We’re lagging further behind on the gender pay gap – how much longer will we wait?

Dellwyn Stuart is the co-founder of gender pay gap advocacy group Mind the Gap.

OPINION: How long is 40 weeks? It’s about three seasons – summer, autumn and winter. It’s a school year. It’s the time it takes to grow a baby to full term. It’s a big chunk of time. And it’s how long it’s been since the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act was marked last October and the Government committed to working on pay transparency measures “with haste”.

Ministers Priyanca Radhakrishnan and Jan Tinetti are deeply committed to taking steps to counter our stubborn gender- and ethnicity-based pay gaps. They have set the wheels in motion. But those impacted by gaps have now collected 40-plus weekly pay packets that have less in them purely because of their gender, their ethnicity or disability.

These are real people, calculator in hand, pushing their trolley around the supermarket, making more and more compromises in how they feed their whānau.

As a country, Aotearoa New Zealand is falling further behind the rest of the world in addressing pay gaps.

Many countries – Australia and the 33 that make up Europe – have recently announced advances on already established measures to close pay gaps. These include mandating action plans where pay gaps are more than 5% and lowering the threshold of the size of businesses that must measure and publicly report.

If we were breaking new ground with pay transparency legislation, you might be forgiving of a 40-week time frame. But we’re not. It’s already in place around the world, the impacts have been measured and the tweaks made. Mandated pay transparency works to reduce pay gaps.

So is New Zealand a uniquely tricky country to do this in? Again, no.

Our public service has already tailored pay transparency measures to fit the landscape here, with many government organisations now reporting on pay gaps and their plans to fix them. They have also shown these measures work, with their gender pay gap falling to 7.7% and their Māori pay gap declining to 6.5% in 2022.

In Aotearoa we like to think we place a high value on fairness, but we’re not living that reality. Recent calculations from the Human Rights Commission Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry show that over the course of their working life, a Pacific woman misses out on $488,000, compared to a Pākehā man. That amount of money allows you to support your kids through university, or to retire more comfortably. This loss of income perpetuates a cycle of hardship.

Data out this month from the Retirement Commission has shown a 25% gender gap on average KiwiSaver balances, 5% worse than in 2021. The commission has ruled out fund choice, withdrawal or suspension behaviour as causes. This widening gap possibly points to a growth in pay gaps.

The commission’s Dr Suzy Morrissey says the report highlights the importance of closing gender pay gaps in regard to retirement savings: “The data shows that within the period of one year, the difference between KiwiSaver balances for men and women has increased, highlighting the continued gender savings gap.”

We also know that while we’ve been in a tight labour market, employees have been more able to secure pay increases. But we know from research studies that women are less likely to receive pay increases when they ask.

The lifelong harm that pay gaps do is undisputed. And the evidence that pay transparency measures do work has been established. There is cross-party voter support for their introduction and more than 100 businesses are already using pay transparency measures as a modern business tool.

Three seasons have passed, and we’ve collected more than 40 weeks of pay while waiting for the Government to act. How many more weeks will we have to wait?