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Women’s work advisory group celebrates 40th anniversary

Forty years of advising government on women’s right to work, and women’s rights at work, are being celebrated this week.

The National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women (NACEW) held its first meeting in 1967, and has timed its birthday celebrations to coincide with Women’s Suffrage Day celebrations today.

“We’re going to celebrate how far we have come,” said NACEW chair Pauline Winter. “But we also want to keep a strong focus on the future work needed to make sure that women and girls have a good deal at work.

“Our 40-year history spans three generations of women and girls – and it’s fascinating to look back on how much things have changed.
“A woman who was 35 in 1967, and perhaps looking to return t
o the workforce after bringing up her children, is now 75.
“Her daughter, now possibly in her 40s, has likely spent more time in the paid workforce than her mother did and less time at home.

“And her daughter, maybe in her early 20s, is likely to have her first child in her early thirties, after more than 10 years in the workforce. She’s probably got a tertiary qualification, and her career will probably include periods of full-time and part-time work.”

NACEW has helped to promote the changes that have given these women such differing lives, said Ms Winter. At the same time there have been other changes such as new technology, the growth of the tertiary sector, changes in women’s fertility, and the creation of jobs that were not even imagined 40 years ago.

“We still have a long way to go, though,” said Ms Winter, “to ensure that all women have equal opportunities. For example, Maori and Pacific women have high rates of unemployment relative to other women, and many of these women are concentrated in low paid, low skilled jobs.

“The role models that exist of Maori and Pacific women who are ambitious, skilled and entrepreneurial are often invisible, especially to girls at school,” she said.

It is a concern that despite the growth in women’s employment rates, most occupations remain segregated by gender.

“Half of women workers are clustered into three of the 10 occupations groups – clerks, service and sales workers and professionals.

“However, it’s heartening that work traditionally done by women is having a greater value assigned to it – the recent wages rises won by nurses and teachers is a sign of this,” said Ms Winter.

“NACEW’s goals for the future are vital, not just for women’s work and their work-life balance, but to the quality of life for all New Zealanders, young and old, male and female,” she said.

NACEW’s goals are:
• Better work-life balance, and shared care of children and elders by men and women
• Quality flexible work across all industries and occupations
• Pay equity and pathways that reduce gender segregation in occupations
• Learning and training opportunities available throughout life
More information about NACEW is at www.nacew.govt.nz
Background information attached:
• Key facts about women’s employment,
• some situations vacant from 1967 (we can provide copies of 1967 newspapers)

ENDS

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