Is the Minister of Women's Affairs betraying women by urging her ministry to engage more actively with men?
Knights in shining armour are unwanted. That was the message from Green MP Catherine Delahunty this week, as she took issue with two government decisions.
One was the move to scrap the Department of Labour's seven-person Pay and Employment Equity Unit. (A unit which, truth be told, doesn't seem to have achieved an awful lot). The other—and bigger—target was an apparent request by the Minister of Women's Affairs, Pansy Wong, for her ministry to engage more actively with men.
Not champion the rights of men, mind you, just engage with them.
Delahunty's single example of this policy in action was a pre-Job Summit meeting organised by the Ministry. The only man who turned up, she reports, was Michael Barnett from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. For his efforts, Barnett is met with cynicism:
"After a couple of hours discussion on getting more women on boards, he may now be a champion. That would be fantastic, if we wanted a champion to speak for us or believed for one minute that the knight on the white horse doesn't gain unhelpful power from rescuing the maiden."
Delahunty's message seems bizarre. According to the 2008 Census of Women's Participation report, there are only 45 women on the boards of the top 100 companies listed on the stock exchange—only 8.65 per cent of the available directorships.
Earlier this year, a stellar group of business and public policy leaders—including Jenny Shipley, Mai Chen, Judith Collins, Patsy Reddy, Jane Diplock, Joan Withers, Katherine Rich, Catherine Savage, Roseanne Meo, and Marilyn Waring—launched a new organisation, New Zealand Global Women, designed to help support New Zealand women with global business aspirations.
The group, according to the Herald, gained the support of Prime Minister John Key, and sponsorship from IBM, Westpac, NZ Post and Vodafone. Other than IBM, those are, of course, all male-led businesses. All "shining knights" whose participation, according to Delahunty's logic, should be mistrusted and treated with cynicism: they are looking for "unhelpful power"!
Perhaps the real problem is simply that the men who are engaging with the Ministry are on the wrong end of the political spectrum for Delahunty's liking.
The MP writes, "women are the best advocates for themselves just like any other marginalised part of our society." I think back to the fight for civil unions. The gay community actively embraced supporters who were not gay: that's how the civil union legislation got passed. (Of course, I would've preferred it if all those well-meaning straight people had supported full marriage rights, but that's another story...)
The misogynistic comments added underneath Delahunty's blog entry reveal the need for strident advocates for women's rights. But surely they need to work in the real world, and that appears to be the spirit of the Minister of Women's Affairs' changes. (It seems a bit unfair—and, yes, actually sexist—for Delahunty to claim without any evidence that Pansy Wong isn't acting off her own bat, but is being pushed around by John Key).
Delahunty claims that, in trying to engage with the broader community, the Minister of Women's Affair's approach is "medieval". I think it's the Green MP whose world-view is outdated.