Women’s needs ‘not recognised’

Press, 23 August 1984, Page 16

Women’s needs ‘not recognised’

The scrapping of the Advisory Committee on Women’s Affairs and its replacement by a Ministry of women’s Affairs is welcomed by Colleen Dewe, farmer chairwoman of the Advisory Committee, and a former National M.P. for Lyttelton. Miss Dewe is delighted to be relieved of her demanding, but low-paid position as chairwoman of the Advisory Committee. She had previously notified Mr McLay, the former Minister of Women’s Affairs, of her wish to resign because of pressure of work with the Commerce Commission.

"I feel as though a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” she said recently. Miss Dewe feels that the poor funding of the Advisory Committee, and the pressures on its members, made it impossible for its work to be carried out properly, and for its submissions to be effective. “I only hope that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs will provide a more successful system to ensure that the needs of women are taken into account in government decision making. “We battled for those needs to be recognised without success,” she said.

“Though we managed to get our message across to some of the politicians, we didn’t manage at all with the bureaucrats. “Women at the Cabinet table of the likes of Ann Hercus and Margaret Shields will alert Cabinet to the needs of women, and the sort of opportunities, that should be provided for women. “This will be on input at the right level,” she said. Colleen Dewe said she was pleased to learn from the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Hercus, that

the new ministry intended to carry on with the Advisory Committee’s proposals for end-of-Decade activities. In recent months, Colleen Dewe has been in an increasingly embattled position becuse of her support for New Zealand ratification of the United Nation’s Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women. She hopes that Government will move swiftly to ratify the Convention, if only to prove that all the “terrible” consequences predicted by opposing groups

ano inoiviuuais wuuiu not occur. She described herself as being very upset and distressed by a ,f the venomous and misinformed attacks on the Convention by Christians who should know bet- ' ter.” < “It has distressed me that - some Christians whom I formerly had held in high >i regard have so miscon- , strued the Convention, and that deliberate mis- statements have been made by people of high intelligence _ to suit their own cause,” she said.