April 2006

 

The CTU’s Vice President Maori is filling a new position that builds on the current Treaty-based CTU governance structures. Recently appointed, Sharon Clair describes the latest development as “wonderful, particularly for Maori women.” Clair says she is “truly encouraged with Maori women’s leadership within the union movement. It’s here, it’s on the move, and I believe it will be retained and it will be advanced.”

 

Clair described the main issues for Maori women in the union movement, and how are those issues might be distinctive. For Maori women in unions, pay equity is doubly important, as “Maori women will be paid less than other women as well as men.” Clair notes that Maori women are not only heavily clustered in teaching and nursing, but in lower-paid realms of the Service and Food Workers union.

 

Within work on Maori needs in the workplace, Clair is looking to project more of the women’s voice on issues such as allowing for leave to fulfil responsibilities to marae. She says that “little discussion has occurred for the role of women who have to attend these things as well, and play a significant role which no-one would deny.”

 

Commenting on the suggestion that Maori leaders have sprung from unions, Clair says she thinks unions do nurture women leaders, [but] she doesn’t necessarily equate that with being the most likely avenue where Maori women leadership could grow from.

 

Clair highlights Maori women’s traditionally strong leadership in public health and community sectors, such as the Ministry of Health’s Maori Directorate, and the Maori Women’s Welfare League, describing Maori women’s leadership in these sectors as well-recognised in the Maori world “because we’re the lifegivers. Women are there at the beginning and end of life in this world. I think that we, Maori women leaders, tend to take a lead in ensuring that women are valued wherever they are, particularly the role of mothers and the intense pressure for mums. I think when we look at Maori women’s leadership around the country there wouldn’t be one of us that wouldn’t agree on those common threads.”