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. 

Te Tiriti o Waitangi has served as an important defining document in New Zealand history, making it unique in the British Empire - then in 1840, and continues in its impact today. Māori women signed te Tiriti; so far, up to 18 possible names have been identified and more are being discovered by researchers every day. Unlike the women among the white settlers coming to New Zealand then, wāhine Māori traditionally had a say in important matters of their people, especially in matters regarding authority over their lands. This tradition of leadership continues to fuel the activism to rectify systemic discrimination and end the misogyny that causes a range of socio-economic disparities especially for Māori, Pacifika and immigrant women in New Zealand. More importantly, the historical events and laws that breach te Tiriti have and continue to impact all New Zealand women today. Below are some milestones in New Zealand's history adapted and excerpted from "Historical events and laws which breach te Tiriti o Waitangi," pp. 58-68 in Treaty of Waitangi, questions and answers (Network Waitangi, 2018).

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.