New Zealand Proposes Gender Pay Gap Reporting for Large Businesses

Jan Tinetti, the minister of women in New Zealand, revealed a strategy on August 11, 2023 to promote workplace fairness by requiring big corporations to disclose their gender pay inequalities. The idea, which is a component of the platform for the currently in power Labour party as they prepare for an election campaign, seeks to boost transparency and encourage businesses to take action to minimise gender-based wage gaps.

Approximately 900 companies with more than 250 employees will be forced to publish their gender pay discrepancies under the new law. According to Jan, this rule will be extended over the next four years to cover businesses with more than 100 employees, or a total of about 2,700 businesses.

"Women perceive the workplace differently than men do, and this has to change. Companies will be prompted to address the causes of these discrepancies if they must disclose their gender pay gaps, increasing transparency for workers, stressed Jan.

Even if the gender pay gap has shrunk to a record-low of 7.7% and women hold more than half of senior management positions in the public sector, growth in the economy as a whole has stagnated. Data from the OECD show that in 2022, the gender pay gap was 9.2%.

There is an increasing awareness of the problem as several private firms, including well-known names like Air New Zealand and Spark, have voluntarily disclosed or intend to disclose their gender pay disparity. However, Jan asserts that New Zealand sees the necessity for formalised reporting in order to adhere to international norms and draw highly qualified women to the workforce.

According to a 2021 government household survey, women in New Zealand earned 89 cents for every dollar non-ethnic men in the country made. With Mori women earning 81 cents to the dollar and Pasifika women earning just 75 cents, this disparity is even more severe among some ethnic minorities.

According to Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Priyanca Radhakrishnan, the government intends to engage the general public before passing the law and is also thinking about introducing reporting of ethnic wage discrepancies for Mori and Pacific peoples.

There are barely three weeks remaining in the current legislative session, so even if the law hasn't been written yet, it will probably be implemented as soon as a new administration is elected.

In order to guarantee that we receive broad input from stakeholders to shape the design of the system before legislation describing the system is created, Priyanca said, "We've decided to declare our plan to implement a reporting system early in the process.

In New Zealand, the center-right opposition National Party, which has always positioned itself as a party in favour of reduced taxes and business-friendly policies, is now leading the incumbent Labour government in the polls. The incumbent prime minister, Chris Hipkins, who took over for Jacinda Ardern earlier this year, has the difficult challenge of guiding his party to victory in this crucial election on October 14.