Opportunity to fix the gender pay gap in tertiary sector

The time to act around the gender pay imbalance is now. The development of a new tertiary education strategy and the reform of vocational education are perfect opportunities for the government and tertiary education leaders to take action, says the Tertiary Education Union | Te Hautū Kahurangi.

Statistics New Zealand has today released figures on the gender pay imbalance which has been unchanged since 2017 .

TEU’s Women’s Officer, Suzanne McNabb, says the time for talking and debating the cause of the unfairness between the median hourly earnings for men and women is over.

“The good work of unions has seen the gender wage imbalance in the average wage close by 2 percentage points to 11.9%. But sadly the imbalance in the median wage is 9.3% percent in the June quarter – the same as it was two years ago. We can only fix this if we work together. We need all workers, leaders in government, and employers to take action now,” says McNabb.

This means TEU members need to sign up to keep the pressure on the government to meet their commitments to deliver good equal pay legislation that will ensure all working people are paid fairly.

McNabb says “It also means the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, committing to gender pay principles and pay equity in the major reforms of the tertiary education sector.”

“There has been a strong drive for good gender pay laws which we will continue to work with other workers to deliver, but we don’t have to wait for better laws to be passed to do the right thing in the tertiary education sector. We can act now.”

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