Submission to the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity
In mid 2025, the Equal Pay Amendment Bill was passed under urgency and without scrutiny. The People’s Select Committee has been established by a group of 10 former women MPs from across the political spectrum to hear submissions from individuals and groups who were not able to be heard.
Their aim is to provide adequate scrutiny of the regulatory, economic and social impacts of the Bill.
Below is our submission to the Committee.
Our Project Director, Vic Crockford and Kaihautū Dr Kathie Irwin also submitted to the committee orally, and you can see their full presentation from 1:58 below.
FULL SUBMISSION
The Coalition to End Women's Homelessness is submitting against the changes to pay equity based on the evidence of our recent research, Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga, and years of work undertaken by advocates to highlight the correlation between pay inequity and housing insecurity for women.
Ngā Ara ki te Kāinga: Understanding Barriers and Solutions to Women’s Homelessness is a research collaboration between the Coalition, a kaupapa Māori research organisation, Ihi Research and analytics firm, Taylor Fry. The stories of women as told in their words are woven with data from the government’s Integrated Data Infrastructure inspired by the He Awa Whiria model (Prof Angus McFarlane).
It shows that 50% of the people experiencing homelessness in Aotearoa are women - or 57,000 women - and that their health and housing needs as women are not often being met. It also documents the disproportionate impact on wāhine Māori, who are over one third of women experiencing homelessness, single mothers, and - increasingly - older women.
It is this trend toward increasing rates of older women experiencing homelessness that is key to our submission. Pay inequity for women over the course of their lives is a contributing factor to housing insecurity in later life. Financial insecurity begets housing insecurity - which often begets ill-health. Overall, women are living longer than men, with less money than men due to pay inequity over the course of their lives, then having to pay for increasingly significant housing costs on their own.
We articulated our position on this in this media release on our website: https://www.coalitiontoendwomenshomelessness.org/knowledge-hub/rushed-law-change-risks-deepeningnbsphomelessness-crisis-for-nz-women
In addition to this, data from our research shows that severely housing-deprived women are more likely to have children than severely housing-deprived men and are more likely than other women to have four or more children. Furthermore, 17% of severely housing-deprived women received sole parent support compared with 2% of severely housing-deprived men in 2018, with similar rates in 2023.
What these two data points mean for the lived experience of these women's lives is that they are shouldering the caregiving responsibilities, without the financial conditions that will enable them to thrive as individuals and a whānau. There is a strong intergenerational aspect to the issue of pay inequity in this regard. Without lifting the wages of lower paid women to represent the true value of the work they are doing, we are also potentially holding children in poverty.
Finally, the changes to pay equity are not only gendered, they are highly impactful on our Māori and Pasifika women. If we focus on wāhine Māori, our research shows us that over one third of the women experiencing homelessness are wāhine Māori. When we sit this alongside the significant pay gap of of 23% for a Māori woman compared to Pākehā men, it is clear that specific action is required to ensure equity for wāhine Māori in housing and in our economic system, and that we are failing on both counts. Our progress in housing is slow, where it exists, and resetting the pay equity negotiations cancels an area that we could point to as making progress.
You can read our research here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/665e6f2743bbbe0ba5874917/t/675491ed4707682afcf257e3/1733595656848/CWH+25665+Research+Report+%C6%92.pdf
You can read a blog on the importance of understanding Mana Wāhine here: https://www.coalitiontoendwomenshomelessness.org/knowledge-hub/improving-outcomes-for-whinenbspmori-starts-with-understandingnbspmana-whinenbspnbsprk to do.
