Hopefully you noticed that this week was International Women’s Day (IWD). It also marks one year since I launched HerStory, so happy anniversary to me! Thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with me!
IWD means there was plenty of new research and articles on gender inequity released. I am usually sceptical about IWD, as it often involves a lot of symbolic social media posts with little real action or intention behind them, or ‘gender washing’. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that when organisations did mess up, people called them out and generally, the organisation addressed it. In Aotearoa, we had Fonterra with their ‘manel’ for IWD, a panel on allies which is a great concept, but surely involving women on IWD would be a priority. And the All Blacks awful social media post, which rankled of a ‘thanking the ladies for bringing a plate’ tone when there is a multiple world champion women’s team as part of their whānau, and out of all the current All Blacks they included photos of two players who should be nowhere near IWD. However, I’d rather an organisation tries and learns, than hide or do nothing at all.
Speaking of hiding, in the U.K. there was a Twitter bot that used publicly available salary information to automatically post the gender pay gap for any organisation that tweeted using the IWD hashtag. The bot’s posts caused much consternation and a flurry of deleting tweets, re posting without the hashtag, or making their account private, all to try and hide their gender pay gap. I would have thought that owning a pay gap would be a great first step for real action on IWD.
Mind the Gap was launched in Aotearoa, with fifty large organisations publicly sharing their gender pay gap. Stuff’s Alison Mau examined those on the list, and more importantly, those who are not. Of interest are the 18 organisations who claim to be members of Global Women’s ‘Champions of Change’ but did not want to share their gender pay gap. Alison’s article also highlights there is no consistent approach to reporting pay gaps, from methodology where it can be median which is more accurate but generally bigger gap than the more common average salary. Plus, it can be (or not in most cases) reported in the annual report, a sustainability report, or (confidentially) to the board or shareholders.
There were no sports organisations in the Mind the Gap list, and as Stuff’s Zoë George outlined, there is a huge pay discrepancy for sports women. I shared this article on Twitter with the question “why are sports organisations apparently exempt from the Equal Pay Act?”, which led to a lengthy argument with a person who said they support equal pay, just not for sports women. I suggested that this means they do not in fact support equal pay at all. They argued the usual points about sponsors, viewership and ‘quality’, but apart from the fact there is huge viewership, high quality, and an organisation chooses how to spend it’s income, regardless of where the income comes from, it goes back to my original question, I can’t find these exemptions in the Equal Pay Act? And what about off field staff?
This week marked five years since WISPA (Women in Sport Aotearoa) was launched. Like IWD, I think WISPA’s work signals how far we have come, but how far we still have to go. I’m here for the day when there isn’t a gender or ethnic pay gap or arbitrary exceptions, when we don’t have to worry about what All Blacks are used to promote IWD, and in fact we don’t need IWD at all because businesses are doing the right (and legal) thing and we live in an equitable world.
Finally, I was fortunate this week to have my PhD research profiled by Massey University for their IWD social media posts. I could hardly say no to an opportunity to write about my research, especially when I’m job hunting! Also a massive shout out to my good friend and fellow PhD student, Rhema Chatiya Nantham, who was also profiled on her awesome research on women in leadership roles. When I was approached by Massey I asked about the diversity of those being profiled and suggested Rhema would be fantastic to profile, not only because of her excellent research, but without Rhema, Massey would have posted about three Pākehā women. IWD is about remembering women are diverse, and that we’re not ‘white washing’ as well as ‘gender washing’.
This week in Herstory, in 2019 the US national women’s team launched their legal case against US Soccer for gender discrimination and Adidas announced equal bonus payments for men and women ahead of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
For all the headlines on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the media this week, check out HerStory.
Alida Shanks 