Public sector gender pay gap to be closed
The Government aims to close the gender pay gap in the public sector within four years, Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter says.
Speaking on the Q&A television programme on Sunday morning, Genter – a self-described ‘‘fulltime feminist’’ – said progress on the issue had ‘‘stagnated’’ during the past decade.
‘‘I think there’s a real opportunity with a new government to take a much more effective approach that will, finally, close that last bit of the gap.
‘‘We’ll start by leading ... we are going to close the gender pay gap in the core public state service.
‘‘I think we can do that within four years and I think we should be aiming to do that as quickly as possible.’’ Genter said the gap could be closed by holding the chief executives of government agencies ‘‘accountable’’ and writing equal pay for women into the chief executives’ key performance indicators.
At September 1, the gender pay gap stood at 9.4 per cent, according to StatsNZ.
A report released in 2016 by former minister for women Paula Bennett showed 80 per cent of the gap was driven by ‘‘unexplained’’ factors. That meant factors that were hard to measure, like conscious and unconscious bias, which impact negatively on women’s recruitment and pay advancement.
Genter said she had first-hand experience of the pay gap during her time in ‘‘incredibly maledominated fields’’ as a transport consultant.
‘‘I did have that experience of finding out that some of my male colleagues, that were perhaps not as effective as I was, were being paid significantly more than me.’’
She noted the gender pay gap for Ma¯ ori and Pacific women was higher than for Pa¯ keha¯ women – 24.5 and 26.8 per cent, respectively.
Genter said she personally supported quotas to get more women on the boards of private companies but would not commit to it as policy.
She pointed to the Green Party, which does not have a gender quota but which elects both a male and female co-leader and actively seeks gender parity on its list, as an example. ‘‘What we found in our last election [was] women were dominating our top 10, because they’re capable.’’
She said there needed to be ‘‘a debate and a discussion’’ around the issue of quotas, and she wanted to lead that conversation.