Feminism is for all women,

By: Karolyn

29 Sept, 2023

PART ONE: Neoliberalism, economic inequalities, and radical materialist feminism

I do not know what party to vote for in this election. I’m tempted to abstain even though I have always thought it is important to exercise my democratic right to vote.

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.

The legacy of long-term male dominance is still embedded in NZ’s political and social structures. As Jane Clare Jones explains in her article on radical materialist feminism, the centuries long oppression of women is a result of systems of male dominance and control that treat the sex-class of women as an exploitable material resource.[i] Liberation for women as a sex-class, means freedom from such oppression for all women, not just those who have hitched their somewhat compromised survival and well-being to wealthy and powerful sections of society.

The need to control women as a material resource for exploitation can be seen in policies and practices related to childbearing and rearing, sexuality, health care, income and wealth inequalities, and the under-valuing of work necessary for humans to survive and thrive, especially work that is still predominantly done by women.

While National, ACT or NZ First do have some good policies that support women, these are quite isolated. Across a range of policies they fail to represent the interests of the female sex-class. Their policies significantly favour the well-off at the expense of the poor, and resource exploitation over countering climate change and entrenched inequalities. Too many of their policies will be damaging to large numbers of people, especially those on the lowest incomes and those living in precarious circumstances, including renters.[ii] This will have negative outcomes for a relatively high proportion of women and children.

National proposal to “extend free breast cancer screening for those aged up to 74 years” is a very good one, while containing a less favourable fishhook.[iii] Many low income women and their children would miss out on medication because National would pay for more cancer treatments by re-instating prescription payments for those without a Community Services or Super Gold Card. Furthermore, National and ACT favour allowing mothers and their partners to share the existing 26 weeks paid parental leave, which basically could take away leave from mothers who carry the harsh physical impacts of giving birth. ACT will also penalise, and seek to control, “those who have additional children while receiving a benefit” by providing their support in the form of Electronic Income Management.[iv]

NZ First’s pledges to remove gender ideology from the school curriculum and “ensure no men are in women’s spaces or sports”[v] and to take GST off basic foods would have very positive outcomes for a large number of women and children.  However, none of their other policies will be positive for females, for instance, they seem to support National’s policy to increase sanctions on long term beneficiaries who are not working. Furthermore, all but 2 of NZF MPs were against decriminalising abortion. Winston Peters and Shane Jones voted against decriminalisation.[vi]

The National and ACT parties have several policies that will be bad for a large number of women. They plan to cut ‘backroom’ staff in public services if they form the next NZ government. This will likely lead to more of the necessary administrative work being done by frontline staff for lower pay, and to reducing the amount of time for delivering frontline services.  They will open some of the delivery of public services up to private organisations[vii]. This will result in underpaid low- and middle-income workers and poor working conditions, as businesses try to drive down wages. Cuts to public services, such as health care and education have been shown to have negative impacts on women in EU research done following the 2008 financial crisis. This was partly because a high proportion of women work in the public sector, but also, because:

“Gender equality policies often start in the public sector and are always implemented much more strictly in the public sphere due to visibility, employment stability, the strength of the unions and – very often in the past – soft budget constraints.”[viii]

This is likely to be the impact of the ACT Party’s plan to axe the NZ Ministry for Women. The EU report found that no assessment on the impact of women was done prior to implementing public sector cuts, as is also the case with the proposed policies of NZ National and ACT parties. [See also, Nick Kelly on tax cuts leading to degrading public services[ix]]

Any action that works against those on lowest incomes, will disproportionally have a negative impact on women. The most serious impacts of patriarchal capitalism are seen in the ways women make up a relatively high proportion of the least well-off, especially the high percentage of single mothers[x] and of Māori and Pasifika women who are struggling financially.  The statistics for the ‘gender’ pay gap point in this direction. [xi]

Benefit sanctions, while having been shown not to work, and will unnecessarily, and unethically punish single mothers, as happened under the John Key government. As Max Rashbrooke says, benefit sanctions have been shown not to work to get more people into employment.[xii]  On top of that, according to Gordon Campbell,

“the work of Victoria University academic Lisa Marriott has shown, the justice system routinely continues to treat benefit fraud much more harshly than tax evasion, even though white collar tax criminals steal far more money from us.” [xiii]

Meanwhile, as Campbell points out, these punitive National and ACT policies will create more hardship for low waged, unemployed, and increasing numbers of precariously employed people. This is especially so  in an economic system that relies on a maximum level of unemployment that is slightly higher than NZ’s current rate, and in conjunction with other centre right economic policies. This is all bad news for large numbers of women who will see little benefit from policies that benefit the well-off at the expense of people on lower incomes.

Added to this are National and ACT polices that will drag the chain on countering climate change that is causing more frequent extreme weather. Women are more likely to be negatively impacted than men and/or in specific ways that don’t get public attention. This is especially so for women on low incomes and on benefits.  [See Enarson, 1998, and Liz Gordon, 2014[xiv]]

So, on balance, I don’t see that much good news being offered to the female sex-class by a National-ACT-NZF coalition: a coalition that could also be very unstable.

[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] RNZ, “Boos and strong language mark forum on housing”, 29 Sept, 2023 https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/499003/boos-and-strong-language-mark-forum-on-housing

1News, “ACT wants to restore power to ‘scapegoated’ landlords”, 28 Sept, 2023, https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/09/28/act-wants-to-restore-power-to-scapegoated-landlords/

[iii] The National Party, “Free Breast Cancer Screening”, https://www.national.org.nz/breastcancerscreening

[iv] Act Party, “Electronic Income Management”, https://www.act.org.nz/eim

[v] NZ First, “2023 Policies”,  https://www.nzfirst.nz/2023_policies

[vi] NZ Herald, March 2020, “How MPs voted on abortion law reform”, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-mps-voted-on-abortion-law-reform/WV4JCWZTSB4PFZFHTFUTDFUC64/

[vii] ACT Party, “Real Solutions for Health”, https://www.act.org.nz/real-health-solutions

[viii] European Federation of Public Service Unions, “Women’s and Gender Equality”, May 2013, https://www.epsu.org/sites/default/files/article/files/Impact_of_cuts_final_report.pdf

See also, Forbes, “Lack Of Women At The Top Of Public Service Threatens Post-Pandemic Recovery Efforts, UN Report Finds”, July 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/josiecox/2021/07/08/lack-of-women-at-the-top-of-public-service-threatens-post-pandemic-recovery-efforts-un-report-finds/?sh=2750d6d941f0

[ix] Nick Kelly, the Standard, “Tax or quality public services – which is more important to NZ voters?”, 27 Sept, 2023, https://thestandard.org.nz/tax-or-quality-public-services-which-is-more-important-to-nz-voters/

[x] Ministry of Social Development, “The Social Report 2016 – Te pūrongo oranga tangata”,

https://socialreport.msd.govt.nz/economic-standard-of-living/population-with-low-incomes.html

Ministry for Women (New Zealand), “Something’s got to change” Insights from mothers, 24 Jul 2018,

https://apo.org.au/node/184041

“Mako Mama – Mangopare, Single Parents Project” Final Report May 2023,

https://www.makomamamangopare.nz/

[x1] Stuff, “Report finds gender, ethnic disparities in NZ pay gap: Pacific women the hardest-hit”, Oct, 2022, https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/130088745/report-finds-gender-ethnic-disparities-in-nz-pay-gap-pacific-women-the-hardesthit

Ministry for Women (New Zealand), “The Gender Pay Gap”, https://women.govt.nz/women-and-work/gender-pay-gap

Statistics NZ, “Measuring the gender pay gap”, June 2015, https://www.stats.govt.nz/methods/measuring-the-gender-pay-gap

[xii] Max Rasbooke, “The Post: The election’s great beneficiary-vanishing Act”, 23 Sept, 2023, https://www.maxrashbrooke.net/the-good-society/the-post-the-elections-great-beneficiary-vanishing-act

[xiii] Gordon Campbell, Werewolf, “on the cynical brutality of the centre-right’s welfare policies”, 27 Sept, 2023,  http://werewolf.co.nz/2023/09/gordon-campbell-on-the-cynical-brutality-of-the-centre-rights-welfare-policies/

[xiv] E. Enarson, “Through women’s eyes: a gendered research agenda for disaster social science”, 1998, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9654814/ ;

Liz Gordon, “There is always someone worse off… The unheard voices of women from the Christchurch earthquakes and beyond”, 2014, https://communityresearch.org.nz/research/there-is-always-someone-worse-off-the-unheard-voices-of-women-fromthe-christchurch-earthquakes-and-beyond/

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