Alexis Stuart: Since we women grew up a long time ago...

COMMENT

Don Brash, the new leader of the National Party, has dropped the party's women's affairs shadow portfolio. And he has admitted that, given half the chance, he would abolish the Ministry of Women's Affairs.

I totally agree with him.

I have read most of the nonsense the ministry has emitted in recent times - discussion document after document that marginalise the roles that men and children play in the lives of women. As a woman, a wife and a mother of sons and a daughter, I have found its efforts to manipulate the outcomes of our lives beyond the pale.

The kind of forced gender egalitarianism the ministry advocates erodes freedom and ultimately leads to a loss of human dignity.

Don't think for a moment that the ministry is concerned with equality. If it were, it would be a champion of individual freedom and opportunity. It is not. Rather it is concerned with women as a collective, a one-size-fits-all powerhouse.

For the bully girls in power, the agenda will suit them very well. Already in powerful positions, career-obsessed women will soon have affirmative action policy on their side.

To clinch the deal, positive discrimination, comparable worth and universal state-financed and state-run childcare will ensure that our little girls don't get any better ideas.

The ministry has always been an advocate of heavy-handed central planning. This will always harm the most vulnerable and disadvantaged women. Employment opportunities will be reduced, more women will be encouraged to stay in traditionally female occupations, and unemployed women will find it harder to find jobs.

The thousands of women who would prefer to stay at home with young children will continue to be ignored by economic policy. The stress of men and women forced to make the same choices and the burden of revenue-hungry centralised enforcement will add fuel to the already ferocious divorce rate.

It is blindingly obvious to those of us who struggle with power bills, nappies, grumpy, overworked and overtaxed husbands and less glamorous occupations that the ministry does not have the foggiest idea how diverse our aspirations really are.

The ministry has shown itself to be mainly concerned with primitively constructed outcomes, not with the underlying social, economic and political structures that we, as individuals, must interact with.

Its pay equity agenda is not about women being paid the same as men for the same job; it is about women working as the ministry deems fit, balancing our work and family life as it deems equitable. It is placing a price on a job as it is valued by the ministry.

This kind of backward, radical, middle-aged feminism is only ever going to survive in a leftist government. Even some in the Government quietly feel uncomfortable with it. But for the leftist ideologues it is all "Great" government.

Equity is important. As individuals we all need to feel that we have been treated fairly. However, the equalisation approach that concentrates purely on economic outcomes will always be hideously unfair and tyrannical. It is results-oriented, not freedom-oriented.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs is concerned not with the promotion of fairness or a system that rewards merit. That would be too close to the efficiencies of the free market. It is too ideologically compromised to be genuinely interested in broadening the opportunities of disadvantaged workers. A sameness agenda has left the importance of improvements in our relative earnings and increased disposable income in its shadow.

It is not all about money, either. The ministry is shockingly anti-family. Whether it is in reports on pay equity or in action plan discussion documents, women's relationships with men and children are ignored. I cannot find the word "marriage" anywhere. It is as if family life is wiped out.

Socialist principles are all-consuming in the ministry. It is highly discriminatory. A change of government could no longer justify its existence.

While the Government concentrates on increasing the power of the feminist agenda by mainstreaming the ministry into the whole of government, the National Party must continue to recognise that most women grew up some time ago.

Women have the opportunities. We can be ministers of education, ministers of finance and prime ministers, so let's stop the patronising nanny-state "we know better than you" drivel that engineers our choices and marginalises us into our own little ministry.

Perhaps then we could save ourselves millions or use the dollars to encourage all our young girls and boys in community programmes - the sort that advise that the sky is the limit but the choices are yours - to work hard, play fair and don't forget to adore your mother.

That would be money much better spent.

* Alexis Stuart is a Christchurch writer.