Election 2020: Gender Justice Collective scores parties on equity, Greens top results

A new scorecard shows where political parties stand on gender equity issues. Photo / File

The Gender Justice Collective has looked at the policies and election manifestos of New Zealand's political parties to see where they stand on gender issues.

According to the collective, the results are "damning for political parties".

It found that 99 per cent of parties do not have a specific women's policy, although women and/or gender minorities were mentioned in policy documents.

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The WeChoose2020 is a gender equity scorecard that gives voters the chance to see, at a glance, each of the different parties' gender equity policies (and whether or not they even have one).

It follows the YouChoose2020 survey, conducted by the GJC earlier this year, which collected responses from 3500 women, non-binary people, trans women, and intersex people, on what they want from their elected representatives.

"We believe this to be a world first. While other gender scorecards exist internationally we haven't found one that uses nationwide survey results to create the framework," said Professor Jennifer Curtin, director of the Public Policy Institute, Te Whare Marea Tātari Kaupapa.

Based on the issues people highlighted in the survey, the GJC analysed the different policies for each party and compiled the Election 2020 scorecard.

"The WeChoose2020 scorecard shows how little political parties know about women's needs," said Angela Meyer, founder of the Gender Justice Collective.

"It is not good enough that over 52 per cent of the population's concerns, aspirations economic fortunes are not being addressed by their elected representatives. While almost every sector of society is severely challenged by Covid, data has consistently shown the one group to be the worst hit by almost every indicator is women" Meyer added.

"We want a political approach that weaves gender into everything a country does at every level, from representation in its own ranks to the allocation of budget spend."

The Green Party is the only party with a separate policy for women. The party's overarching policy platform includes mentions of women, wāhine Māori, gender minorities, non-binary, and transgender people.

"There is an assumption that because New Zealand was the first to give women the vote that we lead the way in gender equity. The survey results and scorecard show this to be completely untrue; there is a huge opportunity to really make Aotearoa NZ the world leader in gender equity and to do that we have to be honest about what the current situation is," Meyer added.

The GJC invited political parties for an online 20-minute Q&A session and, according to the collective, only Labour and the Greens accepted. National accepted initially but then pulled out. New Zealand First and Act did not reply.