Human Rights Commission
Media Release
19 August 2009

A monitoring framework will be developed by the Human Rights Commission to ensure the health, education and public sectors take action on delivering pay and employment equity for all workers.

This is one outcome from a round table on pay equity hosted by the Human Rights Commission in Wellington today.

The round table, attended by 34 union leaders, business representatives, government and policy agencies and women’s organisations, was convened following concern that progress in closing the gender pay gap has slowed because of the economic recession, the cancellation of state sector pay equity investigations and changed government priorities

“The gender pay gap is a fundamental breach of human rights that results in unfairness to many thousands of working women and impacts significantly on New Zealand families”, said Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor.

The monitoring framework would measure annually:

• the overall pay gap between men and women in each organisation,
• the number of women in senior management ,
• the starting rate pay gaps between men and women,
• progress on pay and employment equity response plans,
• other employment equity initiatives.
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“The gender pay gap identified in the 67 health, education and public service reviews undertaken to date shows almost every organisation has a gender pay gap of some sort that disadvantages women. These vary from 3 per cent to 35 per cent in median equivalent full-time earnings”, said Dr McGregor.

The EEO Commissioner said the new monitoring framework would allow public service departments, district health boards, schools and the kindergarten sector to benchmark themselves against others.

“It also allows the 120,000 women who have been involved in pay equity reviews to see what is being done to close their gender pay gaps.”

The monitoring framework dovetails with recently announced Government policy to continue support for implementation of pay and employment equity response plans, excluding pay investigations, and to continue to address identified gender inequities as part of good management practice and being a good employer.

ENDS

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