The Women’s Rights Party congratulates Te Whatu Ora employed midwives on their interim pay equity settlement, which goes some way to addressing the established undervaluation of these midwives due to the fact that midwives are almost all women.

Women’s Rights Party co-leader Jill Ovens says midwives employed by private primary birthing centres and those community midwives who are self-employed (LMCs) will not benefit by the settlement, which is in itself an interim settlement pending the resolution of a number of outstanding issues subject to legal processes.

“We call on the Government to address pay parity with those midwives employed in the so-called ‘funded sector’ and to pay LMCs ‘fair and equitable’ remuneration,” she says.

Ms Ovens, who had previously worked for five years on the midwives’ pay equity claim, says pay equity is based on sex-based discrimination and not gender as reported in media stories yesterday.

“It is not a ‘gender’ pay gap. The word ‘gender’ does not appear in the Equal Pay Act 2020,” Ms Ovens says.

Pay equity, as defined in the Equal Pay Act, is based on occupational comparators of male-dominated occupations and female-dominated occupations.

“The process of establishing sex-based undervaluation uses remuneration data across the comparators’ occupational groups, usually using data from Collective Employment Agreements,” Ms Ovens says.

“Use of the term ‘gender’ to cover males who identify as women and vice versa, or those who identify as ‘non-binary’ is not relevant to pay equity claims. Men who identify as women and work in female-dominated occupations will also benefit by the outcomes of the pay equity processes.”

Ms Ovens says there is no valid reason to remove the word “sex” from the language of pay equity as that is the legal basis of the discrimination against women in employment in relation to their pay.

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