By Emma Jolliff
From now until the end of the year, women will work for free - or, they may as well be, according to the pay equity movement.
Women gathered in central Wellington today with an invoice for $4 billion, money they say female workers are owed.
There is 12 percent of the year remaining and with an average 12 percent pay gap between men and women, the pay equity coalition says women will effectively spend the rest of the year working for free.
“Part of it is about female-dominated workplaces, traditional caring roles, they're not traditionally paid as much,” says Pay Equity Challenge spokesperson Angela McLeod.
Labour MP Sue Moroney says women’s working roles are not respected in New Zealand.
“We don't value the types of jobs women do, working in rest homes or some of the support workers who are here today,” she says.
Ms Mcleod says workers paid less than $13 an hour and university graduates are also affected.
“The statistics show that 67 percent of the graduates are women - the shame is that at the end of the first year of work the gender pay gap is 8 percent,” she says.
The gender gap is not new - Ms McLeod says there has been a 12 percent gap for 10 years, nine of which when Labour was in power.
Ms Moroney says National have not yet addressed the pay imbalance.
“With the change in government the pay equity unit has been closed. We've had two pay equity investigations ceased by this government,” she says.
Ms Moroney says the findings of 65 workplace investigations by the pay equity unit were being implemented when the Government changed.
She says pay equity is an issue for the whole labour force, but the Government has relegated it to the smallest, most poorly-resourced ministry in Government - the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
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