On Wednesday, 18 October 2023, Geraldine Anne McCarthy and Randolph Hollingsworth of the Education Action Hub met with Mindanao Young Leaders Programme researcher, Dennis John "Barbs" Barimbao, of the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines-Davao. The Mindanao Young Leaders programme is part of a UnionAID initiative funded by MFAT and delivered in partnership with a local Filipino organisation and Victoria University of Wellington, and it is supported by Aotearoa New Zealand's International Development Cooperation program. The young leaders are at the forefront of social justice issues and leading important projects in their communities. At the time of the interview, Barbs was studying a 12-week Sustainable Development Course Programme at VIC.

In April 2022, The NCWNZ Education Action Hub committed to a campaign to advocate for the compulsory teaching of consent in all state and state-integrated schools/kura in Aotearoa New Zealand. It all started with a request from the NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch which reported that after reports about various forms of sexual harm in local high schools, a survey about misogyny in schools was completed in 2021. (See the Circular article about the work by researcher Dr Liz Gordon here.) The young women asserted that they would organise into a student-led group called Students Against Sexual Harm (SASH) and that they would work to make consent education to be compulsory in all schools. Louise Tapper, a member of the NCWNZ Education Action Hub and current chair of the NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch, has been leading the Education Action Hub's focus on this issue.

The Action Hub members decided that they needed to find out what schools/kura were currently doing in relation to the teaching of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum. After conferring with the Minister of Education, the Action Hub members decided to ask the schools directly whether and how schools/kura were currently teaching about consent. A survey was developed by members of the NCWNZ Education Action Hub and field tested with educators across the nation. 

Did you know that Kiwi parents pay more for daycare than those in other countries even though State funding here is the highest? New Zealand's childcare costs are among the most expensive in the world. Research has shown that providing families with access to affordable early childcare education can boost women's employment in wage-based labour. Many democratic nations across the world are focusing attention on intentional education for children from the ages of 0 or 1 until entry into primary education.

On Monday, August 14th, the Child Poverty Action Group offered a free webinar focused on the Early Childhood Care and Education Sector. The panelists were Michelle Duff (journalist and author), Dr Sophie Moullin (University of Auckland), and Dr Jenny Ritchie (Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington). The recording of the webinar, "Why is Early Childhood Care and Education so unaffordable and inaccessible?" is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbnBr-Pam1g.

Dr. Fiona Te Momo

Dr. Negar Partow

On the 18th of July, the NCWNZ Education Action Hub hosted two vibrant speakers informing members about gender gaps in New Zealand academia. They were Associate Professor Dr. Fiona Te Momo (lecturer at the School of Māori Knowledge), and Dr. Negar Partow (senior lecturer in Security Studies), both from Massey University, Albany, New Zealand. Both also chair Ethics Committees at their universities.

Negar explained that the gender gap in universities generally is hundreds of years old, since originally universities were structured for men’s needs (Perez, 2019). Today, in New Zealand, men have more than double the chance than women to be promoted to professor status from a similar research baseline and have a $400,000 lifetime gender pay gap. Women are cited and published less than men, are not being included in research, and women employees are often delegated to pastoral and service work (Brower & James, 2020; Walker, Sin, Macinnis-Ng, Hannah, & McAllister, 2020). Negar suggested that to improve, universities need to focus on blind hiring, distance themselves from centralising the power of hiring and promotion in middle management, work around the ‘glass ceiling,’ facilitate women’s opportunities for networking and institute an independent process for monitoring workload and promotion processes.

A commentary from members of the NCWNZ Education Action Hub

Recent New Zealand research shows that young women who leave secondary school early through pregnancy, bullying or other issues, have less opportunity to gain qualifications and later life opportunities. Even though overall numbers of pregnant adolescents have been declining since the late 1990s, there are those who suffer from significant stereotyping in medical and socio-economic contexts by too many of the very professionals who are tasked to support them. This is an issue especially for under-served and under-represented minority groups.