Rebecca Mackay

On October 21, 2024, Minister for Women Nicola Grigg, posted on Facebook a celebration “how far” we’ve come, while acknowledging “how far there is to go.”

She said she wanted “to see more women in leadership.” She proclaimed her hope that “the 8.2 percent gender pay gap [in female leadership] [will] not only reduce but disappear altogether” and she expressed excitement about forthcoming plans “to help businesses around New Zealand address their pay gaps – because women deserve to be paid fairly for what they do.”

Then, last week, without warning, she and other female leaders of our country, stepped up – out of the blue - to disagree.

They now say the current system—the same one that received unanimous cross-party support when the Equal Pay Amendment Bill passed in 2020—is flawed and failing.

Despite the urgency, the lack of transparency, public consultation, and general important political checks and balances, they’ve fallen back on the tired trope of random job comparisons, and the claim that the legislation misses the mark.

They claim to be committed to pay equity and to women, “but…”

That argument is disingenuous. The work that was being done—the 33 claims the coalition wiped out—was not about random comparisons. It was about enabling cross-sector comparisons that expose the systemic, sexist undervaluation of female-dominated jobs. That’s how pay equity works. Especially in a society that has long channelled girls and women into the more nurturing, lower-paid professions—teachers, support workers, nurses, etc —while steering boys and men away from them.

Professions, incidentally, that serve the public and are now under unprecedented strain, thanks to the systematic gutting of our public systems by this Government, and inattention by previous governments.

Our māmā and pēpī are dealing with this dangerous reality since we lost our secondary birthing services at Whakatane Hospital.

The Government insists these latest amendments aren’t stopping pay equity claims outright. Technically, that’s right—it’s just making it near impossible to raise them.

They’re lifting thresholds; shifting the burden of proof. And, as always under a National government, they’re placing more power and control back with the abuser, I mean, the employer.

They want us to believe this is “common-sense”? That everything is just fine?

Are they gaslighting us, or have they gaslit themselves? Or maybe—from the comfort of their privileged, powerful positions—they’ve simply decided they don’t care about our aspirations, our wellbeing, our value to society?

We are watching. We will remember come election time.