Abstract
In Hopes Dashed, Prue Hyman reviews the state of gender inequality in Aotearoa since the publication of her 1994 Women and Economics: A New Zealand Feminist Perspective. Her verdict: in significant ways, the more things change the more they stay the same. Combining clear writing and hard data, Hyman’s new analysis serves as an excellent introduction to key debates in the field of gender and economics in general, and New Zealand’s gendered economic policy and practice in particular. Detailing persistent inequalities in intertwined global and national economic structures, Hyman’s volume is a call to action for ‘a compassionate, genuinely green economy built on feminist values’ (p. 129), one that rejects ‘the orthodox [economic] prescriptions that brought us the recent and ongoing global economic, financial, and environmental crises’ (p. 129). Particularly helpful in this project are the data-driven arguments, the focus on intersecting social and economic factors in different wage gaps, the clear and detailed explanations of how shifts in labour practices under neoliberalism mean that even well-intentioned policies have little positive effect, and the numerous examples demonstrating over and again how the government (and ‘orthodox neoclassical economics’, p. 12) narrowly defines every public policy and legal victory so that few people actually benefit.
Hyman touches briefly on broad issues affecting women’s economic inequality: climate change, the housing crisis, the growth imperative, free trade agreements. These serve to frame her key areas of concern, which she probes in depth: inequalities in unpaid work (chapter 1), paid work (chapter 2) and enforcement of equal employment opportunities policies (chapter 3). Chapters 4 and 5 argue for ‘radical labour market policies’ and a ‘compassionate economy’. Hyman examines both general socio-economic policies (across the board minimum and living wage proposals) and specific gender-inequality-targeted policies (equitable pay; gender quotas in nominated job categories) that would help reduce income inequality generally and, as a consequence, have a significant impact on the ‘feminization of poverty’, women’s relative economic ill-health relative to men, and Maori and Pacific Islander women’s specific economic needs. As she notes in chapter 4, general policies have far more effect on women’s economic position than targeted ones; ‘hence, more radical labour market policies are required’ (p. 96).
The book is saturated with statistics on different ways that women are working more but being counted – and remunerated – less. For example, women with both paid jobs and minor children work the most hours, more time is spent on unpaid than paid work in New Zealand (and women do most of this work), and sole parents on benefits suffer the most under current individualistic (rather than family and community) and sexist (male-breadwinner) economic assumptions. Hyman also spends significant time explaining the persistence of the wage gap. The level of detail here will be invaluable to those seeking to understand a complex – and hotly contested – facet of gender and economics. Hyman looks at the basic definition – the ‘percentage by which female pay falls short of male pay’ (p. 56) – but also compares gaps in particular occupations, official statistics on ‘full-time workers’ versus statistics that account for women’s over-representation in part-time and casual work, statistics on weekly earnings versus hourly earnings, and income versus total annual income from all sources. She also offers a clear discussion of disparate impact (‘indirect discrimination’) versus disparate treatment (‘direct discrimination’) in the labour market, and how the former is far more significant in the persistence of gender economic inequality than the latter.
Key themes emerge again and again: the failures of GDP to measure productivity, and fealty to it as a contributor to ongoing gender inequality; the devaluing of ‘women’s work’ (care work) and interdependence as a fundamental feature of social and economic life; the necessity of public and private volunteer and unpaid labour (all highly feminized) to a well-functioning society; the ways that gender stereotyping undermines both gender-targeted and gender-neutral EEO (equal employment opportunity) interventions; the disconnect between the government’s rhetoric on economic equality and its lack of enforcement; specific ways deregulation and the casualizing of the economy have been harmful to most New Zealanders, but to women even more than men; and the persistence of gendered job segregation. Though we know New Zealand is not alone in these trends – there is a global problem of decoupling wages from productivity (p. 101) – Hyman argues New Zealand could be a world leader in addressing these issues if the political will were mustered.
There are a few missteps in the book. Occasionally Hyman writes about the women faring worst in the new economy, but then focuses her examples on middle-class women or ‘women’ generally. For example, in the conclusion to chapter 1 she offers a ‘case study’ (p. 44) illustrating how unpaid work is ‘undervalued by society’ (p. 44) and is interdependent with paid work, but instead of explaining how (for instance) sole-parent earners struggle with ever-stingier benefit rules, Hyman opts for a standard narrative about a professional woman trying to ‘have it all’. Professional women are under pressure, too, of course, but the mismatch between theory and application was jarring.
Similarly, chapter 4 goes into useful detail regarding the kinds of policies that could ameliorate some gendered economic inequalities, discussing both minimum and living wage options. However, while noting the ‘universal basic income’ proposal that has been getting increasing amounts of coverage in mainstream media, Hyman quickly, and perplexingly, dismisses it. The final few pages were interesting in terms of analysing alternatives to GDP as the metric of economic or national health, but also introduced some contradictions with the rest of the book: in a text outlining how New Zealand has failed to live up to the promises of a fair go for all, Hyman becomes oddly defensive about the country’s position in the world and the ways that alternate measures of economic equality undervalue how well New Zealand performs.
None of these criticisms detract, however, from the urgency of Hyman’s critique or the clarity of her analysis. It’s a timely and useful contribution to global debates about economic justice and fairness that reignited with the Occupy movement and have charged recent electoral politics and protests internationally.