A speech by Sue Kedgley ONZM, convenor of the NCWNZ Influence & Decision-making Action Hub and former member of New Zealand Parliament, delivered to the Women on Boards Summit on 17 August 2023. (See the whole program here.)

I can still vividly recall the jubilation I felt when Laila Harre’s Paid Parental Leave bill, which gave all women employees a statutory right to 12 weeks of paid parental leave, was passed in Parliament in 2002. It had taken years of lobbying and working with women’s groups to get the
legislation passed, and it felt like a huge milestone for New Zealand women. I was equally delighted when paid parental leave was extended to 18 weeks in 2016, and 26 weeks in July 2020. At the time, I assumed the legislation applied to all women in employment in New Zealand, and so it never occurred to me, or I suspect to most other MPs, that the right to parental leave did not extend to women who were company directors or to locally elected Councillors.

Kia ora! My name is Rayane Al-Faraj; I am the new intern for NCWNZ. I am both French and Jordanian, and I came all the way from the South of France, where I am studying political science in a university called Sciences Po Toulouse.

This is the first time I have travelled that far, and I am doing this to work as a board administrator for NCWNZ. Therefore, I will be joining them until mid-December, and I am beyond excited to be a part of this amazing organisation.

Date: Wednesday, 13 September

Time: 5:30-7pm

Where: Victoria University of Wellington Pipitea Campus, 33 Bunny Street, Pipitea, Wellington AND online

The political season is upon us and we want to ensure that women’s voices and concerns are both seen and heard in foreign policy.  We invite you, your family, friends, colleagues and networks to buy tickets and share the upcoming Feminist Foreign Policy Political Panel Event - there is an in-person (Wellington) and online ticket option - available at https://events.humanitix.com/political-panel-feminist-foreign-policy.

Get on out there! Whether you are a member of a local NCWNZ branch or of an NCWNZ Action Hub, we rely on you to help with collaborations across organisations with a similar mission to get things done at the local, regional and national levels. As stated in the NCWNZ 2020 report A Sustainable Future - Free from Gender Discrimination: "Our strength comes from our membership, which includes individuals, branches, and organisations from unions and NGOs to community organisations." 

Currently, we have 13 local branches and more than 200 member organisations, as well as individual members. In addition, we have members and non-member volunteers who serve on six Action Hubs. The Parliamentary Watch Committee, an evolution from one of the original components of the NCWNZ since its founding in 1896, coordinates the writing of official submissions and our combined input into consultations with Parliament or with international organisations such as the United Nations' international treaty, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

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.

In July I was asked by Family Harm Prevention to attend a meeting with the Family Harm Practitioners to explain to them the role that National Council of Women play in preventing family violence.

Tēnā koutou e hoa mā,

Aotearoa has just celebrated Volunteer Week, so it seems appropriate to give a “Big Shout Out” to all our fabulous volunteers. We rely on our operational volunteers to run our organisation – the Board, administrators, finance and communications teams; and on our volunteers in the Parliamentary Watch Committee, Action Hubs and the Branches to do the advocacy mahi.

It is important that we all invest in our volunteers and be considering how we as an organisation can reward them: is it by providing mentoring, training, or experience? Or is it by providing collegiality and friendship, and/or the satisfaction of having impact in the community through our advocacy?

We should all be making it our mission to ensure that every volunteer who spends time working with us gains something that makes their lives better.

NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch and Students Against Sexual Harm (SASH) at Christchurch Girls’ High School (CGHS) collaborated to hold an action workshop for high school students in Greater Christchurch at Tūranga Library in central Christchurch 4-6 pm on Tuesday 11 May 2023. The workshop was attended by twenty students from five different high schools, as well as two representatives of the Empowerment Trust, two counsellors from one of the schools attending, and NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch members who had worked with students to organise the workshop. The eight male students who attended were from three different high schools (one a high school for boys); the others were female students, overwhelmingly from two large girls’ schools in the city.

After a welcome, and some information about SASH, students were engaged in small group discussion of workshop questions with two breaks for refreshments and informal talk. There was a lively buzz throughout the two hours and a group photo was taken at the end. 

SASH Workshop Attendees at Tūranga Library, 11 May 2023. Image courtesy of NCWNZ Ōtautahi Christchurch Branch.

Kurawaka exhibition launch at the National Library in March with Amy Rice, Suzanne Manning, Aleisha Amohia, Kerri Dupont and me, Emma Catteau.

Kia ora tātou

My name is Emma, and as some of you might know, I have been an intern at NCWNZ for the past five months, working as a Board Administrator, providing support to the Action Hubs, Parliamentary Watch Committee and Diversity Committee. However, this enriching experience comes to an end as I am ready to start the next steps of my studies back in France, starting my Masters in Political Sciences, specializing in Strategy, Intelligence and Risk Management.

Working with Te Kaunihera Wāhine o Aotearoa | National Council of Women of New Zealand has been an incredible opportunity that I am truly grateful for. I did not only learn how to work and execute tasks for an organisation, but I discovered what it is like to be part of it. It has been a pleasure to engage with the different bodies of NCWNZ, whether it is by participating in Wellington Branch’s meetings, organising the Misogyny Webinar with the Influence and Decision-making Action Hub, collaborating with the CEDAW group on the written response to the Draft CEDAW Report, or coordinating the meetings of the Diversity Committee.

On Friday 16th June 2023, the Influence & Decision-Making Action Hub of the NCWNZ organised and hosted a webinar on the topic of "How Do We Counter Misogyny?" The recording is viewable on the NCWNZ YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/H7Z9BRV3iMc. Five hundred and thirty people registered for the webinar, and over two hundred showed up - with several registrants hosting viewing parties in their local organisations. This event was a follow-up to last year's successful webinar, "Countering Misogyny" (available at https://youtu.be/JCHnvPVarkI).