Critical Issues for New Zealand Women’s Employment, now and in the future
NACEW's Current Focus
A Snapshot of Women's Employment Today
- Women's labour force participation has been on an upward trend for the last half century. 61.8% of all working age women are in the labour force compared with 75.7% of men. (Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), March 2007). Participation rates vary by ethnicity. In December 2006, 62.8% of European women, 60.4% of Mäori women, 55.2% of Pacific women and 56.6% of other women, participated in the labour force.
- European women's unemployment is significantly lower (2.9%) than that of Mäori women (8.6%), Pacific women (8%) and women of other ethnicities (7.2%) (HLFS, March 2007)
- Part-time work is more common for women (34.8%) than men (10.4%), and the proportion of men and women working part-time has been relatively stable over the last five years (DoL, 2007)
- The proportion of self-employed who are women has been increasing; at the 2006 Census, 16.6% of employed women were self-employed and they made up 36% of all self employed. Self employment is more common for Asian and European women than for Māori and Pacific women. Almost half (48 percent) of self-employed women work part-time, compared with 11 percent of self-employed men.
- Despite the growth in women's employment rates, most occupations remain segregated by gender. Half of women workers are clustered into three of the ten occupational groups; clerks, service and sales workers and professionals. (Else and Bishop, 2003)
- For women, higher levels of caring responsibilities and lower levels of education are associated with lower levels of labour force participation (Johnston, 2005)
- The average hourly wage of all women from employment was $18.55 in June 2006; this was 86.4% of the average hourly wage of men (DoL, 2007). The gap in average total earnings between women and men is much larger, due to women's lower average hours of employment, and greater likelihood of being out of the labour force.
NACEW's Approach
As the history paper shows, NACEW has not confined itself to particular disciplines or work areas in its pursuit of the interests of women in employment.
Our approach has been to act on the most pressing issues affecting women's employment opportunities and outcomes. This has included addressing immediate needs, identifying emerging employment issues for women and undertaking research about cross-cutting concerns that will not necessarily be addressed by employers or government agencies.
In line with our brief, NACEW places a priority on promoting the dissemination of information on the employment of women by maintaining links with our partner organisations, keeping our website informative and up-to-date, publishing our findings and promotional material, and making representations and submissions as appropriate.
Women's participation in the labour force in New Zealand has increased from 36.6% of women in 1967 to 61.8% of women in 2007. For many women, however, getting a quality job, and balancing work and family responsibilities is still difficult.
Our Current Priorities
NACEW's current work programme prioritises the following issues:
- Quality of Work
- Mäori and Pacific Women's Employment
- Caring and Working
Quality of Work
Ensuring women are able to reach their potential, whether they work full-time or part-time, and that their wages and conditions are fair, is key to the sustainability of women's employment, and to the achievement of innovative and productive workplaces. As identified by the Pay and Employment Equity Taskforce amongst others, several issues contribute to the low quality of many women's jobs:
Education
Even though, on average, young women's educational achievements now exceed those of young men, there is still a slightly higher proportion of women (27.3%) than men (24.9%) of working age without qualifications (HLFS, December 2006). Women are not necessarily getting the best job value for their educational effort due to their narrow range of study fields.
Occupations and Industries
Women employers and employees are concentrated in a narrower range of industries and jobs than men are. Many of these industries and occupations are low earning and low paying. The jobs that women do have been estimated to contribute to between 20-40% of the pay gap between men and women (Dixon, 2000). Some of this is due to the undervaluing of female dominated occupations, and the constraints around advancement in many of these jobs.
Precarious work (low quality part-time or casual work)
Many women work part-time to balance work with their caring responsibilities. The need for hours of work to fit with other responsibilities further narrows the range of jobs they can access. Women, along with Maori and Pacific people, are over-represented amongst those earning minimum or close to minimum hourly wages. Many of the low wage, part-time jobs undertaken by women also lack training, job security and opportunities for advancement.
Undervaluing work, low pay, and women workers being unable to reach their potential, have negative impacts not just on the wages of the workers concerned, but also exacerbate skill shortages, and result in the loss of potential production due to lower labour force participation. This, in turn, raises the need for government support and increases poverty in families.
Actions
NACEW's research into the public contracting of cleaners, residential and home care workers resulted in recommendations to improve conditions in these commonly precarious jobs by managing contracts so that the public sector good employment practices are extended to all businesses receiving public money through service contracts. The recommendations for improvements have been sent to the Department of Labour to inform the low pay work programme.
NACEW is now promoting discussions on the economic and business benefits of improving pay and employment equity, and options to improve outcomes for part-time workers with business people.
Māori and Pacific Women's Employment
The relatively high rates of Māori and Pacific women's unemployment, their under representation amongst the self employed, and their low wages, is a matter of great concern to NACEW, which is paying particular attention to policies and programmes that will improve the education and employment outcomes for Māori and Pacific Women.
A current focus is on inspiring young Māori and Pacific women to see the full range of employment opportunities that could be theirs. Because so many Māori and Pacific women are concentrated in low paid, low skilled employment, the role models that exist of Māori and Pacific women who are ambitious, skilled and entrepreneurial are often invisible, especially to girls at school. A key aim has been to communicate the challenges and benefits of self-employment through three brochures, one targeted at Māori and Pacific women of all ages, one at senior secondary school girls who may be considering self-employment as a career option, and one at unemployed women.
Caring and Working
More and more mothers are seeking to return to their jobs after a period of parental leave, rather than leaving the workforce all together. This means greater numbers of parents are juggling work with caring responsibilities.
NACEW has been keen to ensure that the developing policy settings for parental leave, childcare and out of school care meet the needs of these parents by providing seamless transitions from one to one care by parents, through our internationally renowned early childhood education services and onto out of school and holiday care. Looking into the near future, larger numbers of older people will need care and combining employment and caring work will require a wider range of policies such as those envisaged in the Carers' Strategy.
Following the evaluation of parental leave in New Zealand (DoL, 2007), NACEW made a submission to the Minister of Labour recommending the widening of eligibility for paid parental leave, lengthening the period of paid parental leave and increasing the payment, providing some additional paid parental leave that is ring fenced for fathers, providing for parents to undertake a small amount of paid work whilst on leave, and the importance of finding ways to support employers to manage workflow when staff are on leave.
NACEW and the Department of Labour, undertook a joint research project, 'Decisions about Caring and Working: a Qualitative Study', which investigated the decisions made by women and men who have caring responsibilities, and especially about whether, how, when and why they participate in paid work.
