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 pleased to hear New Zealand Department of Corrections state – after RNZ’s exposures of examples of grossly unacceptable practices in New Zealand’s prisons – that it aims to be a “world-leading centre of excellence for the management and care of women prisoners”. We trust that aim applies with equal force to all who are in prison.
Jan Logie, Green MP, gave an excellent speech this week on income inequalities and those doing it tough in the Covid era. How does this impact on women, especially those living in the most precarious situations?
Almost four decades of neoliberalism has hit New Zealand beneficiaries hard, especially large numbers of solo mothers on benefits. They have become the most demonised of beneficiaries, as seen in the impact of sanctioning parents (96% of whom are women) for failing to name the other parent of their child.
Maori incarceration statistics go from awful to appalling when the rate of Mana Wāhine in New Zealand’s prisons is considered. Currently at 68%, it is the highest per capita incarceration rate of indigenous women in the world.