Rights Aotearoa's Submission to the People's Select Committee on the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025
In May 2025, under the cover of parliamentary urgency, the Government extinguished the employment rights of over 300,000 workers in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Opening Statement
1. In May 2025, under the cover of parliamentary urgency, the Government extinguished the employment rights of over 300,000 workers in Aotearoa New Zealand. With no public consultation, no select committee scrutiny, and no voice given to those affected, the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 dismantled one of this country's most significant human rights achievements—a functioning system for addressing gender-based pay discrimination that had taken decades to build.
2. This submission to the People's Select Committee—itself an extraordinary civil society response to democratic failure—documents how the 2025 Act represents not merely poor policy, but a fundamental breach of human dignity. It tells the story of how a government chose to abandon its most vulnerable workers, violate its international commitments, and undermine the very principles upon which our society claims to stand.
3. Rights Aotearoa appears before you as one of New Zealand's leading non-governmental organisations devoted to promoting and defending universal human rights, with a particular focus on the rights of transgender, non-binary, and intersex people. We bring to this Committee not just legal analysis, but the voices of those whose economic futures have been stolen by this legislation.
Part I: The Architecture of Inequality
The Historical Context of Gendered Work
4. To understand the gravity of what has been destroyed, we must first understand what was being built. For over a century, entire sectors of the New Zealand economy have been systematically undervalued—not because the work lacked skill, responsibility, or social importance, but because it was performed predominantly by women. Care work, education support, clerical services, social services—these occupations form the backbone of our society, yet their wages have never reflected their true value.
5. This undervaluation is not accidental. It stems from deeply embedded cultural assumptions that women's work is naturally worth less, that caring is instinctive rather than skilled, that supporting others requires dedication but not compensation. These assumptions have created what scholars term "occupational segregation"—a labour market divided not just by gender, but by the value assigned to gendered work.¹
6. The intersectional nature of this discrimination cannot be ignored. Wāhine Māori and Pacific women are overrepresented in these undervalued occupations, facing both gender and ethnic pay gaps. Transgender women, often excluded from other employment due to discrimination, frequently find work in these same sectors. Non-binary and gender-diverse workers, whose very existence challenges the binary frameworks upon which traditional pay structures rest, navigate these spaces with particular vulnerability.
The Promise of Pay Equity
7. Pay equity represents more than wage adjustment—it embodies recognition of human dignity and the equal value of all work. The principle, enshrined in international law since 1951 through ILO Convention 100, requires that work of equal value receive equal remuneration, regardless of the gender of those performing it.²
8. New Zealand's journey toward this principle accelerated with the 2014 Court of Appeal decision in Terranova Homes & Care Ltd v Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc.³ The Court recognised that paying aged care workers less because their work had historically been performed by women constituted discrimination. This watershed moment demanded systemic response.
9. What emerged was remarkable: a tripartite process bringing together government, employers, and unions to design a collaborative framework for addressing decades of discrimination. The resulting 2020 amendments to the Equal Pay Act 1972 created something unprecedented—a non-adversarial, accessible system where workers could raise pay equity claims without proving employer fault, where historical undervaluation could be remedied through good faith negotiation, where the focus was on fixing problems rather than assigning blame.
The System That Worked
10. Between 2020 and 2025, the pay equity framework demonstrated its effectiveness: The numbers tell one story—14 settlements achieved, benefiting over 100,000 workers with average pay increases of 32 percent. But behind these statistics lie human realities: the teacher aide who could finally afford her children's school uniforms, the care worker who no longer needed a second job, the administrator who could save for retirement. These were not merely wage adjustments but life transformations, dignity restored through recognition of worth.
11. The framework's genius lay in its simplicity. A worker need only raise an "arguable" claim that their women-dominated work might be undervalued. This low threshold was deliberate—recognising that workers rarely have access to the comparative pay data needed to prove discrimination before investigating it. Once raised, employers and employees would work together, comparing the role to appropriate male-dominated positions with similar skills, effort, responsibilities, and working conditions.
12. Critically, the system recognised that meaningful comparisons often require looking beyond a single employer or industry. A school administrator's work might be properly valued only when compared to local government administrators; a care worker's true worth might emerge only through comparison with corrections officers or forestry workers. This flexibility was essential to uncovering discrimination hidden within entire undervalued sectors.
Part II: The Systematic Destruction of Rights
The Urgency That Wasn't
13. On a Tuesday in May 2025, the Minister introduced the Equal Pay Amendment Bill to Parliament. By Thursday, it was law. No select committee. No public submissions. No consultation with affected workers, unions, employers, Māori, or anyone else. The Government claimed urgency but never explained what emergency required destroying a functioning system without scrutiny.
14. The true urgency, we suggest, was political—to avoid the inevitable opposition that transparency would bring. Internal documents, heavily redacted even under Official Information Act requests, hint at awareness of the damage being done. The Government's refusal to release its human rights analysis, now under Ombudsman investigation, speaks volumes about consciousness of wrongdoing.
15. This process itself violated fundamental democratic principles. Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to participate in public affairs.⁴ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises that government authority derives from the will of the people.⁵ By denying any opportunity for input on legislation affecting hundreds of thousands of workers' fundamental rights, the Government breached not just convention but constitutional principle.
The Mechanism of Exclusion
16. The 2025 Act's destruction of pay equity operates through multiple interlocking mechanisms, each designed to make claims impossible while maintaining a façade of process.
The Comparator Cage
17. Under the new regime, comparators must come first from the same employer, then the same industry, and only with employer permission from elsewhere. This creates what we term the "comparator cage"—trapping undervalued occupations within their own discrimination.
18. Consider the residential care worker, employed in a sector where 90% of workers are women and wages average $23 per hour. Under the 2025 Act, she can only compare her work to other care workers—all similarly undervalued. She cannot look to the prison officer ($35 per hour) whose work requires similar vigilance, crisis management, and responsibility for vulnerable people. She cannot reference the forestry worker ($32 per hour) whose physical demands and safety risks parallel her own. She is locked within a cage of gendered undervaluation, comparing discrimination to discrimination, finding false equality in shared injustice.
19. More insidiously, employers now hold veto power over comparisons. They can simply declare "no appropriate comparators exist" and terminate the claim. This hands those who benefit from pay inequity the power to prevent its investigation—akin to allowing defendants to dismiss their own prosecutions.
The Merit Trap
20. The shift from an "arguable" to "merit" threshold fundamentally reconceptualises pay equity from a right to be investigated into a privilege to be proven in advance. Workers must now essentially demonstrate discrimination before they can investigate whether discrimination exists—a logical impossibility given that employers hold the comparative data needed for such proof.
21. This change reverses decades of jurisprudence recognising that discrimination is often invisible to those experiencing it, revealed only through systematic comparison and analysis. It places an impossible burden on those least equipped to meet it—low-wage workers without access to legal resources or comparative pay data.
The 70 Percent Wall
22. By requiring that occupations be at least 70% female (up from 60%) and have been so for ten years, the Act arbitrarily excludes vast swaths of discriminated workers. Secondary school teachers (64% female), library workers (68% female), and numerous other female-majority occupations simply don't count anymore. The ten-year requirement adds temporal discrimination to numerical—as if recent feminisation of an occupation somehow negates its undervaluation.
23. This provision particularly impacts occupations where Māori and Pacific women concentrate, which often hover around 60-65% female due to higher male participation from these communities. It also excludes emerging female-dominated fields in technology and service sectors, forcing them to wait a decade before seeking justice.
The Retroactive Elimination of Rights
24. Most shocking is the Act's retroactive destruction of existing rights and remedies—a violation of rule of law principles that would be remarkable in any context but is particularly egregious when applied to human rights.
The Overnight Extinction
25. Thirty-three active pay equity claims, some progressed over years of careful work, ceased to exist the moment the Act took effect. No transition period. No compensation. No alternative pathway. Simply extinction.
26. The education sector claim alone affected 90,000 teachers and support staff. Three years of research, negotiation, and job evaluation—vanished. Workers who had invested hope, time, and resources in the legal process watched their efforts evaporate. Some claims were weeks from settlement, pay increases all but guaranteed. Instead, nothing.
27. This retroactive elimination violates fundamental principles of legal certainty and legitimate expectation. When citizens engage with legal processes in good faith, they have a right to see those processes concluded according to the law under which they began. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly held that retroactive interference with pending legal proceedings violates basic rule of law principles.⁶ While New Zealand is not bound by European jurisprudence, these principles are universal to democratic legal systems.
The Voiding of Settlements
28. Even more extraordinary is the Act's interference with completed settlements. All 14 pay equity agreements reached since 2020 contained review mechanisms—commitments to reassess pay equity after specified periods to ensure gains were maintained. The Act declared these contractual obligations null and void.
29. Consider what this means: employers and workers negotiated agreements, signed contracts, and established legal obligations. The Government then unilaterally cancelled these obligations—not its own obligations, but private agreements between other parties. This represents an unprecedented interference with freedom of contract and acquired rights.
30. For the workers affected, these review mechanisms were not peripheral—they were central to accepting settlements. Many accepted lower initial increases knowing that reviews would address any remaining gaps. Now they are locked into potentially inadequate settlements with no recourse.
The Decade of Silence
31. Adding insult to injury, the Act prohibits any group that achieved a settlement from raising another pay equity claim for ten years. Combined with the voiding of review mechanisms, this creates what we term "the decade of silence"—a period where discrimination can flourish unchecked, where changing circumstances cannot be addressed, where equality once approached can drift away unremedied.
32. No rationale exists for this arbitrary timeframe. Employment conditions change. Economic circumstances shift. New forms of discrimination emerge. Yet workers must remain silent for a decade, watching any gains erode, unable to seek justice through the very system designed to provide it.
Part III: The Human Rights Architecture of Violation
The International Legal Framework
33. New Zealand's actions must be measured against its voluntarily assumed international obligations—treaties ratified, conventions signed, commitments made before the community of nations. The 2025 Act breaches virtually every relevant instrument.
The Principle of Non-Retrogression
34. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, states must progressively realise economic and social rights, using maximum available resources.⁷ Any deliberately retrogressive measure is presumptively impermissible, requiring extraordinary justification.
35. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has established strict criteria for permissible retrogression:⁸
· The measure must be temporary
· It must be necessary and proportionate
· It must not be discriminatory
· It must ensure minimum core obligations are maintained
· All alternatives must have been comprehensively examined
· Affected groups must have been genuinely consulted
36. The 2025 Act fails every criterion. It is permanent, not temporary. It was driven by political choice, not necessity. It discriminates against women and gender minorities. It eliminates rather than maintains core obligations. No alternatives were examined. No consultation occurred.
37. This is not mere technical non-compliance—it represents abandonment of the fundamental principle that human rights progress must be preserved. As the Committee emphasised in its statement on austerity measures, even in times of severe resource constraints, vulnerable groups must be protected and discriminatory measures avoided.⁹ Here, in a time of relative prosperity, New Zealand has chosen to attack rather than protect the vulnerable.
CEDAW and the Right to Remedy
38. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women requires not just prohibition of discrimination but positive measures to achieve equality.¹⁰ Article 2(c) specifically requires states to "establish legal protection of the rights of women on an equal basis with men and to ensure through competent national tribunals and other public institutions the effective protection of women against any act of discrimination."
39. The 2025 Act does precisely the opposite. It removes legal protection, eliminates access to tribunals, and ensures ineffective rather than effective protection. It transforms the Employment Relations Authority from a venue for remedying discrimination into a forum where discrimination cannot even be properly identified, let alone addressed.
40. CEDAW's Committee has consistently emphasised that formal equality is insufficient—states must ensure substantive equality through concrete measures.¹¹ The pay equity framework was exactly such a measure. Its destruction violates not just the letter but the spirit of CEDAW, signalling retreat from the goal of genuine equality.
ILO Standards and Tripartite Consensus
41. ILO Convention 100 requires "objective appraisal" of jobs to ensure equal remuneration for work of equal value.¹² The 2025 Act's comparator restrictions make objective appraisal impossible by limiting comparison to subjectively similar contexts already shaped by discrimination.
42. Moreover, ILO standards emphasise tripartite consultation—government, employers, and unions working together on labour standards.¹³ The 2020 framework emerged from exactly such consultation, representing a rare consensus across traditionally opposing interests. The 2025 Act shattered this consensus through unilateral action, violating both ILO procedural norms and substantive standards.
Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Constitutional Breach
43. The Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 represents a profound violation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, breaching both the principles of equity and partnership that underpin the Crown-Māori relationship.
The Equity Dimension
44. Article Three of Te Tiriti guarantees Māori the rights and privileges of British subjects—understood in modern context as equal citizenship rights and equitable outcomes.¹⁴ The Waitangi Tribunal has repeatedly emphasised that this creates positive obligations on the Crown to address disparities affecting Māori.¹⁵
45. The statistics are stark: Māori women earn 12% less than Pākehā women and 23% less than Pākehā men.¹⁶ They are dramatically overrepresented in the undervalued occupations targeted by pay equity claims—care work, education support, health services, social services. Pay equity settlements were beginning to close these gaps, lifting entire whānau out of poverty.
46. By destroying the pay equity system, the Crown has abandoned its Article Three obligations, choosing to entrench rather than eliminate disparities affecting Māori women. This is not passive neglect but active harm—taking away tools that were working, removing pathways that were opening.
47. For Takatāpui—Māori who are LGBTQ+ or gender-diverse—the impact is even more severe. Already facing discrimination at the intersection of colonisation, racism, and gender identity prejudice, they found in pay equity a mechanism for economic justice that recognised their work's value regardless of their identity. The Act's reinforcement of rigid gender binaries and exclusion of gender-diverse experiences represents a form of ongoing colonisation, imposing Western binary frameworks that contradict te ao Māori understandings of gender diversity.¹⁷
The Partnership Betrayal
48. The principle of partnership requires the Crown to act in good faith, consulting and working with Māori on matters affecting Māori interests.¹⁸ On an issue directly impacting thousands of Māori workers and their whānau, the Crown chose secrecy and speed over partnership and consultation.
49. No engagement with iwi. No consultation with Māori women's organisations. No input from Māori unions or employment advocates. Not even notification that changes were coming. This represents not just failure to partner but active exclusion—a deliberate choice to shut Māori out of decisions affecting Māori futures.
50. The Tribunal has held that partnership requires more than consultation—it requires meaningful participation in decision-making, especially where Māori are particularly affected.¹⁹ Here, where Māori women bear disproportionate impact, meaningful participation would have been essential. Instead, they received nothing.
Domestic Human Rights Law: The Constitutional Violation
51. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 affirms at section 19 the right to freedom from discrimination. While Parliament can pass legislation inconsistent with NZBORA, such inconsistency requires justification and remains a constitutional breach requiring remedy.²⁰
52. The 2025 Act discriminates on the basis of sex by removing remedies available predominantly to women while leaving male-dominated occupations unaffected. It imposes what equality law terms "adverse effect discrimination"—facially neutral measures that disproportionately disadvantage protected groups.²¹
53. The Attorney-General's section 7 report, while acknowledging potential inconsistency, attempted to justify limitations under section 5 as reasonable limits demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. This justification fails the established test:²²
54. The objective (cost saving and administrative efficiency) lacks sufficient importance to warrant overriding fundamental rights. Even accepting the objective's legitimacy, the means chosen—complete destruction of the pay equity system—lack rational connection to efficiency goals and represent maximum rather than minimum impairment of rights. The devastating impact on affected workers far outweighs any administrative convenience gained.
Part IV: The Particularly Marginalised
Transgender and Non-Binary Workers: Compound Discrimination
55. The impact of the 2025 Act on transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse workers deserves specific attention, as these communities face unique vulnerabilities that pay equity mechanisms were beginning to address.
56. International research consistently documents the economic marginalisation of gender minorities:²³
· Unemployment rates 2-3 times higher than general population
· Concentration in lower-paid service sectors due to discrimination elsewhere
· Workplace harassment leading to job instability
· The "trans pay gap" layered upon existing gender pay gaps
55. In Aotearoa, while comprehensive data remains limited, community research suggests similar patterns. Many trans and gender-diverse workers find employment in female-dominated sectors—partly through choice, partly through exclusion from other opportunities. These sectors' undervaluation thus compounds their economic disadvantage.
56. The 2020 pay equity framework offered hope through its potential for evolution. While framed in binary terms, nothing prevented its application to benefit all workers in undervalued occupations regardless of gender identity. Future development could have explicitly recognised non-binary workers, addressed discrimination affecting trans men in female-dominated roles, and acknowledged the complex ways gender identity intersects with occupational segregation.
57. Instead, the 2025 Act reinforces rigid binaries. Its heightened thresholds and narrowed definitions exclude not just many women but entirely erase those who don't fit traditional gender categories. The message sent is clear: only cisgender women deserve pay equity, and barely them. This represents not just failure to progress but active regression, encoding discrimination against gender minorities into law.
Intersectional Impact: Where Discrimination Compounds
58. The Act's impact cannot be understood through single-axis analysis. Its greatest harm falls on those experiencing intersecting discriminations—wāhine Māori, Pacific women, disabled women, immigrant women, older women, transgender women of colour. For these workers, pay equity represented more than wage adjustment—it offered recognition that their labour, devalued through multiple prejudices, had worth.
59. Consider the Samoan transgender woman working as a rest home caregiver. She faces discrimination as a woman, as a Pacific person, as transgender, as someone in a devalued occupation. Each identity marker compounds her economic disadvantage. Pay equity offered a mechanism to address at least one dimension of this discrimination. Now, even that limited remedy is gone.
60. These are not abstract injustices but lived realities—rent unpaid, medication unaffordable, heating foregone, choices between food and power bills. The 2025 Act perpetuates these indignities, choosing to maintain suffering that could be alleviated.
Part V: The Path Back to Justice - Recommendations
Immediate Imperatives
55. The first requirement is simple: complete repeal of the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 and restoration of the Equal Pay Act 1972 as amended in 2020. Half-measures or modifications cannot repair fundamental destruction. The architecture of discrimination must be dismantled entirely.
56. But restoration alone is insufficient. Justice requires remedy for harm done:
Revival of Terminated Claims
a. All 33 pay equity claims extinguished by the Act must be revived at their point of termination. Workers who invested years in these processes deserve to see them concluded. The Crown should fund additional support to expedite resolution, recognising that delay has compounded disadvantage.
Restoration of Settlement Reviews
b. The voided review mechanisms in existing settlements must be reinstated and honoured. Where reviews were scheduled to occur during the Act's operation, they should commence immediately with back-payment of any adjustments that would have applied.
Compensation for Harm
c. Workers whose claims were terminated or settlements undermined have suffered concrete losses. Interest should be paid on delayed adjustments. Costs incurred in preparing now-terminated claims should be reimbursed. The economic harm of delay should be acknowledged through compensation.
Structural Reform
57. Beyond remedying immediate harm, this crisis reveals need for structural reform to prevent repetition:
Constitutional Protection
a. Pay equity should be recognised as a constitutional principle, protected from political interference. This could be achieved through entrenched legislation requiring supermajority support for amendment, or through judicial development of pay equity as a recognised right under NZBORA.
Institutional Independence
b. Establishment of an independent Pay Equity Commission, insulated from political pressure, would ensure consistent development and application of pay equity principles. This body would maintain comparator databases, provide guidance, monitor progress, and report publicly on pay gaps.
Inclusive Framework
58. Future pay equity legislation must explicitly recognise gender diversity, addressing discrimination affecting all workers regardless of gender identity. This requires moving beyond binary frameworks to acknowledge the full spectrum of gender-based discrimination in employment.
The Partnership Imperative
59. Any path forward must centre partnership with Māori, recognising that pay equity is a Treaty issue requiring Treaty-based solutions:
Māori Pay Equity Authority
a. Establishment of a Māori-led body to oversee pay equity implementation for Māori workers, ensuring cultural perspectives inform evaluation of work value and appropriate remedies for discrimination affecting Māori.
Iwi Partnership Agreements
b. Direct agreements with iwi on pay equity implementation in their rohe, recognising rangatiratanga over economic wellbeing of their people and ensuring local solutions to discrimination.
Takatāpui Leadership
c. Specific inclusion of Takatāpui voices in pay equity governance, recognising their unique position at the intersection of indigeneity and gender diversity, ensuring solutions that work for all gender-diverse Māori.
Democratic Restoration
60. The process that created this crisis must never be repeated:
Prohibition on Urgency
a. Legislation affecting fundamental rights should be explicitly excluded from urgency provisions except in cases of genuine emergency (natural disaster, war, pandemic). Pay equity changes could never qualify.
Mandatory Consultation
b. Any future employment law changes should require minimum 90-day consultation periods, including targeted engagement with affected communities, unions, employers, and Treaty partners.
Transparency Requirements
c. All human rights analysis of proposed legislation should be publicly released. Cabinet papers on rights-affecting legislation should be proactively disclosed. The public deserves to know how their rights are being considered.
Part VI: The Moral Imperative
The Test of Our Values
61. The Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 forces Aotearoa to confront fundamental questions about who we are as a society. Do we believe that work has inherent dignity regardless of who performs it? Do we accept that some people deserve less because of their gender? Are we willing to perpetuate discrimination for political convenience?
62. The international community watches. UN treaty bodies will review our compliance. Trading partners who value human rights will note our regression. Future generations will judge whether we stood for justice or accepted injustice.
63. But beyond international reputation lies deeper truth: we diminish ourselves when we diminish others. Every underpaid teacher aide represents not just individual injustice but collective failure. Every care worker struggling to make ends meet reflects not just economic inequality but moral inequality—our willingness to consume care while denying carers dignity.
The Economic Imperative
64. Even those unmoved by moral arguments should consider economic reality. Pay discrimination is economically irrational, wasting human potential and reducing productivity. Treasury's own analysis shows that closing gender pay gaps would:
· Increase GDP by billions annually through increased consumption and reduced benefit dependence
· Reduce child poverty by lifting family incomes
· Strengthen economic resilience through more equitable distribution
· Enhance productivity by properly valuing and investing in human capital
65. The 2025 Act perpetuates economic inefficiency, maintaining artificial wage suppression that distorts labour markets and wastes talent. It represents not fiscal responsibility but fiscal irresponsibility—choosing discrimination's costs over equality's benefits.
The Democratic Imperative
66. This People's Select Committee exists because democracy failed. When Parliament abandons its duty to scrutinise legislation, when government refuses to consult those affected by its decisions, when urgency is abused to avoid accountability, democracy itself is undermined.
67. The Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 is thus not just an employment law issue but a constitutional crisis—a test of whether New Zealand's democratic institutions can self-correct when they fail, whether civil society can demand accountability when government avoids it, whether the people's voice matters when Parliament refuses to listen.
68. Your work on this Committee represents democratic innovation—creating new forums for participation when traditional ones are denied. But it should never have been necessary. The fact that it is necessary reveals how far our democracy has strayed from its principles.
Conclusion: The Choice Before Us
55. The Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 is more than bad law—it is a moral failure that diminishes us all. It abandons vulnerable workers, violates international commitments, breaches Te Tiriti, undermines democracy, and entrenches discrimination. It represents a choice to maintain injustice rather than remedy it, to preserve privilege rather than share prosperity, to deny dignity rather than affirm it.
56. But choices can be reconsidered. Laws can be repealed. Justice delayed need not be justice denied.
57. Rights Aotearoa calls upon this People's Select Committee to recommend not just repeal but transformation—using this crisis as catalyst for creating a pay equity system that truly serves all people regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, or any other characteristic. We stand ready to support this work, bringing the expertise of affected communities and the moral clarity of human rights principles.
58. The question now is whether Aotearoa will choose justice or injustice, equality or discrimination, dignity or degradation. History will record our answer. Let it record that when confronted with discrimination, we chose to dismantle it. When faced with injustice, we chose to remedy it. When given the opportunity to affirm human dignity, we took it.
59. The path back to justice begins with acknowledging injustice. It proceeds through remedying harm. It concludes with building systems that prevent repetition. This Committee's work represents the first step on that path. We urge you to take it boldly, knowing that hundreds of thousands of workers walk with you.
Ngā mihi maioha ki a koutou katoa.
Paul Thistoll
Chief Executive
Rights Aotearoa
References
¹ Statistics New Zealand. (2023). Gender Pay Gap Report 2023.
² International Labour Organization. (1951). Convention No. 100: Equal Remuneration Convention.
³ Terranova Homes & Care Ltd v Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota Inc [2014] NZCA 516.
⁴ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 25.
⁵ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21.
⁶ See, e.g., Stran Greek Refineries v Greece (1994) 19 EHRR 293.
⁷ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 2(1).
⁸ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 3 (1990).
⁹ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (2016). Public debt, austerity measures and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
¹⁰ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Articles 2-3.
¹¹ CEDAW Committee, General Recommendation No. 25 (2004).
¹² ILO Convention No. 100, Article 3.
¹³ ILO Convention No. 144: Tripartite Consultation Convention (1976).
¹⁴ Orange, C. (2011). The Treaty of Waitangi. Bridget Williams Books.
¹⁵ Waitangi Tribunal. (2019). Hauora: Report on Stage One of the Health Services and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry.
¹⁶ Ministry for Women. (2023). Ngā Wāhine Māori: Māori Women's Employment Report.
¹⁷ Kerekere, E. (2017). Part of The Whānau: The Emergence of Takatāpui Identity.
¹⁸ Waitangi Tribunal. (2011). Ko Aotearoa Tēnei: A Report into Claims Concerning New Zealand Law and Policy Affecting Māori Culture and Identity.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, sections 4-6.
²¹ Ontario Human Rights Commission v Simpsons-Sears [1985] 2 SCR 536.
²² R v Oakes [1986] 1 SCR 103; Hansen v R [2007] 3 NZLR 1.
²³ European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. (2020). A long way to go for LGBTI equality.
About Rights Aotearoa
Rights Aotearoa is one of New Zealand's leading non-governmental organisations devoted to promoting and defending universal human rights with a focus on transgender, non-binary, and intersex rights. We work through advocacy, education, and supporting strategic litigation to ensure all people in Aotearoa can live with dignity, equality, and freedom from discrimination.