Women should thank feminists—Minister

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 25

Women should thank feminists—Minister

PA Wellington The middle-of-the road women’s movement had much to thank feminists for, the Minister of Consumer Affairs, Mrs Shields, has said. In a speech to the national Home Economic Teachers Association at Heretaunga, Mrs Shield said that in many cases women had been frightened of identifying with the feminist movement for fear they would be seen as unfeminine or unwomanly. However, feminists had been responsible for moving the boundaries which had traditionally kept women in the home and out of public life. Mrs Shields said it was time to move away from the “crude ideas” which some people had about equality of women during the emergence of the women’s movement in the late 1960 s and early

19705. “If it is to mean anything it must mean more than the right of women to do the same things as men. “It must also mean beyond that, a re-valuation of the traditional allocation of tasks in our society and at values which have been placed on those allocations.” Though New Zealand had had equal pay for 13 years, women, on average, continued to receive much less than men. This had prompted a revaluation of equality and economic independence for women and had given rise to a new concept, that of comparable worth. This was the idea of equal pay for work of comparable value. Unfortunately, this theory denied one of the world’s realities, that wages were determined according to supply and demand. “The reality is that women have been prepared

to accept jobs with low valuation because we have had no other option.

“There, we have become ghetto-ised in areas which have been regarded as women’s work.” Mrs Shields said it was important that women took up their positions of responsibility in national life and in other decision-mak-ing arenas. “However, the hardest part of the' battle is undoubtedly to maintain our particular (women’s) perspective ... “It is part of the responsibility of women in public life to help break down the old stereotype ideas of how women should behave. “We need to tread that fine line between not meeting others’ expectations of how women should behave, yet not upsetting people to such a degree that our objective — true equality — is never reached,” she said.