Women's Policy - Valuing Women

Vision

The Greens envision a world where women's experience, knowledge, wisdom, work and contribution is recognised, valued and treasured. The Greens want a future where women are safe from violence, abuse and ill health.

Key Principles

The Green Party affirms that:

1. Women's unpaid work should be valued and recognised.
2. Women should receive equal pay for work of equal value.
3. Women with family responsibilities should not be discriminated against, and that they should, where possible, be able to work without conflict between their paid employment and family responsibilities.
4. Women and men should share positions of responsibility and decision making.
5. Women must be safe from violence.
6. Structural and indirect discrimination against women and wahine Maori must be dismantled.
7. New Zealand should honour our commitment to international conventions, treaties and standards that relate to the elimination of discrimination against women.
8. Te Tiriti O Waitangi remains a living and fundamental constitutional document.

Specific Policy Points

1.Valuing parenting and other unpaid work of women

Research shows that women provide most of the unpaid household and community work in New Zealand. This work is unseen and unvalued, while activities such as selling of tobacco and car accidents are counted as positive in our economic statistics.

The Green Party wants to see parenting and community and voluntary work measured and valued in our national accounts and also in the way we support women and families in our communities.

The Green Party will:

1. Introduce a Universal Child Benefit. This non income tested, non transferable payment to the primary caregiver would be similar to the Family Benefit that was scrapped in 1991. The base rate as of June 2011 would be $18.40 per week for the first child, and $13.00 for each subsequent child.
2. Support a full and wide ranging public debate on Universal Basic Income, and government funding for detailed studies of the impacts of UBI. The UBI would recognise the value of caring for children and other dependants, as well as voluntary community work.
3. Develop a modified set of national accounts to measure real national achievement and wellbeing.
4. Extend the working for families package to remove all discriminatory policies and provide the same level of support to children regardless of whether their parents are in the workforce or on a benefit.
5. Oppose compulsory work testing for single parents on the Domestic Purposes Benefit and for the partners of beneficiaries whose primary responsibility is caring for dependants.
6. Provide support and education programmes for parents. All parents should have access to programmes that will support and develop their parenting skills .
7. Provide additional support for parents in the first year of each child's life. Review and increase resourcing of programmes such as Plunket to ensure that every child is seen regularly in their first months of life.
8. Review the childcare subsidy with a view to increasing the number of families who are eligible.

2. Maintaining a work / life balance

Women's lives are becoming increasingly complex as they struggle to balance paid work with responsibilities for children, families and their communities. There is an anti-family ethic in many workplaces which requires employees to put the demands of work first and to pretend that they do not have children or family lives.

A cultural revolution is needed in our workforces if women and men are to live more balanced lives, and be able to spend more time with their families. While men are beginning to share some childcare and household responsibilities, many men (and women) are having to work longer hours in paid work. Women are still doing more household and more community work than men. Leadership is required for us to reconsider how we manage our home, community and work responsibilities so that we can live more balanced, less stressful lives.

The Green Party will:

1. Support continued access to flexible working hours, as provided for by the Employment Relations (Flexible Working Arrangements) Amendment Act 2007.
2. Extend leave entitlements to:
   1. Extend the period of paid parental leave to a total of 13 months, in line with the Families Commission recommendations of September 2007, and increase the level of payments to 100% of the average male wage.
   2. Ensure workplaces provide work breaks and areas where mothers can breastfeed as required by ILO convention 183.
   3. Up to five days bereavement leave for each bereavement.
   4. Ten days sick leave.
   5. Establish a separate domestic leave entitlement to provide (over time) up to 10 days leave where employees have to care for dependents who are sick.
3. Identify initiatives to encourage a child friendly culture in workplaces, businesses and public places wherever possible. These initiatives could include:
   1. facilities to allow mothers to breastfeed.
   2. ensuring children are able to communicate with their parents (i.e all women to have access to a telephone in their workplace).
   3. pre-school care for employees' children should be available, where possible, close to or within workplaces.
4. Investigate tax incentives for employers who provide facilities and equipment for the purpose of making their place child friendly
5. Work towards a shorter working week. Many parents struggle to find time to spend with their children due to the demands of employment. We would initiate a public debate and research into the future of work, including investigating the economic and social effects of a 35-hour working week in New Zealand.

3. Bringing equity into paid work

Women in the paid workforce often bear the economic costs of having and raising children. Despite the Equal Pay Act, women still earn significantly less than men. This is in part because women's professions such as teaching and nursing are paid at a significantly lower rate than male dominated professions such as policing. Homecare workers, caring for older people and disabled are paid less than those caring for sport grounds or buildings. Earnings are also reduced as women who take time out to have a child, often return to work at a lower wage.

The Green Party will:

1. Introduce legislation to progress pay and employment equity. This will work towards a mechanism:
   1. for employers to undertake pay audits.
   2. for employers to report on pay and employment equity in all sectors.
   3. for legislation that makes it a breach of good faith for an employer to refuse to modify or eliminate pay rates or practices that continue an inequity.
2. Establish a Pay and Employment Equity Commission. This commission will:
   1. Collect, collate and analyse data on pay and employment equity.
   2. educate and inform employers and employees on pay equity.
   3. report annual progress on reducing the gender and ethnicity pay gap.
3. Review the Equal Pay Act to make it consistent with current employment legislation and to ensure it includes the 'principle of equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value' as set out in ILO convention 100 on Equal Remuneration.
4. Reform Paid Parental Leave to:
   1. Extend eligibility to self employed, and those working for an employer for less than 12 months.
   2. Increase payment to 100% of wages up to a maximum of the average male wage.
   3. Fund the scheme jointly by government contribution and an employer levy based on payroll (similar to ACC).

4. Support for Low Income, Unemployed Women and Women on Benefits

Women are over represented in the lowest 20% of income earners. Increasing the minimum wage, and benefits and reducing tax for those low income earners will make a real difference to the lives of low income women.

The Green Party will:

1. Increase the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour, and legislate to provide for annual adjustments to ensure that it eventually equates to no less than 66% of the average wage.
2. Introduce a tax-free threshold for the first $10,000 of income.
3. Implement the principles of simplicity and universality in all aspects of income support, including an increased emphasis on treating all adults as individuals for income support purposes.
4. Work towards setting benefit amounts at a level that is sufficient for all basic needs and work towards an increased emphasis on treating all adults as individuals for income support purposes.
5. Introduce measures to address the casualisation of work, such as improving employment rights and increasing protection for casual, seasonal, fixed term, and temporary workers, and when workers are re-employed, requiring that previous service is recognised.
6. Introduce legislation to protect the continuity of employment for low income workers whose jobs are vulnerable because of the contracting out of services or transfer of business.
7. Foster new employment by supporting active employment programmes, including:
   1. financial support for the appropriate retraining of long-term unemployed.
   2. support for the work of employment resource centres, small business support groups and similar organisations which work to train and support people going into self employment, small business, co-operative and community owned enterprise.
   3. resource targeted employment, self employment and small business programmes for women, wahine Maori, and migrant women.
   4. resource the Department of Work and Income to help women find appropriate employment, and to inform women of relevant employment and human rights legislation.
   5. ensuring all registered unemployed women have access to careers advice and vocational guidance from the time they register as unemployed.
8. Ensure quality support and advocacy services for people dealing with Work and Income and other relevant Government departments by: providing adequate resourcing and infrastructure support to community organisations which provide beneficiary advocacy and support services; supporting and enabling training and information sharing in and among advocacy groups.

5. Women and Violence

The Green Party wants to reduce the violence in our society and culture, and in particular the underlying causes of violence. All women have the right to safety at home, in schools, on the streets and in the workplace.

The most common forms of violence against women are domestic and sexual violence. We need to break the cycle of violence. We are committed to rebuilding strong supportive communities and promoting peaceful relationships from the individual to the international level.

The Green Party will:

1. Review, with a view to reducing, the cost of obtaining a protection order.
2. Resource improved provision of targeted information to women and men about protection orders.
3. Fully resource the Domestic Violence Act 1995.
4. Increase educational and training programmes to deal with attitudes and behaviours that result in violence. These include non-violent conflict resolution in schools for both boys and girls and mandatory attendance at (culturally appropriate) behaviour modification courses for men convicted of assault on women.
5. Secure financial support for agencies that provide safe houses and refuge for women and children in violent relationships.
6. Reduce violence on television by requiring the Broadcasting Standards Authority to monitor the amount of violence on all television channels through surveys and report the findings to Parliament each year.
7. Require the Broadcasting Standards Authority to monitor and enforce the TV codes of broadcasting practice on the portrayal of violence, in particular the requirement that channels avoid screening programmes containing gratuitous violence (that is not justified by the context).
8. Require TVNZ, as a publicly funded channel, to take a lead in reducing the amount of violence on television by:
   1. developing guidelines on violence for producers and programmers.
   2. committing itself to not screening programmes that contain gratuitous violence.
9. Provide free counselling and support for victims of violence, in addition to ACC.
10. Ensure information about sexual victimisation is readily available through various outlets to be accessible for all.

6. Women and Health

Women often have responsibility not only for their own health but also that of their children. As mothers and carers, women play a major role in the health of our society. The Green's Health Policy has a strong emphasis on improving people's health, protecting people against ill health and minimising the risk of disease, and facilitating early diagnosis and treatment.

The Green Party will:

1. Increase investment in public health and disease prevention programmes.
2. Support primary health services to improve early diagnosis and treatment of illness.
3. Support traditional Maori healing practitioners and practices, including traditional breastfeeding and birthing practices.
4. Encourage District Health Boards to identify women's health priorities in their health strategies.

Public Health and Prevention Programmes

1. Support and extend targeted smoking cessation programmes for Maori women, and young women.
2. Provide positive education programmes about body image and the impact of dieting on health and well being.
3. Support appropriate education and intervention services for early recognition of eating disorders.
4. Progressively increase funding to prevent illness and injury and promote health, to 10% of the total healthcare budget commencing with the introduction of a free annual wellness check by a health professional for all New Zealanders.
5. Support women's wellness seminars, particularly in rural areas.

Screening and cancer treatment

1. Ensure the waiting time between surgery for breast cancer and radiotherapy is within the internationally recognised limit of 12 weeks.
2. Establish a national breast screening programme instead of the 6 different (and incompatible) current regional programmes.
3. Continue to implement the Gisborne Cervical Screening Inquiry report recommendations.
4. Require full content labelling for products such as personal care, cosmetics and household products that contain ingredients linked to an increased risk of cancer.
5. Work for a National Breast Cancer Prevention Strategy.
6. Promote a National Breast Cancer Prevention Week.
7. Develop a public awareness campaign about how women can avoid the chemicals implicated in breast cancer, how to reduce lifestyle risk factors such as alcohol, cigarettes, obesity and lack of physical exercise, and how to improve nutrition to reduce breast cancer risk.
8. Identify the occupations at high risk of breast cancer and reduce the risk factors in these working environments.
9. Restrict hormone replacement therapy to cases of significant medical need, and then to be used only in accordance with Medical Adverse Reactions Committee guidelines.
10. Continue to provide cervical screening to all women.
11. Evaluate alternatives to routine mammography such as thermography and sonography.

Reproductive Health

1. Develop a National Infertility Prevention strategy that focuses on ways we can protect fertility and reduce infertility.
2. Research environmental causes of infertility in women and declining sperm counts in men and in particular chemicals that mimic or disrupt hormones.
3. Require all pesticides and chemicals to be reviewed for their endocrine disrupting potential and phase out any chemical that is found to cause reproductive hazards.
4. Instigate research into the upsurge of endometriosis and other hormone induced illnesses which affect fertility and health.
5. Improve access to family planning and sexual health services to all women in New Zealand, in particular young women, Maori and Pacific women and rural women.
6. Review abortion services to ensure equity of access for women throughout New Zealand.

Maternity services

1. Review current Maternity health services to:
   1. Allow women greater choice about the length of hospital stay following childbirth.
   2. Improve access to appropriate birth facilities, particularly for rural women.
   3. Improve the choice of lead maternity carer for women, particular in rural areas.
   4. Investigate to what extent the substantial increase in caesarean birth is due to legitimate reasons.
   5. Improve access to services and support for postnatal depression and postnatal psychosis.

Mental Health

1. Increase investment in core mental health services directed at girls and young women; improve access to healthy, affordable and secure accommodation, employment and other social/recreational activity for women with or recovering from mental illness.
2. Undertake further research into "women and depression" including the high rate of prescriptions for anti depressants and high use of ECT.
3. Improve support and respite care for carers of those with a mental illness.

7. Women and Justice

Increasing numbers of women are not only victims but perpetrators of crime.

The Greens will:

1. Review adequacy of financial support for community law centres.
2. Review the management and rehabilitation of women in prison, in particular, pregnant and nursing mothers.
3. Review mediation and counselling services available to those using the Family Court, in particular the number of subsidised sessions.
4. Continue to support legislation that protects minors who are working as prostitutes and those forced to work in prostitution, and that improves the health and safety of people working in the sex industry.

8. Life long learning

While, women are gaining more qualifications, they are still under represented at the highest levels and in some subjects such as maths and sciences. The Greens will address the increasing cost of higher education which has impacted more on women than men.

In tertiary education, the Green Party will:

1. Write off one year of student debt for every year of paid or unpaid work in New Zealand.
2. Reintroduce a universal student allowance.
3. Immediately cap tertiary fees and progressively phase out the fee system.
4. Reinstate the Training Incentive allowance for degree-level courses, and extend its availability to long-term sickness beneficiaries.
5. Encourage and support women to take programmes in which they are currently under represented.
6. Undertake research into the barriers to women's participation in post graduate education and programmes such as science, maths and engineering.
7. Increase support for the assessment of prior learning for those who have gained knowledge working in the paid or unpaid workforce.
8. Work with students' associations and tertiary education institutions to facilitate affordable and accessible childcare facilities on campus.

In schools the Green Party will:

1. Support mothers' programmes in schools and other educational institutions.
2. Encourage the teaching of self-esteem, self-defence and sexual health to 10 to 14 year old girls through a comprehensive school-based programme. It will address the link between low self-esteem and youthful smoking addiction, eating disorders, pregnancy and risk of violence within domestic partnerships.
3. Ensure teachers are trained to recognise gender issues in the classroom.
4. Provide resources to encourage and support girls to take subjects in which they are under represented.

9. Wahine Maori

Research from the Time Use survey shows that wahine Maori are more likely than non Maori women or Maori men to do unpaid work outside their household. Wahine Maori play an important role in protecting our natural heritage and culture. The Green Party supports the strength and energy of wahine Maori and recognises their contribution to society. The Green Party also recognises that wahine Maori, in particular, have suffered from the effects of colonisation which has undermined their leadership, spirituality, knowledge and rights.

The Green Party will work with wahine Maori to:

1. Recognise and support the leadership of wahine Maori on both social and environmental issues.
2. Resource a series of nation wide hui of wahine Maori to discuss and determine their priorities and needs for the future.
3. Implement programmes and policies to reduce existing social and economic disparities between Maori and non-Maori women.
4. Ensure that all health, education and other government policies and priorities recognise and aim to improve the well being of wahine Maori.
5. Support a public information and awareness programme on Te Tiriti O Waitangi that includes the context, intent, wording, adherence to and violations of, Te Tiriti O Waitangi; and a shared understanding of Pakeha culture and values, focusing on its past and present relationship to Maori culture and values. Both of these are first steps towards healing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual effects of colonisation on our society.
6. Promote and support increased resources for the Waitangi Tribunal, including adequate resources for claimants to prepare and present their cases, and increased transparency and accountability.
7. Promote and support guaranteed Tangata Whenua participation in local governance.
8. Support an ongoing dialogue as to how the idea of shared guardianship can be developed to protect and enhance our natural heritage. The role of hapu as kaitiaki of their rohe must be recognised and strengthened.

10. Migrant women

Many women come to New Zealand as partners of migrants. Current immigration policies and settlement programmes are often focused on the "migrant" and not on their spouse or family. Many of these women face barriers to employment, education and community activities.

The Green Party will:

1. Provide ongoing support for organisations such as Shakti that provide support for new migrant women.
2. Require the Immigration service to undertake research on the problems faced by migrant women.

11. Lesbian Women

Lesbian partnerships are equally entitled to respect and support. For our full policy on lesbian women see the Green's Sexual Orientation Policy.

The Green Party will:

1. Support the extension of all legal partnership arrangements and rights to lesbian couples.
2. Support equal criteria for lesbian and heterosexual couples in their assessment for suitability and eligibility for parenting.

12. Women and Superannuation

Superannuation is an important issue for women. Firstly, because women live longer and likely to require more income to see them through their retirement years. Secondly, because many women take time out of the workforce to have children, and because they are in lower paying jobs, they have less savings in retirement than men. For many older women, superannuation is their first independent income. Retirement is also the time of life when men's and women's income are the most equal. This is due to the universal New Zealand Superannuation.

The Green Party will:

1. Maintain universal New Zealand Superannuation for all New Zealanders 65 years and older, adjusted annually in accordance with movement in the consumers price index - all groups published by the Department of Statistics, and within the constraints:
   1. That the rate for a couple cannot fall below 65% of the average ordinary time weekly earnings (after the deduction of standard tax and the earner premium payable on those earnings) as determined by the Department of Statistics; and
   2. That the rate for a couple cannot exceed 72.5 % of the average ordinary time weekly earnings (after the deduction of standard tax and the earner premium payable on those earnings) as determined by the Department of Statistics; and
   3. That the rate for a single person living alone is 65% of the rate for a couple; and
   4. That the rate for a single person not living alone is 60% of that for a couple.
2. Review taxation policy to increase incentives for employers to provide superannuation for low and middle income staff as well as those earning over $60,000.
3. Encourage employers to provide employer subsidised superannuation schemes that recognise the realities of women workers, who are more likely to be part time and casual workers and take extended periods of leave away from the workforce.

13. Women and the Environment

Women have often played a leadership role in promoting environmental issues. They are key workers and campaigners to keep NZ GE free, reduce waste and reduce pesticide and chemical use in New Zealand. Women as mothers and carers are often the first to feel the impact of environmental degradation. All Green policies are aimed at putting New Zealand on an ecologically and socially sustainable footing.

Some examples of the Green Party's commitments include working to:

1. Ensure all New Zealand produced food is GE free and any imported GE food is comprehensively labelled.
2. Set targets for the progressive reduction in total pesticide use.
3. Require all local authorities to have a water management plan, in which they assess water conservation strategies against new supply strategies.
4. Clean up contaminated sites. Toxic sites have intergenerational effects not only on workers but on partners and children.
5. Create a waste free New Zealand and an organic nation.
6. Ensure decision makers take into account women's views on environmental issues such as the Kyoto Protocol, conservation, marine resources, pesticide use and waste management.

14. Including women in policy development

Women are not a marginal group in society. They are workers, taxpayers, unemployed, business owners, mothers, students, farmers, decision makers. For many reasons, women's lives are different from men's. Their day to day experiences, and the different roles women play, mean that programmes and policies developed only with men in mind will not result in equitable outcomes for women.

The Green Party will:

1. Require all legislation and government policy be analysed to examine the different effect on men, women, Maori and non Maori.
2. Review the adequacy of funding of the Ministry of Women's Affairs.