Equality: she's a hard road ...

JAN CORBETT recaps on our subject in the final of our series on the status of women.

She is well educated, but not so well paid. If she asks for more money, she risks being labelled too aggressive. She gets more qualifications than her male colleagues, but that does not seem to propel her up the career and income ladder as fast.

It will take her longer than the men to repay her student loan.

The older she gets, the more she slips behind. If her skin is brown, she faces an even bigger battle in the world, and at home.

You don't see much of her on the rich lists.

She is more likely to travel by bus, and does the lioness' share of the unpaid work, like cleaning, childminding, helping at school or caring for elderly relatives.

She is having fewer children and delaying having them until she is into her 30s.

She may choose to stay at home with them, but feels she has to justify that choice. She may choose to go back to work as soon as she can, but feels she has to justify that choice too.

Sometimes it is merely the need for more household income that drives her back to work. Other times, her career is her cornerstone and her identity.

She doesn't hear her husband doing any justifying.

She might only find out how much childminding he wanted to do if they go through the Family Court. She is starting to hear men complaining about being downtrodden.

The younger she is, the more confident she is of her equality. She believes she can have it all, but is starting to think that should not mean having to do it all.

The older she is, the more relieved she is not to have faced the choices confronting her daughters, and the more likely she is to be living alone. It costs her more to support herself through old age, because she lives longer.

Sure, she lives in country where women have much to celebrate, from being the first where she could vote to boasting an impressive array of women in the top posts.

She knows there are some positive trends in her direction: at 14 per cent, her country leads the developed world with the participation of women in the armed forces, just ahead of the United States, Australia and Canada, the only other countries with more than 10 per cent participation.

One day she might use those fighting skills against regimes that do not let women read or write or stone them to death for adultery. She thinks about them and feels liberated.

But if she didn't know before, she found out through this week's series that she still has a long way to go to be truly equal. She is the New Zealand woman.

Today, in the final of the series, we talk to the two women who have the most chance of changing laws that can change other women's lives ...

Read the rest of this series:
nzherald.co.nz/nzwomen