Resources
Working Towards Pay and Employment Equity for Women
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To request a copy of the review workbook or to order an electronic version with charts please contact the Pay and Employment Equity Unit
Ministers' Foreword
As New Zealanders, we pride ourselves on a sense of fair play, but our nation’s pay packets reveal a workforce of two halves: in 2004, women earned 86.4% of the average hourly earnings of men. While women have come into the workforce in record numbers, and achieved at the highest level, when it comes to hourly pay not much has changed in the last thirty years. Since 1978 the pay gap between men and women has reduced by just 8.4%. At that rate, women will have to wait until 2045 to get equal pay for work of equal value.
That’s why the government established the Pay and Employment Equity Unit in 2004. Its role is to implement a five-year action plan that will increase the equity of the New Zealand labour market. In practical terms, this means working alongside employers, employees, and unions to identify and eliminate the causes of inequality. This review workbook is a resource designed specifically for that purpose.
The Pay and Employment Equity Unit also administers a contestable fund, which supports initiatives by employers and unions to promote pay and employment equity. Joint applications to the fund from employers and unions planning to work together are particularly welcomed, recognising the fact that equity is not something that either workers or employers can address on their own.
New Zealand’s workforce is changing. Over the past 50 years, women’s participation in paid work has significantly increased. In 1959 just 29% of working-aged women were in the paid workforce. Now that figure is 61%. Yet despite the increase in participation, when payday rolls around women’s work is still undervalued. By using this review workbook, workplaces can take a very positive step towards ensuring that the skills, experience and productivity contributed by women receive a fair reward.
Hon Ruth Dyson, Minister of Labour
Hon Dr Michael Cullen, Minister of Finance
Hon Pete Hodgson, Minister of Health
Hon Steve Maharey, Minister of Education
Hon Annette King, Minister of State Services
Secretary of Labour’s Foreword
The current environment of high employment presents New Zealand with both opportunities and challenges. We have the opportunity to bring more people into the workforce, and to offer a higher standard of living as a result. And we have the challenge of attracting and retaining the workers we need.
Pay and employment equity will help us make the most of the opportunity, and to meet the challenge. By ensuring that everyone in paid work is fairly rewarded, we ensure there are equal incentives for women to enter and stay in the workforce. By removing the barriers to participation of women in paid work, we can help build a strong economic future for New Zealand.
The purpose of the review process is to assist people in New Zealand workplaces to identify their gender pay and employment equity issues and to develop and implement a response plan.
During the review, workplaces will have the opportunity to assess how they ensure that:
- Women and men have an equitable share of rewards
- Women and men participate equitably in all areas of the workplace
- Women and men are treated with respect and fairness.
The review workbook is a six-step process that can be modified to fit the wide range of New Zealand workplaces. It will build on existing workplace data and focus the collection and analysis of new data in a way that is meaningful for each workplace. The analysis will lead to the key part of the process – the development of a rigorous and meaningful response plan to ensure that solutions can be implemented.
When the participation of women and men in the workforce is truly equitable, everyone benefits. Workplaces make the most of the skilled and experienced people they have, and workers get fair rewards for their work. Pay and employment equity is a cornerstone of a fair and modern labour market, and New Zealanders expect nothing less.
James Buwalda
Secretary of Labour
Contents
- Part A: Introduction to the Pay and Employment Equity Review
- Purpose of the Pay and Employment Equity Review
- Scope of the Review
- Assumptions on which this Review is Based
- How to Use this Workbook
- Adapting the Workbook
- Allocating the Role of Project Manager
- Forming a Review Committee
- Role of Unions
- Role of the Pay and Employment Equity Unit
- Running this Review in a Small Organisation
- Running this Review in an Organisation that Employs Mostly Women
- What Do You Do With the Results?
- Relationship to Pay Investigations
- International Conventions
- Part B: The Review Process
- Equity Indicators and Key Questions
- Suggested Process for Analysing and Responding to the Equity Indicators and Key Questions
- Overview of the Six-Step Process
- Decide on Important Gender Issues to Investigate – Step 1
- Undertake Preliminary Analysis – Step 2
- Carry Out Follow-Up Analysis – Step 3
- Validate – Step 4
- Prepare Review Report – Step 5
- Develop a Response Plan – Step 6
- Part C: Managing a Pay and Employment Equity Review
- Choosing an Appropriate Time to Carry Out a Review
- Preparing Your Organisation for the Review
- How Much Time is it Likely to Take?
- How Far Apart Should the Review Committee Meetings be Scheduled?
- How Often Should a Review be Undertaken?
- Project Manager
- Review Committee
- Principles for Working Together
- Legislation Relating to the Operation of Review Committees
- Checklists for Legislation and Policies
- The Review Process, Step by Step
- Preparing for Committee Meetings
- Developing and Implementing a Communication Strategy
- Possible Traps and How to Avoid Them
- Part D: Charts
- Download all these charts in the following formats
- PDF file 78 KB
- Word document 184 KB
- RTF file 339 KB
- Preliminary Scan of Pay and Employment Equity in Our Organisation with regard to Gender
- Relevant Unit(s) of Analysis
- Representation and Distribution of Women and Men
- Summary of Key Areas of Difference in Representation and Distribution
- Pay Profile
- Summary of Key Pay Differences
- Key Questions We Will Start With
- Summary of Preliminary Analysis Findings
- Can We Answer the Follow-Up Analysis Questions?
- Summary of Follow-Up Analysis Findings
- Summary of Areas to be Considered for Response
- Prioritising the Areas Requiring a Response that are Within the Organisation’s Influence
- Summary of Most Useful Strategies and their Success Measures
- Issues that Would be Best Responded to Through the Bargaining Process
- Download all these charts in the following formats
- Part E: Patterns and their Possible Causes
- Part F: Overview of Information-Gathering Techniques
- Part G: Useful Resources
- Glossary and Statistical Terms
- Endnotes
- Appendix 1. International Conventions
- Appendix 2. Public Service Departments: Occupations by Gender Concentration
Published by the Department of Labour
Wellington, New Zealand
First edition August 2005
ISBN 0-478-28025-4
This edition January 2006
ISBN 0-478-28032-7