PM announces pregnancy
WELLINGTON: Jacinda Ardern, who became New Zealand’s youngest prime minister in October, attracted international attention when she denounced television interviewers who had asked whether she planned to have children if elected. Ms Ardern, 37, told a television presenter that it was “unacceptable” for women in the workplace to have to answer that question.
On Thursday, Ms Ardern announced that she was expecting her first child, due in June. She said her partner, Clarke Gayford, the host of a television show about fishing, would take a leave from his job after the birth to become a stay-at-home parent.
Although she would be the first New Zealand leader to give birth while in office, Ms Ardern, at a news conference yesterday, played down the idea that her case was particularly special, saying that she was “not the first woman to multitask,” nor the first “to work and have a baby.”
But she admitted that her family’s situation was unusual in some ways, saying that she had suffered “pretty bad” morning sickness during the first three months while forming a new government, and that she did not know “how the government cars would feel about having a baby seat in them.”
Ms Ardern said she planned to work right up until she gives birth and would then take six weeks of parental leave. During that time, she said, the deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, will assume her duties.
After that, Ms Ardern added, she planned to return to “full duties,” with Mr Gayford and travelling with her and their child as often as possible.
Ms Ardern will be the first leader of New Zealand to take parental leave. Two other women have also served as the country’s prime minister, Helen Clark of the Labour Party, who offered Ms Ardern her congratulations yesterday, and Jenny Shipley of the National Party, who had children before she took office.
Mr Shipley offered words of support yesterday.
“She’ll also surround herself with smart people who’ll help her do her job, and I think it’s another, a groundbreaking, example of what women can do,” Mr Shipley told Radio New Zealand.
Social media sites were flooded with celebratory messages from New Zealanders after the announcement, with silence from the critics who had questioned Ms Ardern’s family plans before she took office.
Mark Richardson, the television presenter who set off the debate last year by asking Ms Ardern whether she planned to have children, has not commented. At the time, Ms Ardern, then leader of the centre-left Labour Party, asked journalists whether they would have asked a man the same question.
Ms Ardern took office after a volatile election campaign, by New Zealand’s standards. The previous Labour Party leader, Andrew Little, quit amid dismal poll numbers, thrusting Ms Ardern into what she, at the time, called “the worst job in politics.”
But her candidacy reversed the party’s fortunes, with her Labour Party winning 46 seats in the Sept 23 election. The centreright National Party, led by Bill English, then the prime minister, won 56, not enough to capture the majority required to govern in New Zealand’s Parliament.
The decision about who would govern was left to Mr Peters, the leader of the populist minor party, New Zealand First, which held the balance of power.
After weeks of negotiations and deliberating, Mr Peters threw his support behind Ms Ardern, whose call for change and youthful energy invigorated Labour voters.