The Gender Pay Gap debate in NZ has always felt like a lot of white tertiary educated women at Boardroom level management pissed off they aren’t getting the same sweet deals the boys are getting.
Less Les Misérables and more Laissez-faire miserable.
Surely the harvest of civil society should be a wee bit broader than the Professional Female Management Class?
At the centre of the Gender Pay Gap is the biological reality women carry the babies. If we as a liberal progressive society want to ensure everyone has equal agency, then surely recognising biological reality is a starting point?
The first 12months should be maternity leave – or paternity leave, either one, but one of the parents should be paid to stay home with the infant for its first year of life. Who else do you want to look after an infant other than the parent?
Meanwhile, ECE should be nationalised and made completely free for 2 year olds to 5 year olds while all after school care should be free.
Childcare costs fall unevenly and unfairly on women, so why not eliminate those costs altogether?
Playing the Gender Pay Gap Game even when implemented, doesn’t lead to the outcomes desired.
If women having babies is stunting their pay careers, then subside the cost of having that kid with 12months maternity/paternity leave, Nationalise ECE and free after school care.
Also implement a 4 day working week for all state employees so that people’s quality of life is lifted rather than just wage growth.
The promise of Democracy is you can look in your kids face and know they will have a netter deal of it than you.
Allowing a parent to stay home with their kid for a year, provide free early education care and free after school care would do more to live up to that promise than anything else.
We need to start fight9ing for tomorrow because none of the politicians are.
All we need to do to fund this type of universal upgrade of the social infrastructure is tax the rich!
Nationals 3 biggest donors (Hart, Mowbray and Bolton) have a combined net worth of 15 billion!
The Bottom 50% of NZ has 23 billion.
The top 5% of NZers own roughly 50% of NZs wealth, while the bottom 50% of NZers own a miserable 5%!
IRD proved NZ Capitalism is rigged for the rich and Bernard Hickey calculates that if we had a basic capital gains tax in place over the last decade, we would have earned $200billion in tax revenue.
$200billion would have ensured our public infrastructure wouldn’t be in such an underfunded ruin right now!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals with over $50million each, why not start start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry to pay their fair share before making workers pay more tax!
Culture War fights make all the noise, but poor people aren’t sitting around the kitchen table cancelling people for misusing pronouns, they are trying to work out how to pay the bills!
Bread and Butter cost of living pressures are what the electorate want answers to, and that’s where the Left need to step up and push universal policy that lifts that cost from the people.
The Commerce Commission is clear that the Supermarket Duopoly should be broken up and the State should step in and provide that competition.
We need year long maternity leave.
We need a nationalised Early Education Sector that provides free childcare for children under 5.
We need free public transport.
We need free breakfast and lunches in schools.
We need free dental.
We need 50 000 new State Houses.
We need more hospitals, more schools and a Teachers aid in every class room.
We need climate change adaptation and a resilient rebuilt infrastructure.
We need all these things and we need to fund them by taxing the rich who the IRD clearly showed were rigging the system.
That requires political courage and there is none!
No one is willing to fight for tomorrow, they merely want to pacify the present!
Just promise me one thing.
Don’t. You. Dare. Vote. Early. In. 2023!
I can not urge this enough from you all comrades.
Don’t vote early in the 2023 election.
I’m not going to tell you who to vote for because this is a liberal progressive democracy and your right to chose who you want in the secrecy of that ballot box is a scared privilege and is your god damned right as a citizen.
But what I will beg of you, is to not vote early in 2023.
Comrades, on our horizon is inflation in double figures, geopolitical shockwave after geopolitical shockwave and a global economic depression.
As a nation we will face some of the toughest choices and decision making outside of war time and that means you must press those bloody MPs to respond to real policy solutions and make those buggers promise to change things and you can’t do that if you hand your vote over before the bloody election!
Keep demanding concessions and promises for your vote right up until midnight before election day AND THEN cast your vote!
We only get 1 chance every 3 years to hold these politicians feet to the fire and they only care before the election, so force real concessions out of them before you elect them.
This election is going to be too important to just let politicians waltz into Parliament without being blistered by our scrutiny.
Demand real concessions from them and THEN vote on Election Day.
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Is this only for the underclasses. We’re going to fix wealth distribution aren’t we? Make New Zealand strong. Pull in the same direction upwards, and produce more millionaires. Fixed it.
I reckon woman at 89%
You’re going to need high economic growth to pay for your new social schemes. The Malthusian nonsense of ‘degrowth’ is not progressive at all (and certainly not socialist).
The high wage ladies’ jobs you’re calling for also need growth. Manufacturing of clothing, footwear, other textiles, electronics and foodstuffs will all need to come back home — and the factories will have to be rebuilt.
The Award System and universal union membership would also need to be restored, so workers can actually bargain for such higher wages.
I reckon women at 89% of men’s income is the gender pay gap closed. As soon as there are more woman capable of doing and wanting to do more dangerous jobs like oil riggers, pylon painters, fireperson, cranedriver etc and start running there own businesses and get better at negotiating their wage rates the gender pay gap will be zero. The other thing that could be done is to encourage more men to go into low paying jobs…
Hey Joseph I challenge you to do the same heavy industrial work that I (with my lady body) have done, you make wild assumptions that women are not making swift progress and doing these roles already.
I’d certainly like more.
Serious question: what’s stopping you?
The Patriarchy!
Remind me: 1 how they decided who was in which basket. Ie what is a woman
2 how they adjusted for men who took primary caregiver roles. And so by definition are not primarily focused on their jobs. Ie the methodology is corrupt while we have people who care about kith and kin
Yes Ada house husband s are part of gender pay gap.
There is no gender pay gap, unless you somehow think that all jobs should pay the exact same amount. Indeed, it is illegal to pay someone less in New Zealand when they are doing the same job. Has been that way for a very long time. What this boils down to is that you think women dominated jobs (e.g. cleaners, caregivers, waiting tables, etc) should get paid the same as male dominated jobs (building, welding, mechanics, forestry). Since we are not a Communist country, the market decides these things. Do the same work, get the same pay. It’s that simple.
Fair point Nitrium
In the perfect World you offer is a lot of free things .Nothing is free and all those things are paid for by the tax payer .It is only right that the state helps the vunerable people who are suffering with health or mental problems our circumstances change like covid or earthquakes or floods but a line has to be drawn at what is paid for for all other people .
MB spends considered time composing an analysis of needs – :
Improve tomorrow’s world
More maternity/paternity leave
Free ECE in NZ
Improve working conditions
Lift the burden of COL pressures.
Break supermarket duolopy
Provide food in schools
Free public transport
Build education and health capacities
Have the correct tax take from tax avoiders
” Fight for tomorrow – Culture War fights make all the noise, but poor people aren’t sitting around the kitchen table cancelling people for misusing pronouns, they are trying to work out how to pay the bills! ”
RESPONDERS to the crisis – :
=
The solution is – It ‘s the fault of that TQI + lot. ‘cos My vagina is better than your vagina !
Whilst outside my window are real struggles, …. yeah, nah.. where humans go to shit is my hill to die on .
Must up my ratios to have friends and qualify as peaked.
( Subversively Drop my Merch link here )
https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/YOU-RULE-YOU-SUCK-Stranger-Things-by-BaileyPerson/82578456.EJUG5
I’ll just re-quack my pronoun theory ad nauseam to @nzlabour.
Nearly FULLY BAKED. Just off to scrub the word ” ADULT” from my tee- shirt logo.
MB spends considered time composing an analysis of needs – :
Improve tomorrow’s world
More maternity/paternity leave
Free ECE in NZ
Improve working conditions
Lift the burden of COL pressures.
Break supermarket duolopy
Provide food in schools
Free public transport
Build education and health capacities
Have the correct tax take from tax avoiders
” Fight for tomorrow – Culture War fights make all the noise, but poor people aren’t sitting around the kitchen table cancelling people for misusing pronouns, they are trying to work out how to pay the bills! ”
RESPONDERS to the crisis – :
=
The solution is – It ‘s the fault of that TQI + lot. ‘cos My vagina is better than your vagina !
Whilst outside my window are real struggles, …. yeah, nah.. where humans go to shit is my hill to die on .
Must up my ratios to have friends and qualify as peaked.
( Subversively Drop my Merch link here )
https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/YOU-RULE-YOU-SUCK-Stranger-Things-by-BaileyPerson/82578456.EJUG5
I’ll just re-quack my pronoun theory ad nauseam to @nzlabour.
Nearly FULLY BAKED. Just off to scrub the word ” ADULT” from my tee- shirt logo.
Years ago I met Zelda D’Aprano in Melbourne Oz. She had just spent the day on a project – trying to travel on public transport but paying a quarter less than the ticket price on the basis that women were paid less by this amount, so were being discriminated against by the fare. It would have been in 1970-71 I think.
The next year, these three women founded the Women’s Action Committee to jump start the Women’s Liberation Movement in Melbourne. This organisation tried to get women more involved in activism as “we had passed the stage of caring about a “lady-like” image because women had for too long been polite and ladylike and were still being ignored” (D’Aprano 1995). This led the women to take more militant action on their path to equal pay. These same women founded the Women’s Liberation Centre on Little Latrobe Street in 1972. ..
The Women’s Action Committee kept going, and grew as it went.
They travelled around Melbourne paying only 75% of the fares, because women were only given 75% of the wage of men at the time. Because women weren’t allowed to drink in bars, only in lounges, they did pub crawls across Melbourne…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_D%27Aprano
Fifty years on women are still trying for better wages. But many miss
what is needed. It is strange that women don’t always support other women who are mothers. This is a hard job to do well; encouraging, coaching, chastising, trying to have a good role model as a father. Helping to bring up nice young people with goals in education and skills plus physicality, plus inbuilt controls against things that will deteriorate their lives and personal standing. Not perfectly behaved youngsters, but not mean, able to handle life positively.
The skills and care needed are huge and happy homes skills don’t get learned from factory or office work, or even doing university courses as now. The closest could be the Domestic Science courses that Otago University once ran, and started in 1911.
https://dehanz.net.au/entries/home-science-university-otago/
Now it seems to be low-ranked if at all available, and even the annual Food Cost Survey* is not quoted much in the media. I think house and childcare has settled back into an unskilled-level ‘women’s thing’. It is part of our current mental disease that women bringing up children, even being able to have safe childbirth in an accessable venue with skilled assistance is yesterday’s certainty.
* https://www.otago.ac.nz/humannutrition/research/food-cost-survey/
There are other things affecting wage earners as well as equal pay. There is also the problem of stand-downs after jobs have finished when little money is available for weeks, and the disheartening practice of cutting grants immediately if there has been some savings made – not allowed. Or a short term period of slightly higher wages than usual remuneration.
I’ve always thought that, regarding the pay of female Prime Ministers, MP’s, and CEO’s, it (the pay) ought to be more than their male counterparts due to a lot of circumstances such as typically less support and more stress, and an increase of effects physically and emotionally on women more than men in the same high ranking positions.
Say a male Prime Ministers has an annual salary of $250,000. With a comparable female Prime Minister, a fair pay packet could be $280,000 or $290,000.
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