For the first time in four years, New Zealand has slipped in a global ranking that tracks a country’s progress towards achieving gender equality.
The Labour Party fears the drop will continue following the Government’s swift pay equity changes, which lift the threshold for making claims and narrow whatroles groups can compare themselves to.
But the Government says the new approach makes the system more robust after claims had previously been able to progress without strong evidence that women were being undervalued compared to men for the same work.
The World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap report shows New Zealand has dropped from fourth to fifth place out of 148 countries largely due to the number of women in top political decision-making roles.
Protesters rally outside Minister Brooke van Velden’s electorate office in St John, Auckland, opposing the Government’s pay equity legislation. Photo / Jason Dorday
The report, which is the longest-running of its kind in the world, reviews the impact of a country’s gender equality efforts on health, education, the economy and politics.
It measures the outcomes of those efforts such as wage parity between men and women for similar work, literacy rates, university enrolments, life expectancy and the representation of women in Parliament.
New Zealand ranks highly across education (1st equal with 35 other countries), eighth for the percentage of women in Parliament and 36th for the number of women in ministerial positions.
The report ranks countries on how close they are to achieving full equality (marked as 100%) across these measures then calculates an average to produce the overall score.
The Global Gender Gap report's top ten ranking over time. Photo / Supplied
New Zealand’s overall gender parity score was 82.7%, a slight decline from the previous 2024 report figure (83.5%), but enough to be overtaken by the UK after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appointed a record number of women to his cabinet.
New Zealand steadily climbed in the rankings from tenth place in 2015 to a peak of fourth from 2021 to 2024.
That period covers the 2021 historic high of 61 women parliamentarians, compared with 60 men, under the previous Labour government. This was the first time New Zealand had reached equal gender representation in Parliament.
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with predecessor and current Labour leader Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The number of women MPs dropped following the 2023 election that October to 57. Currently, four of the 14 ministers in Cabinet are women.
In New Zealand, one way officials measure gender parity is with the gender pay gap, which calculates the difference in median hourly pay for men and women. The current pay gap is 8.2%.
Labour’s spokesperson for women Carmel Sepuloni said New Zealand was moving in the wrong direction “after years of making good progress”.
Protestors protest outside Parliament for pay equity for women. Photo / Marty Melville, NZ Herald
“What concerns me is this report doesn’t even take into consideration ... what we’ve seen recently in New Zealand with the Government slashing pay equity for women.
“If we look at the information in the report, we see quite the backslide from the early 2000s through to the 2010s where we move from a ranking of five to a ranking of 10. What I’m concerned about now is [whether] we are seeing another backslide of that nature.”
Mps, including Labour's Carmel Sepuloni, join a protest at Parliament prompted by the Government's pay equity reforms. Photo / Marty Melville
Although it would not take into account the actual pay equity legislation, which was passed under urgency last month, upcoming reports could consider relevant flow-on effects which negatively affected women.
Sepuloni said the Government’s recent pay equity changes, which prompted significant outrage and protest, were a “slap in the face” for women who endured a “hard fought battle” over decades to improve pay conditions for women.
The new pay equity legislation, which was rushed through under urgency in May, prompted former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring to assemble a line-up of former MPs to form their own “people’s select committee” to hear “the evidence Parliament should have heard” on recent pay equity changes.
The committee, which includes ex-Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta, will convene on August 11.
Former National MP Dame Marilyn Waring will lead a people's select committee on pay equity reforms. Photo / Dean Purcell
Nicola Grigg, Minister for Women, said although New Zealand had slipped in the ranking, it remained in the top five globally.
“This is a strong position, reflecting long-term commitment.”
Recent changes to pay equity would make the system ”more robust, workable and sustainable” and “identify genuine sex-based discrimination in the workplace”.
“New Zealand’s system remains more liberal than many listed in the 2025 Gender Gap Index, for example. Having a fair pay equity system and giving businesses resources to reduce the gender pay gap contributes towards achieving gender equality.”
Grigg said measuring gaps in pay for women and men was complex and nuanced with around 80% of contributing factors being “unexplained”, like hiring bias. The Government last year launched a Gender Pay Gap Toolkit to help them address these complex issues.
“Since launching the calculator toolkit, we’ve had great engagement with over 23,000 visits to the site.
“I’m pleased businesses are using the resources now available as it will take a concerted effort across business, organisations, and Government to reduce the gender pay gap and uplift women over time.”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
