The Labour benches unimpressed with a ruling from The Speaker, David Carter, during question time in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Labour benches unimpressed with a ruling from The Speaker, David Carter, during question time in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Feminism is on the rise. This year has seen a greater focus on gender issues than perhaps ever before. In this extended column Bryce Edwards looks back on one of the most important trends in New Zealand politics in 2015
A variety of different gender issues have been part of the political conversation in New Zealand this year. Some have been focused at the elite level - such as how to get more women into the ranks of the political or financial establishment. Other debates have been about attitudes, ideas and behaviours - especially "casual sexism" - but also about domestic violence. And another focus has been on the women at the bottom of the heap - those struggling on low pay.
The variety of gender politics stories show how feminist politics has now moved from the margins into the mainstream. Now it seems almost everyone wants to call themselves a feminist - from Judith Collins through to Police Commissioner Mike Bush.
Who is a feminist?
Are you a feminist? It's becoming increasing popular to identify as feminist, even if you're a man, and especially if you're a politician. This year has seen a surge of concern about gender inequality, discrimination and the degraded position of women in many aspects of New Zealand life. A number of high profile advocates for women's rights have spoken out recently. And many of these are men: a campaign was launched on Friday to get men on board the feminist struggle - see Simon Collins' Men sign up to feminist cause.
Much of the debate about feminism equates "being a feminist" with being "pro-women" or in favour of women's equality and human rights. This categorisation is fraught, and makes nearly everyone a feminist at one level or another. Certainly amongst the men signing up to the "HeforShe" campaign there are a few surprises - some of the more high profile are: Police Commissioner Mike Bush, Governor-General Jerry Mateparae, Gareth Morgan, Wallace Chapman and Jack Tame. Of course David Cunliffe was at the forefront of this movement last year with his apology for being a man.
It's obviously not just middle-aged men rallying to the feminist cause. The above articles simply point to the more mainstream and surprising new voices of gender politics. The feminist label is being adopted more readily now amongst teenagers, after a period of reluctance to use this term. Back in May, Jeremy Olds wrote a feature story about The rise of high school feminism. In this, students explain why they have been setting up feminist clubs.
Plenty of other prominent men and women have made pronouncements about feminism this year. Comedian Michele A'Court published a book - Stuff I Forgot to Tell My Daughter - largely about gender issues and "the fourth wave of feminism", and she was the subject of an interesting interview with Philip Matthews - see: Michele A'Court is trying to make NZ feminism fun.
Feminism used to be associated with the political left, but today's feminist agendas are often pushed from the political right, including within the National Party. Probably the most prominent MP speaking out this year on gender issues has been National's Judith Collins. In May she talked about her feminism and what it means to her, stating "I've been a feminist a lot longer than most people. I've been a feminist all my life" - see the NBR's Lifelong feminist Judith Collins wants cabinet job back.
Women ministers have been increasingly visible in John Key's National Government this year, with Amy Adams, Paula Bennett, Maggie Barry and Anne Tolley all being foils to an at times "very blokey" administration, according to the NBR's Rob Hosking - see his (paywalled) column, Government's women ministers to the fore.
Hosking outlines the increasingly strong role of the Government's female ministers and argues, "This highlighting of National's women ministers could be dismissed as coincidence but that seems a stretch. It certainly isn't tokenism, however: most of these initiatives are part of the business of the government this year, in some cases major parts of it."
Justice Minister Amy Adams has been lauded for her progress on gender issues. Since taking on her justice job she has made domestic violence reform her top priority, which in August received backing from opposition parties - see Andrea Vance's Killing the family pet could become a crime in law overhaul.
There have been other gender initiatives for which the Government has received praise - for example last month trade unions and the Greens congratulated National on establishing a joint group to deal with establishing the principles for working out how to apply equal pay rules across industries - see Peter Wilson and Sarah Robson's Government hailed for equal pay initiative.
National's problem with women
John Key's "rapist" allegations in the debate about the Australian detention centres has clearly made the Prime Minister vulnerable to counter-allegations that he's insensitive to rape victims and gender issues. His refusal to apologise for any offence caused has been criticised by the Herald - see it's editorial, Why John Key should say sorry.
And the
Herald's
political editor Audrey Young says the episode "suggests he is willing to squander his reserves of political capital - in particular with women" - see:
. Fellow columnist Paul Little paints Key as an old-fashioned male chauvinist for how he has handled his opponents: "he is about old-fashioned values, like putting women in their place, teaching them to be seen and not heard, and never backing down or apologising, especially when you're in the wrong" - see:
But National's Michelle Boag has received even more heated criticism for her judgements on the women MPs who walked out of Parliament. She accused them of "parading their victimhood" - see Sam Sachdeva's
But this is only the latest in a line of contentious debates this year about sexism in politics. A couple of months ago, it was all about Labour's fast-rising new star, and whether she was being unfairly categorised - see my column at the time, Jacinda Ardern and the "pretty little thing" debate. See also, Ardern's blog post, I am a feminist.
This has fuelled even more concern about the under-representation of women in politics - particularly Parliament and Cabinet. The Green Party has responded with an announcement from co-leader James Shaw that "half of its Cabinet will be women if it enters Government" - see Isaac Davison's Green Party to have 50/50 split men and women.
It's a sign of how mainstream feminism has become, that today much of the gender politics agenda is about the women at the top - the broadcasters, CEOs, politicians and others in positions of power. There is currently a particular focus on women in business - see, for example, Fran O'Sullivan's article from Saturday: Women's arrival at top taking too long. In this, O'Sullivan celebrates "that women are finally taking their place at the top tables of New Zealand business", but laments that the changes are happening too slowly.
TVNZ chair Joan Withers. Photo / David Kerr
O'Sullivan draws attention to Joan Withers winning the "Chairperson of the Year" title at the Deloitte Top 200 awards last week. Withers, who chairs Mighty River Power and TVNZ, earlier in the month also won the
. For more on her victory, and the other category winners, such as the Ministry for the Environment's Vicky Robertson and the Defence Force's Karyn Thompson - see
. She reports "The number of women in business management has dropped dramatically in the last two years, reaching a ten-year low in 2014."
This week Rachel Smalley suggested that publicly-listed companies need a quota imposed on them to ensure 25 per cent of each company's directors are female - see:
Smalley uses the example of businesswomen Diana Foreman not being on any company boards. Yet while Foreman herself is also campaigning for more women on boards and in business, she opposes quotas. According to Holly Ryan, "Ms Foreman disagreed with having a quota system, with companies needing to put the people with the best skills in the job rather than a woman for the sake of gender diversity" - see:
Foreman has recently published a book, In the Arena, which is "about getting to the top and why she thinks businesses need to work harder to get more females into executive and board roles". See also Fiona Rotherham's article,
But the State Services Commission report released last week suggests there has been significant progress in terms of the employment of women in the public service, albeit with a significant pay gap - see
. According to this report, "Female bosses in the public sector have increased by 23 percent between 2010 and 2015 with women now in charge of 39 percent of all public sector departments."
In terms of the pay gap between public sector males and females, the Commission says, "When adjusted for occupation, seniority and experience, the average pay gap falls by two-thirds" - see
. In addition to this, it's worth noting that the recently-released World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2015 has New Zealand jumping up three places to the ranking of number ten - see
Much of the renewed feminist focus in politics is about highlighting some of the behaviours, stereotypes and beliefs that are said to be rampant in a sexist New Zealand. The problem of so-called "casual sexism" was outlined well by Alison Mau back in March with her column, The curse of #casualsexism. This referred not just to the everyday gender discrimination experienced by many women, but also to TVNZ's Facebook post of "Vote For Our Sexiest Female Presenter". Similarly, see Aimie Cronin's I'm not sexist but....and Shelley Bridgeman's Sexism is alive and well.
Lizzy Marvelly has also raised related issues in her blog post,
Possibly the single most controversial item published on the topic of gender and domestic violence this year was Rachel Stewart's New Zealand has reached the pinnacle of world number one in domestic violence. In this she laid the blame and the solution for domestic violence "firmly at the feet of men" and called for some tough physical responses to the offending men.
Although much of the attention of gender politics is focused on helping women "at the top" of society, or dealing with sexist stereotypes and behaviour, some is focused more on economic structures and how they impact on women at the bottom.
For Deborah Hill Cone, much of the focus on "casual sexism" is banal when more serious gender discrimination is going on, and so she responded to Alison Mau's column on "The curse of casual sexism" by saying: "What I do care about is the reality of the economic power of women, especially older women and minority women. This matters more to me than the objectification of television presenters. Like most things in life, it all comes down to money" - see: Let's turn focus to women's pay.
It's low pay that is probably the biggest problem for women at the bottom of the socio-economic heap. And this year has seen a renewed focus on issues of equal pay for such workers. Much of this attention on working womens' pay is due to the landmark case of aged-care worker Kristine Bartlett, which was explained by employment lawyer Christie Hall at the start of the year in her opinion piece, Where next for equal pay. See also her eight-minute interview with Corin Dann on Q+A: Equal pay for all.
Finally, is the increase in gender politics a win for the political left? Leftwing activist Phillip Ferguson has some doubts about this, suggesting that feminism, along with other liberal-left ideologies, has merely served to bolster the status quo - see: Respect for diversity': modern NZ capitalism's necessary ideology.
