Women impatient for change—Minister

Press, 8 June 1985, Page 7

Women impatient for change—Minister

PA Wellington Women were growing impatient with the pace of change towards greater equality in all areas of life, the Minister of Women’s Affair, Mrs Hercus, has said. In an address to a seminar in Wellington on women and employment in science and technology, Mrs Hercus said that the Government was committed to affirmative action on women.

“We are committed to it for one reason: it is, we believe, the only way in which equal opportunities for women can be achieved, and achieved within a reasonable space of time.”

Mrs Hercus told delegates that the aim of the seminar, and of all such initiatives, was not to find ways of

infiltrating more women in a male-dominated society. "It must be to change the system itself, so that not only is it a more amenable and encouraging environment for women to work in but its values and its work are influenced by the values and beliefs of women.” Mrs Hercus said that it was hard to imagine any sphere of human activity where introducing and enhancing women’s values was more important than science and technology. “What we are seeing now is a relentless process of technological ana scientific innovation in areas over which we, as women and as consumers, have no control.”

Two such areas were the weapons industry and alternative reproductive technology, said Mrs

Hercus. “I have no confidence that the so-called technological culture being forged is either caring and responsive to the needs of women, or for that matter caring and responsive to the needs of the human race.” Mrs Hercus said that the task ahead was urgent and had two goals. “First, to see that women are not relegated to the realms of the ‘de-skilled’ but instead gain the education and the training — and the confidence and the self-es-teem — to secure positions of influence and decisionmaking within the power structures of science. Second, to see that our values, the values of a caring society, cease to be an irritant outside the system and become an irritant within it.”