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Pay Equity: Hard Work Down Under

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Women, Work and Inequality

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Abstract

In 1893 New Zealand led the world in giving women the vote. In 1894 the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act (IC&A Act) set the basis for an extensive collective system of employment regulation and centralized bargaining. Today, New Zealand is a leader of a different kind: according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development it now has the most deregulated labour market of any member country (OECD, 1993, p. 9). This development is directly linked to the Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA), which led to a complete deregulation of industrial relations. Interestingly, given their antithetical nature, both Acts were justified, at least in part, as a means of promoting women’s equality. The 1894 Act was partly inspired by the 1890 Royal Commission on sweated labour (Brosnan, Smith and Walsh, 1990, p. 27) which found that ‘freedom of contract’, the principle governing employment relationships at that time, had resulted in the exploitation of many workers, especially female workers (Hammond and Harbridge, 1993, p. 15).

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Authors
  1. Martha Coleman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Middlesex University, UK

    Jeanne Gregory (Visiting Professor, Head of Gender Research Centre) (Visiting Professor, Head of Gender Research Centre)

  2. School of Social Science, Middlesex University, UK

    Rosemary Sales (Principal Lecturer) (Principal Lecturer)

  3. Cranfield School of Management, Bedford, UK

    Ariane Hegewisch (Senior Researcher) (Senior Researcher)

Copyright information

© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Coleman, M. (1999). Pay Equity: Hard Work Down Under. In: Gregory, J., Sales, R., Hegewisch, A. (eds) Women, Work and Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333983331_4

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