For a more equal Aotearoa.
The Green Party will take action to advance gender equality and ensure women and gender minorities are respected and treated fairly.
Aotearoa has made decent progress to make this reality come to fruition, but we have a way to go before women and gender minorities can be truly equal in this country. Life is unfair and unsafe for too many – single mothers are vulnerable to hardship and homelessness, gender-based violence is increasing, and women continue to get paid less than men for equal work.
Changes the coalition Government have made have worsened the position of many women and gender minorities. The Government’s changes to pay equity shifted the goal posts and balanced their budget on the backs of our lowest paid working women. Wāhine Māori are overrepresented in the justice system for crimes of poverty, worsened by the coalition Government’s policies. Gender minorities have been attacked and used as a political distraction by Government parties.
The Green Party are proud of our legacy championing solutions to the inequities women and gender minorities face. In Government we championed the first-ever plan to eliminate family violence and sexual violence, Te Aorerekura. We worked with the former Government on pay equity legislation, getting ACC to cover birth injuries, and extending parental leave.
But there is more to do. We will undo the Government’s changes to pay equity to ensure working women are paid fairly. We will work with wāhine Māori to address disparities and injustices in health, justice, work and pay, learning from the ongoing Mana Wāhine Waitangi Tribunal inquiry. We will fund treatment and diagnosis of pelvic pain including endometriosis and properly resource front-line organisations to end family and sexual violence in Aotearoa.
Ensuring women and gender minorities are safe, respected and valued in Aotearoa benefits all of us. The time to act is now.
Our plan
- Close the gender and ethnic pay gaps by undoing the Government’s changes to the pay equity regime and resuming claims, pay transparency measures, and comprehensive pay gap reporting.
- Increase the Best Start payment and extend it to every child under three as a universal child benefit for the early years.
- Fund one-stop-shops that provides pā harakeke wrap-around services for whānau throughout hapūtanga, after birth, first stages of life, and navigating parenthood.
- Work towards diagnosing and treating endometriosis faster, including by developing formal clinical guidelines for diagnosing and treating endometriosis and other pelvic pain, and by funding specialised clinics across Aotearoa.
- Resource kaupapa Māori solutions and community-led solutions to family and sexual violence, that have have been developed by disproportionately impacted groups, including women, Pasifika, rainbow, and disabled communities.
- Amend the Crimes Act to criminalise coercive control, amend the definition of consent, and preclude a defence of reluctant consent to affirm that consent must be free and voluntary, and can be withdrawn at any time while ensuring these changes cause no further harm.
- Increase paid parental leave to 15 months for the primary caregiver, with additional ring-fenced leave for partners, while also increasing payments.