Feminism is for all women,

By: Karolyn

9 Sept 2023

PART THREE: Progressive policies, contradictions, confusions, silences & a corrective

Part One showed that National, ACT and NZ First Parties’ 2023 policies are, on balance, damaging for women.  Jane Clare Jones’ radical materialist feminist analysis of the centuries-long oppression of women concludes widespread male-dominance is based on the control and exploitation of females as a material sex-class and resource (for sexual, reproductive and other labour). [i]

In Part Two I stated that I agree with many of the Green Party’s policies that counter aspects of several inequities. However, I concluded that the (neo)liberal, anti-materialist polices they have absorbed will be very damaging to women and children in the long term. In their radical embracing of gender identity politics, they have noticeably lost touch with material reality, and good science, and failed to practice true community engagement and participant democracy.

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?

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NZ Labour Party: Patriarchal Capitalism

Appeasing wealthy and powerful elites

Parliamentary Labour is not as radically neoliberal as National and ACT, nor does it have as strong policies as The Green Party to counter poverty, income and wealth inequalities, climate change and sex-based inequities. NZL seems to have a better understanding of the dynamics of power than the GP, but, these days, the dominant voices in parliamentary Labour seem too quick to appease the wealthy and powerful, especially those that represent corporate elites. Despite almost 50% of the parties’ current MPs are women, they still have a caucus that is embedded in a patriarchal capitalist system. [ii]

Chris Hipkins was too quick to rule out wealth and financial taxes that favour by a large proportion of New Zealanders. [iii] A recent poll shows that, “78% – of New Zealanders think it is time for their country to introduce an excess profits tax on large businesses, plus the majority are for taxing unearned income from property ownership and shares. [iv]

However, the current NZL government does have the experience in managing crises.  Furthermore, in the past it doesn’t seem to have been quite as radically captured by authoritarian genderism, although that probably depends on which MPs are calling the shots.

What’s in it for women and those on low incomes?

The Labour Party puts more focus on improving access to home ownership, while, unlike the Green Party, failing to truly tackle the struggles of renters, especially those of us of all ages who are, or will be life-time renters. The Green Party [v] focuses on renters first with a proposed massive increase in state owned housing by Kāinga Ora, which is necessary for the amount and quality of housing those on low incomes need. In contrast, NZL, focuses on home ownership first, and then ‘public housing’, which includes, partnerships between local government and the construction industry.

Labour has some good policies supporting women (e.g. with respect to maternity leave, health care and women on low incomes). Curiously for a party whose leader doesn’t seem to know what a woman is, NZL has a “Women’s Package” in their 2023 manifesto. [vi] This includes extending the age for breast cancer screening; a national endometriosis plan; free cervical screening from 25 to 69 years; an “innovation and entrepreneurship programme for low-middle income women”; updating the consent law; and the introduction of “gender pay gap reporting.” However, the language of “innovation and entrepreneurship” and the focus on running a small business suggests the uptake will be more from middle than low-income women. Furthermore, with the ‘gender pay gap’ the inclusion of males who ID as women will fail to accurately monitor the long-term legacy of a sex pay gap or the sizeable accumulated wealth of males.

Over the Rainbow, education, and the female sex

Nevertheless, I was starting to think I might vote Labour this election, and then they released their 2023 Rainbow Manifesto. [vii] This was done on a Saturday, a couple of days before early voting commenced. Was NZL hoping that hardly anyone but radical transactivists and their allies would notice?

This manifesto includes a plan to fund more gender affirming health care, especially in the form of surgeries and medical treatment. When our public health system is already stretched and given the physical harms that such treatment can cause, any such cosmetic and hormonal treatment should be strongly targeted on those extremely distressed by their sexed bodies.  It should be a last resort treatment, provided for adults most likely to benefit from it, and not just available to anyone who self identifies as the opposite sex or as some other form of ‘gender diverse’.

The NZL Rainbow Manifesto states that they will “encourage” schools to adopt the Ministry of Education’s Relationships and Sexuality Education guidelines. [viii] At least they don’t state they would make implementation of the guidelines mandatory, because these guidelines show as many contradictions, confusions, and adherences to gender identity ideology as the Greens, as I stated in Part Two.  Furthermore, the guidelines state that there should be consultations on the policy with parents. There are an increasing number of parents who have concerns about the inclusion of gender identity ideology in both primary and secondary schools. [ix]

The RSE guidelines say that students should be able to use toilets and changing rooms for the gender they identify with. However, it is important for young people, especially those going through puberty, to have access to single sex toilets and changing rooms, for privacy, and for the safety of girls and young women.

The RSE guidelines includes unscientific definitions of gender and sex. It defines ‘gay’ as same gender attraction (a homophobic denial that homosexuality is same sex attraction), though they also DO acknowledge same-sex relationships in relation to sexually transmitted diseases. The RSE guidelines define lesbian as a ”woman who is emotionally and sexually attracted to other women”. I would prefer a definition that makes it clear that ‘woman’ is defined as an adult human female.

The RSE guidelines fail to acknowledge the biological reality and scientific evidence that sex differences are a whole system thing: all humans except for an extremely small minority, have either a male or female reproductive system, fully integrated in the whole of their anatomy, regardless of fertility. These differences cannot be reduced to a mix and match of selected ‘sex characteristics’. ‘Intersex’ is an inaccurate term for a range of differences of sex development (DSD) that can be medically identified as separate medical conditions. DSD is a more accurate term than some unspecified ‘sex characteristics’, and most of the conditions include an identifiable male or female anatomy.

The Rainbow guidelines do include some positive plans, including ensuring good health care for HIV positive people and that those vulnerable to it have access to the preventative PrEP medication. I also agree that students in schools should be encouraged to be accepting of diverse ways of being male and female, and not to discriminate against those who don’t conform to regressive, socially constructed stereotypes of sex and sexuality: i.e., positive responses to boys that have conventional feminine qualities and behaviours, and to girls with stereotypical masculine qualities and behaviours, regardless of how or whether they self ID as a ‘gender’.

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Te Pāti Māori, radical economic policies, and wāhine Māori

Te Pāti Māori has some excellent proposals [x] to counter wealth and income inequalities that will benefit the high proportion of wāhine on low incomes, such as in their tax plan.  [xi]

TPM policies do not specifically mention wāhine except with respect to the increasing numbers of wāhine Māori in prison. They now make up 64% of the female prison population and 70% of the female remand population.[xii]  They do not provide any wāhine-focused polices to counter this trend and to support wāhine in the prison system. Unlike the Greens and Labour, TPM do not have specific female friendly policies such as those related to maternity, prostitution and/or the inadequate provisions for women in health, social security, and justice systems.

The two TPM MPs voted for the BDMRR amendment Bill that incorporated sex self-identification. They publicly stated that this was because Māori traditionally accept diversity, and how people choose to identify. [xiii] This is pretty vague. However, they never spoke at the second and third readings of the Bill.  They don’t give a clear indication of what that means in practice and have steered clear of an explicit endorsement of gender identity ideology. While I strongly acknowledge and support the diversity of ways of being male or female, I do not support subjective notions of gender supplanting the material reality of natal sex. Nor do I support the legal and political erasure of sex-based rights, and provisions for females.

Nevertheless, Te Pāti Māori have more female candidates than male, and they have females in positions identified as those for ‘wāhine’. Furthermore, much of their Justice and other policies will be beneficial for low-income women, and for wāhine Māori who get caught up in the justice system due to inequalities, poverty, and institutional racism.

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The Opportunities Part NZ, public services and women

TOP, with an outside chance of crossing the 5% threshold, has proposals for housing, benefits, and to counter income and wealth inequalities that would be particularly helpful for women on low incomes. [xiv]

TOP is particularly good on its support for public services, [xv] which would provide strong support for women. This includes fully funded contraception and antenatal ultrasounds (including related GP visits), increased support for maternity services, enable GPs to provide more fully funded community care, including for cervical screening.

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Women’s Rights Party: a corrective, and direction for the future

The Women’s Rights Party is the only one that specifically acknowledges and supports the fact that biological sex is innate and immutable, while also having policies that address the needs of low-income women. [xvi] They say that “the rights of women and children to reject gender stereotypes without discrimination, labelling, or medical intervention to ‘fix’ them is paramount”. They also plan to increase minimum wages and benefits, “so that all people have living incomes. Women need increased incomes to promote full participation in society and dignity as we age.” They want “more support for new families, including wrap-around services for vulnerable mothers and their babies, and “recognise the links between poverty and child protection, and support action on strategies to alleviate poverty.”

The WRP includes policies for the recognition of sex, and for women’s sex-based rights and provisions in NZ law, including recognition that lesbians are same-sex attracted, the maintenance of female-only spaces, sports, and services, and are against the legal transitioning of minors.

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The 2023 Election and the future

I still haven’t decided which party to vote for this election, and I have never been so vexed about how to vote. Labour, and to a lesser extent, The Green Party have absorbed some of the values and approaches of neoliberalism. Modern neoliberalism, with its agenda to privatise state assets and services has always benefited the already wealthy and powerful, to the major detriment of the poor and powerless. [xvii]

On balance, Labour, TPM and the Greens have more policies that will benefit women, especially low income, disabled, beneficiary, and precariously living women than National, ACT and NZF.  However, voting for the lesser evils in recent decades, has not done anything to counter neoliberalism long term.

Democracy doesn’t begin and end with an election.  More than ever before, no matter which parties get to form a government after the election, there will a need for on-going protests, lobbying, advocacy, and organised actions in support of female rights to be free from control, exploitation and political erasure for quite a while in the future.  There is an urgent need to counter the current backlash against women, including those advocated for by men’s rights advocates, and by radical transactivists and their powerful allies.

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References

[i] Jane Clare Jones, The Radical Notion, Issue Three, “Woman as Resource: Towards a Radical Materialist Feminism”,  https://theradicalnotion.org/woman-as-resource-towards-a-radical-materialist-feminism/

[ii] Steogict, “Top 10 Richest in New Zealand 2023, Richest Info, 8 April 2023, The NBR Rich list” https://richestinfo.com/richest-person-new-zealand-nbr-rich-list/ The top 6 individuals are male who are worth over $1 Billion. The richest female is Katmandu’s Jan Cameron worth an estimated $1.04 million.

[iii] RNZ, “Hipkins rules out capital gains tax, wealth tax if Labour re-elected”,  12 July 2023, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/493596/hipkins-rules-out-capital-gains-tax-wealth-tax-if-labour-re-elected

[iv] Better taxes for a Better Future, 29 Sept 2023, https://www.bettertaxes.nz/essential-profits-poll

[v] NZ Green Party, Full Manifesto 2023, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSWSfQJunWVEuNIQjF4sdIy3Qa7uFoe6R6vHIk5lh9EmSH_Amf7yXFssfK9GHzu8S19NbrzPcB8Oj_o/pub

NZ Labour Party Manifesto 2023, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LpGWVJZ8-7AWL-tiFD8aAdD3e0Gxa6uC/view

[vi] NZ Labour Party, Women’s Manifesto, 2023, https://www.labour.org.nz/news-release_women_package ;

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nzlabour/pages/21142/attachments/original/1694910517/Womens_Manifesto.pdf?1694910517

[vii] NZ Labour Rainbow Manifesto 2023, https://www.labour.org.nz/news-labour_rainbow_manifesto

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nzlabour/pages/21172/attachments/original/1696046037/Factsheet_Rainbow.pdf?1696046037

[viii] NZ Ministry of Education Relationships and Sexuality Guidelines for Teachers, https://hpe.tki.org.nz/guidelines-and-policies/relationships-and-sexuality-education/

[ix] Resist Gender Education NZ, News, https://www.resistgendereducation.nz/information/news- See for instance the link to the August 2023 polls.

[x] Te Pāti Māori, https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/policy

[xi] Te Pāti Māori, 2023, https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/2023_tax_policy

[xiii] Te Pāti Māori, Justice Policy 2023, https://drive.google.com/file/d/176hWaOhkn1LpQczamCxdwJVA7Yzem4D_/view

Te Pāti Māori, Aug 2021, “Te Pāti Māori welcomes and supports ‘Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill’,  https://www.maoriparty.org.nz/te_pati_maori_welcomes_and_supports_births_deaths_marriages_and_relationships_registration_bill

[xiv] The Opportunities Party Policy, 2023, https://www.top.org.nz/policy

[xv] The Opportunities Party NZ Public Services Policy, 2023, https://www.top.org.nz/public-services

[xvi] Women’s Rights Party NZ, 2023, https://womensrightsparty.nz/policy/

womensrightsparty.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/POLICY-Womens-Rights-Party-adopted-at-AGM-2023-160723.pdf

[xvii] The Daily Blog, “GUEST BLOG: Finn Flynn – Careful what you wish for”, 7 Oct 2023, https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2023/10/07/guest-blog-finn-flynn-careful-what-you-wish-for/

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