Venkat Raman
Auckland, October 6, 2024
Participating in this year’s Suffrage Day, Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and Acting Human Rights Commissioner Dr Karanina Sumeo underscored the importance of continuing the fight for equality.
“We cannot take for granted the things we have, like doctors and women’s refuges,” she said, citing her primary focus on pay equity.
“This fight is far from over. We need a better system to know if women are getting paid fairly and equally,” she declared, highlighting the fact that current legislation addressing pay equity has been paused.” She encouraged women to take action, rally, lobby and write to their politicians.
“Software that measures pay equality exists but it must be made mandatory, with legislation that includes women, ethnicity, and disability,” she said and asked, “What does equality look like now?” She challenged women to envision a better future for our children, where equality is not just an aspiration but a reality.
Call for national action
“Other countries are looking at New Zealand and saying we do not have equality. We all count,” she said, calling for a collective effort to ensure that the future is one where equality for all is a given, not something we are still fighting for.
Community worker and New Zealand Indian Central Association Treasurer Hansa Naran, who filed the report for Indian Newslink, expressed the opinion of her colleagues.
“As we celebrated women’s suffrage, Dr Sumeo’s call to action was a timely reminder that while the right to vote was a monumental victory, the work of achieving true equality is far from over. It is up to each of us to carry forward the spirit of the suffragists and continue the fight for a better, more equal New Zealand,” she said.
There have been instances in recent years to recognise women for their contributions to business and community. We have celebrated the success of Ranjna Patel who has been honoured by the government, and non-governmental organisations, all of which were crowned by her induction into the New Zealand Business Hall of Fame on September 11, 2024.
Salary disparity
However, there is no doubt that much more needs to be done.
It is not the position alone- there are disparities in salaries as well. According to experts, of the many glass ceilings constraining women’s careers, one is particularly important yet often overlooked: the wage of the husband.
They said that in a country like America, in which men on average earn more than women, it follows almost naturally that the wife often earns less. However, the pattern of relative income of men and women at young(ish) ages in a marriage is striking; there are many young couples among whom the wife earns slightly less than her husband, or just as much, but far less as relative income reverses, that is when the wife earns more. This pattern is not driven by older couples; the researcher only uses couples around the time of first marriage (22-34) for this part of the study. Despite some progress in recent decades, the social norm “men should earn more than their wives” seems to be alive and well.
That is not only a curious fact; it has consequences, too.
The researchers show that women with the potential to earn more than their husbands quit their jobs altogether, more often than otherwise similar women in comparable families. If they do work, they use their earnings potential to a lower degree. That is bad news for the economy.
Economists may wonder why people with “rational expectations” enter such a marriage at all. The answer is: that many do not. The marriage market, as economists bluntly call it, clears much less often in regions in which more women have the potential to surpass men.
Gender Equality or Inequality
Gender equality or inequality has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but the issue has been generating heat in the public domain in recent years.
Two major reasons have been cited for its re-emergence – the current cost of living crisis that brought to the fore many ills of companies, and recent reports, which indicate that companies with women on management boards tend to perform better than others.
It is indeed time to address this issue with greater thoroughness and sincerity. For many years, researchers and corporate consultants have been saying that New Zealand is among the countries with a poor record of gender equality and that in many cases, women are paid less than men for performing the same type of jobs, often within the same company.
It seems there are no valid reasons for this inequity and like many things in life, there is greater interest in preserving the status quo ante than in thinking afresh.
We are happy that the situation in the Indian business community is far better, compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
We have women occupying positions of importance- as owners, directors, HR managers, chief financial officers and so on in companies that are owned, operated, managed and franchised by businesses of Indian origin. We have seen them participate in all management decisions, setting policies and strategies and steering their organisations towards higher levels of productivity and profitability.
We honour our women
The presence of women on the management boards of companies and as entrepreneurs encouraged us to include the ‘Best Businesswoman of the Year’ category in the annual Indian Newslink Indian Business Awards in 2010, two years after the launch of the Awards Programme. According to our independent panel of judges, this category is among the most popular of the Awards, attracting people from various industries and highlighting the significant role played by our women in the decision-making process and management of companies.
Large companies are also beginning to value the contributions of women and accord them importance as directors and management committee members. It is pleasing to see our mothers, sisters, spouses, friends and colleagues occupying places of importance on the boards of companies that they do not own.
Women elsewhere in the world, including the Western countries and India, have proved that they bring greater value to boards and to the operation of the company in which they are employed. Apart from politics, India can be proud of its women corporate leaders who steer the destiny of multinationals.
