and LGB people who understand the significance of material reality, science, and biology.