#EightPercentMatters 2023

Kiwi women are effectively working for free from 2:38pm today.

New Zealand’s Gender pay gap statistics show that from today the average Kiwi woman is effectively working for free until the end of the year.

Global Women is calling on all New Zealanders to reflect on the role they can play in closing the gender pay gap with its “Eight Percent Matters” campaign.

Year on year, New Zealand’s gender gap has decreased by 0.6%, moving from 9.2% in 2022, to 8.6% this year. This is a positive shift, but it has only decreased the pay gap by 52 hours and 32 minutes in real terms. 

This inequality is even worse for women of colour, with the pay gap between all men and Wāhine Māori, and between all men and Pasifika women sitting substantially higher at 14.3% and 15.2% respectively. This equates to Wāhine Māori having been “working for free” from Thursday November 9th and Pasifika women from November 6th.

The “Eight Percent Matters” campaign serves as a reminder to New Zealand society that although the pay gap figures may be seemingly small, they still have a significant impact on women’s livelihoods.

“The year-on-year figures show positive signs that our gender pay gaps are closing. However, we can’t become complacent, as the gap won’t continue to close without sustained, intentional action,” shares Theresa Gattung, Chair of Global Women.

“We want New Zealanders to use this day to talk about topics like pay equity and pay transparency with those around them – whether it’s asking HR about your organisations pay gap to revisiting your DE&I strategy in a leadership meeting. We need to keep challenging ourselves to do better until there is no pay gap to talk about.”

This #NoPayDay Global Women wants to encourage organisations and individuals to:

1. Report and monitor their organisations pay gap: Unless organisations are aware of their current pay parity status – when it comes to both gender and ethnicity – they can’t fully understand the changes that need to be made. Organisations need to make a commitment to scrutinise and monitor any existing pay gaps and then make a plan to correct them.

2. Be transparent from day one: If salaries are kept secret this will often result with people being remunerated different amounts for the same job, in turn stifling social mobility and fuelling systemic inequalities. A progressive step to take here is to state a salary when recruiting. By advertising a role with a clear salary band this helps break the cycle on both gender and ethnic pay gaps – it will also stop you inheriting a pay gap from a candidate’s previous employer.

3. Join our movement and set your out of office: To drive conversation on the day we will be encouraging our members and networks to mark the day by setting their out of office message in line with our campaign.

We invite you to be part of this movement with an Out Of Office Message

For our third year in a row, we’re calling on our whānau to raise awareness on No Pay Day, Thursday 30th of November— and invite you to spread the word to your organisations, workplaces, communities and whānau by including the below message as an out of office message today and for the rest of the week if you wish.

We want to use this day to encourage individuals and organisations to have an open conversation about the inequalities that drive ethnic and gender pay gaps. It is only when we have conversations about the gaps and why they exist that we will be able to take steps to close them.

 

We encourage those aligned with our message to set their out of office message on Thursday 30th of November and include the following copy:

I am out of office for the rest of the year. Got your attention? 

Aotearoa New Zealand’s gender pay gap is 8.6%. And with 8.6% of the year left, this means that from today the average Kiwi woman is effectively working for free until 2024. 

This inequality is even worse for Māori and Pasifika women, who began “working for free” from November 6th and November 9th respectively. 

I am participating in Global Women’s #EightPercentMatters campaign today because although 8.6 may feel like a small number on paper, our countries’ gender pay gap continues to have a significant impact – at some age or stage – on all women’s livelihoods. 

Please join me in sharing this message in your out of office today. It is only through intentional action, challenging conversations, and self-reflection that we can achieve pay equity and pay parity for all. 

You can find out more about the equity initiatives Global Women is driving such as Champions for Change and programmes we support at https://globalwomen.org.nz/eightpercentmatters