Budget 2018
We note that the Ministry for Women received an increase of 1.9% in this year’s budget.
Compare that to a number of government agencies that lost funding despite providing apparently worthwhile roles such as:
Ministry for the Environment: reduced by 14.9%;
Ministry for Primary Industries: reduced by 12.9%;
Serious Fraud Office: reduced by 12.7%;
Ministry of Transport: reduced by 4.4%;
Ministry for Pacific Peoples: reduced by 4.3%;
Te Puni Kokiri: reduced by 3.7%.
Compared with these agencies, it’s difficult to see any useful role for the Minstry for Women nowadays. We would challenge anyone to come up with a single right that men have but women don’t. The Ministry has previously said that gender pay equity is its remaining goal, but they bring to the issue their erroneous beliefs and ineffective proposed solutions.
Of course, we could hardly expect any reduction for this women’s ministry from a government led by the ‘Labia Party’ who chose its candidates on the basis of female genitalia before merit.
It’s difficult to find out what this Ministry has cost us since its inception in 1984. We estimate that it amounts to around $200 million of our hard-earned taxes. In our visit a few years ago to the Ministry’s central Wellington office suite we found only women and an overtly gay male working there. There is no government body giving voice to men’s needs and concerns or checking legislation to protect men’s rights and welfare. Is this hypocrisy really what NZ really needs as ethical leadership?
How much of that increase will go to pay for their fat arses?
What else do they do except have their morning coffee and eat their lunch?
Comment by Downunder — Mon 21st May 2018 @ 2:47 am
They make comments about men on Company Boards.
Comment by Brad — Mon 21st May 2018 @ 11:15 pm
Interesting comment back here from 2009
Comment by Downunder — Wed 23rd May 2018 @ 2:03 pm
It’s really just funding for an unregistered political party.
It’s acceptable because … ?
Comment by Evan Myers — Thu 24th May 2018 @ 11:35 am
This is purely political expediency to pander to the NZ Greens, in return for the Greens forming government with Labour. The Greens asked for and were given this portfolio and so they have also been given extra budget to push their feminist agenda. No doubt they have already conceived of some campaign(s) they intend to push with this money.
Always remember that the NZ Greens are first feminist, second socialist and a long way back in third, green. So this is only to be expected.
What one must do is expose the hypocrisy of feminism and thus how out of touch with the electorate feminist lobbyists are.
Comment by Vman — Mon 4th June 2018 @ 12:36 pm
The Ministry for Women recently funded a paper which is being circulated/pushed by all the usual feminist organisations on social media. The Ministry for Women Paper is “Parenthood and Labour Market Outcome” (May 2018). It is basically a statistical salad, looking at employment rates, hours worked etc, and the MOW is looking to use it to highlight the perceived ‘penalties’ and ‘disadvantages’ women incur when they chose to be the stay at home care giver, and/or return to the workforce after any given period of time.
In it the authors highlight nothing unexpected: when women chose to have a child, or children, and care for it/them after birth, they have a drop or loss of income, which depending on the length of time they remain in child care, or whether they return to part time or full time work, influences their return to work earnings potential or value. This is widely acknowledged as being one of the primary causes of the pay gap, and is in fact well known and understood worldwide by experts (Ref: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jel.20160995 ). Anyone whom leaves their field of expertise for lengthened periods of time, can be expected to lose competency and experience in that field depending on the length of time in question, and hence lose their value in that field until they regain their competency, and their experience, and also return back to full time hrs worked. Clearly many chose to not return back to full time work for a significant period of time; either being a full time care giver, or return to work part time only. The same will be applicable to men whom become the caregiver, if that is the family choice. The couple simply evaluate the best financial route for their family and take it. The results simply highlight that more women chose the option to undertake the childcare role given the extreme drops evident prior to and after birth. Their choice, although I suspect MOW think it is the oppressive patriarchy making that call.
What the MOW paper doesn’t pick up on from the graphical results or even acknowledge, but which is clearly evident, are:
1. That prior to males/females having children women on average work less hours than men (Figure 6). An average of the hours worked rate by genders. The weekly averages prior to birth of the child appears to be 37.62hrs/wk (Females) and 43.88hrs/wk (Males). So males work on average 17% more than women prior to having children. These figures exclude the 12mths prior immediately to birth which would increase that working gap.
The MOW paper uses dubious median values, of 40hrs/wk for women and 41hrs/wk for men selected by the authors, which are misleading. No doubt they are chosen to artificially reduce, or misrepresent, the gap between hours worked by males and females. It is unclear to me how the male median can be 41hrs/wk when the lowest value in the male graph is 42hrs/wk? Similarly unclear how the median of 40hrs/wk is derived for females when all values in the female graph are notably less than 40hrs? Some re-evaluation required?
2. It is observable (Figure 3) that there is a slight fall in male employment rates pre-birth of approximately 5%. Additionally post birth there is a fall approaching 10% over the duration shown (10yrs) which appears to correlate to some extent with women’s employment rates increasing after the child’s birth, where they are returning to work (Figure 3). This anomaly is ignored by the paper, but may be a factor worth exploring? Particularly if males wages/hours, as stated in the paper, stay unchanged or appear to trend upwards/increasing (Figure 6)? How can this be? Are some men staying at home to care for the child(ren), and if so are the remaining working male parents in fact working longer hours, and/or needing to earn more, to make up for the family choice of having a reduced income elsewhere? Is that their ‘penalty’ or ‘disadvantage’ given a mothers choice to either stay at home for the care giving roles of the family unit, or to return to work if she earns the majority income in the relationship? Logically this would usually be the case out of family financial necessity.
So, the above are evident with aspects associated with men working more than women pre-birth, and seemingly working longer hours post birth being ignored by the MOW who just want to focus on the perceived ‘loss’ to women during this time. No doubt they will be pushing to compensate women in future policies base on this.
Clearly MOW are quite ok with ignoring exploration of the financial/life style factors and considerations women and couples actually make when deciding to have a child/children, prior to assuming one party is somehow ‘penalised’ or ‘disadvantaged’, when in it is likely they have simply made specific choices to meet their own, and their childs’, specific situation/benefit/requirements? A choice they made and accept as best for them and their family.
Perhaps the ‘penalties’ and ‘disadvantages’ created by womens’ choices are more than compensated by a) the male working harder to compensate for the choice and/or b) the gender tax gap evident which works strongly in favour of women? (Ref: https://www.victoria.ac.nz/news/2014/research-shows-disparity-between-tax-paid-by-women-and-men ). Something else ignored by the paper authors and the Ministry for Women? Again only telling half the story?
The tax gap summarised (Ref: http://judgybitch.com/2016/08/16/reblog-research-find-that-as-a-group-only-men-pay-tax/?a=1 ).
Just some thoughts. I’d recommend people start following MOW, and other feminist sites, to keep an eye on where they are heading with many issues. Happy for the above to be copied and pasted into a new forum post if you think it’s worthy of starting a new topic.
Comment by Jonathan — Wed 13th June 2018 @ 12:51 pm
Taxpayer funded misinformation. What’s the end goal here. Amother piece of legislation for the financial benefit of women.
Similar to the PSA organising research to support an extra weeks leave for women as per Jan Logie’s Domestic Violence Bill.
They’re like second Ministry for Women.
Comment by Downunder — Wed 13th June 2018 @ 3:31 pm
Thanks Jonathon @6 for your thoughtful analysis and your vigilance about what’s coming from the Ministry of Sexist Propaganda.
Note also that women overwhelmingly choose partners who earn more than they do. This is unequivocal, consistently found in all relevant research. This enables many women to delay or avoid returning to work and/or choosing to work part time, privileged to be able to nurture their children and experience their developmental milestones.
Another issue is that the real income of the stay-at-home partner includes half or a substantial proportion of the ‘working’ parent’s earnings. Both parents’ incomes surely should be calculated to take that into account, the higher earner’s income thereby reduced and the lower earner’s income increased.
A more accurate picture would arise by comparing the incomes and post-baby drops in income for sole parent fathers vs sole parent mothers. Probably not much difference.
Comment by Ministry of Men's Affairs — Wed 13th June 2018 @ 9:58 pm
#7 https://www.hrc.co.nz/news/commission-welcomes-progress-family-violence-legislation/
That’s 10 days during any 12 months period which is a minimum of 2 weeks.
HRC is celebrating the bill passing its 2nd reading.
Comment by Evan Myers — Thu 14th June 2018 @ 1:39 pm