Victoria University law student Melissa Harward says young women in the legal profession have often felt the sharp end of gender discrimination. But events in 2018 have given her cause for hope. Photograph by Mark Mitchell
Victoria University law student Melissa Harward says young women in the legal profession have often felt the sharp end of gender discrimination. But events in 2018 have given her cause for hope. Photograph by Mark Mitchell
Last month, a large New Zealand bank started encouraging its staff to "leave loudly".
Westpac New Zealand wanted its employees to stop slipping out of the office sheepishly on the dot of 5pm to pick up their kids from school, and said they should instead leave confidently and clearly regardless of the time of day.
The policy, adopted from the United States, is a small symptom of a gradual social shift in New Zealand towards greater flexibility in the workplace.
"When I left work before 5 o'clock to get my daughter from creche I used to tell people I had a commitment," said Tracey Bridges, co-founder of the Good Registry and a member of Global Women.
"Which was true, but I was framing it in a way that could have equally been a client appointment that I had to go to.
"These days what I am loving is that, we can talk about it, it is okay to need to leave the office at 5 o'clock to get your kids.
"Young women in particular but also young men are starting to say 'Yeah, nah' – I want to work hard, want to be good at my job, but maybe don't want to sacrifice so much of my own flexibility and ability to choose how I use my time."
Greater workplace flexibility is one measure of the social progress being made for women in New Zealand in 2018.
The greatest social gains were made in the 1960s and 1970s with the arrival of the contraceptive pill and more accessible abortions - though abortion rights have returned to the spotlight in the last year because of reformers' push to get it declassified as a crime.
Since then, New Zealand women have gradually shifted away from the traditional expectations of family life and work.
More women are choosing not to have children, and those who do have children are having them later as they prioritise their careers instead. Most children are now born when the mother is between 30 and 34. In 2013, 16 per cent of women aged between 40 and 44 were childless - up from 9 per cent in 1981.
But while those choices are increasingly being made, it does not mean they are being readily accepted by society.
"Whatever choices women make, whether it is to have a family or not have a family, that has always been absolutely scrutinised and criticised," said Bridges.
"And I don't really actually see a massive amount of change there."
Another key measure of social progress is how women are portrayed in public life.
Catherine Harris, managing director of the ad agency TBWA Group, said advertising in this country still reverted to traditional gender roles.
"So if it's a big, powerful car ad, for example, it will usually be for men, and women will be talking about food and shopping ... or will be shown in the home.
"We've got a long way to about how we better women - and represent humanity - day to day."
The overtly sexist representation of women as sex objects and domestic servants has mostly gone, but what has replaced it can be more difficult to combat.
"Sometimes it's harder to tackle sexism when it is more nuanced," Bridges said. "When it's more nuanced you know in your gut that is wrong, but it is harder to articulate and explain and harder to reject, to separate yourself from it."
This year has also been marked by heightened concern about sexual harassment in the workplace, a local response to the #MeToo movement in Hollywood.
"I think we're at quite a big turning point," said Harris. "It's a more sophisticated conversation than we've been having in the past about genuine representation and different types of stories being told."
In the arts world, an institutional bias against women has only started being broken down in the last 15 years.
Heather Harris, acting head of curatorial and exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery, said just 15 per cent of the gallery's vast collection were by women. The gallery is now proactively seeking out women artists' work, and has collected 680 pieces in the last seven years - compared to 200 in all of the 1990s.
In the sporting world, men dominate coverage and funding, though there have been incremental changes this year - in particular the professionalisation of the Black Ferns and pay parity for men's and women's national football sides.
'A VERY COOL YEAR'
Law student Melissa Harward says 2018 has been a turning point for young women entering the legal industry.
She says the #MeToo movement has expanded beyond an initial focus on sexual abuse to agitate for women's broader rights within the workplace and wider society.
Harward, 22, is in her fifth year at Victoria University's law school and is president of the Feminist Law Society.
Young women in the legal profession often feel the sharp end of gender discrimination, especially in their pay packet and their opportunities for promotion.
"We knew the statistics right away, when we started our degrees," Harward said.
Despite making up 60 per cent of graduates since the 1990s, just 30 per cent of partners in law firms are women. Even fewer are judges.
"It puts you in this position where you think 'This is just what happens', law just isn't good if you want to be a mum, or don't want to prioritise your life around," Harward said.
The #MeToo movement has helped shake up that unfair system, Harward said.
"This year has been a very cool year to be a woman at law school, because of the stuff that has come out about the profession that we have known about for a really long time, and us having a say over how it is going to change."
It is not just talk, she says. After the Russell McVeagh sexual harassment scandal, law firms have been scrambling to show they are taking concrete steps to tackle harassment and discrimination and make workplaces more inclusive.
Harward said the law school had also been supportive of a range of changes, from the use of more inclusive language in classes to a proper process for dealing with complaints.
