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TE IRA TANGATA
ISSUE
03
WOMEN, EQUITY AND ACTIVISM IN AOTEAROA
Cover artwork by Ayla Corner
ISSN 2744-788X (Print)
ISSN 2744-7898 (Online)
2
Te Ira Tangata
He hakamāramatanga o ‘Te Ira Tangata’
Nā Taua Roimata Kirikiri rāua ko Matua
Hōne Sadler
Editorial
Miriama Postlethwaite & Sarah Proctor-Thomson
Valuing our university tutors: Examining
gendered hierarchy and organisational
exclusion
Kendra Marston
Reflecting on human resource management
student experiences of learning about
sexual harassment.
Suzette Dyer & Fiona Hurd
Rise up, craftivists! Rise up!
Jo Donovan
HE WĀHINE, HE WHENUA, E MATE AI TE
TANGATA
Sharn Riggs on occupying space, building
coalitions, and being strategic
Career glimpses curated by Kylie Cox and Sarah Proctor-Thomson
3
4
5
10
13
16
17
CONTENTS
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Te Ira Tangata
Ko ‘Te Ira Tangata’ e hakaatu ana i te āhua o te
noho o te wāhine me te tāne, otirā, me te tangata
hoki ki runga i te mata o Papatūānuku.
I tīmata te ira tangata i te hononga o Tāne-nui-
a-Rangi – mai i te ao o te ira Atua – rāo tahi
ko Hine-ahu-one, i pokepokea mai – i te uku i
Kurawaka – ka puta ko Hine-tītama. Mai i a ia,
ko te tīmatanga mai o te ira tangata ki runga i te
mata o te whenua.
I tīmata te ira tangata mai i te ‘whare tangata’
(wāhine) i te hononga o te wāhine me te tāne. Ko
te ‘whare tangata’ ka noho hei āhuru i ngā mea
katoa o te ao. I hakatōngia ai te kākano e te tāne
ki te kōpū o te wahine ka tīmata te kukunetanga
kia puta te ira tangata i te wheiao ki te Ao
Mārama, ā, ko te kawenga nui o te ao kei runga
i te wāhine. Koia, ko te ingoa o ‘Te Ira Tangata’ e
hakaatu ana i tēnei mana nui a te wāhine.
The title ‘Te Ira Tangata’ epitomises the relationship
between women and men, that is, as mere mortals
living as equals on the face of earth mother.
The genesis of human beings began with the joining
of the genes of Tāne-nui-a-Rangi – from the divine
realm – and Hine-ahu-one, fashioned from the female
element – of the earthly realm at Kurawaka – and
begat Hine-tītama. From her, derives the origins of
humankind on the surface of the earth.
The birth of humans has been through the ‘house
of humanity’ (woman) in the joining of the female
and male elements. Within her ‘womb’ being the
sanctuary for all mortals. The seeding of the womb
by the male element signals the birthing cycle that
propels forth the child from the realm of dim light
into full enlightenment, and, thus the greatest
responsibility of the world is carried by women.
Hence the title ‘Te Ira Tangata’ is an expression of
this immense mana of the female element.
2022, Issue 03
Nā Taua Roimata Kirikiri rāua ko Matua Hōne Sadler
HE HAKAMĀRAMATANGA O
‘TE IRA TANGATA’
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Te Ira Tangata
Sarah Proctor-ThomsonMiriama Postlethwaite
It is an understatement to say that 2022 has been a year of many challenges for women
workers in Aotearoa. From waves of sickness sweeping through our workplaces and
homes; climate change and extreme weather events hitting rural and urban spaces;
violence and mass protest on the streets; stubbornly high rates of workplace bullying
and harassment; and rising inflation alongside widening gender and ethnic pay gaps,
women workers have endured it all.
We have endured because we have to, but also because we live in hope that things will
get better. As union women we collectivise and mahi so the world our daughters and
sons inherit will be better than it is today.
The pieces in this issue are varied but collectively shine a light on the dynamic flow of
thought, hope and action that union women experience as they confront inequality at
work. The first piece by Kendra Marston explores the gendering of precarious academic
labour and oers simple strategies that could help to disrupt the inequities underpinned
by the academic hierarchy of universities. Suzette Dyer and Fiona Hurd then share a
research note highlighting the importance of reflective, deep, and personal learning
about gender-based workplace violence for students who are preparing for the working
world of human resource management. They underscore the continued need to work
with young people to raise awareness of the collective, organisational, and societal
responsibilities for building intolerance for gender-based violence at work. Providing
something of a salve to the accounts of inequity in the previous pieces, Jo Donovan’s
reflective piece calls her readers to ‘rise up’, oering the political potential of crafting as
one strategy to take action against inequity in a way that also feeds the wellbeing of
oneself and ones’ community. The final piece curated by Kylie Cox and Sarah Proctor-
Thomson provides brief excerpts of early union life for one of our union foremothers,
Sharn Riggs, to highlight the strategies of union women gone before us that we can take
forward in our future mahi towards a better world.
Sarah and Miriama
EDITORIAL
COEDITORS
Sarah Proctor-Thomson
TEU Te Hautū Kahurangi
Miriama Postlethwaite
Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi
EDITORIAL BOARD
Elba Ramirez
Auckland University of Technology
Nadia Charania
Auckland University of Technology
Elisa Duder
Auckland University of Technology
Krassie Petrova
Auckland University of Technology
Mary-Liz Broadley
The Open Polytechnic, New Zealand
Sarah Kate Millar
Auckland University of Technology
Jyoti Jhagroo
Auckland University of Technology
Kerri Spooner
Auckland University of Technology
Clare Moleta
Victoria University of Wellington
Saida Parvin
Auckland Institute of Studies
Jill Jones
TEU Te Hautū Kahurangi
Frederique Vanholsbeek
University of Auckland
Shirley Barnett
Massey University
miriama.postlethwaite@wananga.ac.nz sarah.proctorthomson@teu.ac.nz
Te Ira Tangata is a peer reviewed, biannual, and interdisciplinary journal setting new agendas for feminism, gender equality, and activism
in Aotearoa. This journal publishes creative writing and celebrations of research, teaching, and activism that are supportive of
Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union’s (TEU) commitment to progressing gender equality and the empowerment of all women.
The journal is a forum for the exchange of a rich range of ideas, debates, and provocations. It aims to reflect the work of our members,
highlight the triumphs of women within our sector and beyond, invite creative exploration of empowerment and in/equality, and inspire
energy for future feminist activism.
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Te Ira Tangata
In this piece, I argue that university tutoring (in its various forms)
should be made a focal point in our conversations on labour equity. I
aim to demonstrate that tutoring shares features with labour classed as
“women’s work,” primarily in relation to its emphasis on aective labour
and pastoral care, and advocate for challenging the hierarchy between
research-active 1 and teaching-only sta in calling for improved work-
place conditions for the latter. To do so, it is necessary to recognise that
this issue is not only about university funding models and institutional
economics, but also about an organisational culture that contributes to
the side-lining of this essential work. It is therefore a collective duty to
suggest strategies that increase the visibility, recognition, and reward of
tutors’ labour.
Kendra Marston is a Learning Advisor at Massey University. She has
tutored at multiple universities across both Aotearoa and Australia and
is interested in how the gendering of labour within higher education
correlates to levels of organisational inclusion and attributions of value.
Kendra Marston
MASSEY UNIVERSITY
K.Marston@massey.ac.nz
VALUING OUR UNIVERSITY TUTORS:
EXAMINING GENDERED HIERARCHY AND
ORGANISATIONAL EXCLUSION
This article’s arguments are shaped by my own experiences
working as a tutor and senior tutor in Aotearoa New Zealand and
Australian universities. I have always seen tutoring as a necessary
and highly eective mode of teaching due to its interactive
approach and greater capacity for relationship building. As a tutor,
I enjoyed seeing students become enthusiastic about topics that
had long interested me and learn to understand the significance of
the research to their own lives. However, my time in this role was
also marked by precarity and considerable anxiety due to low pay
and poor employment conditions and prospects. It was at times
a labour-intensive process to maintain a positive, enthusiastic,
and encouraging aect within the classroom and in dealings
with students, or to represent the “friendly face” of institutions
where I only precariously belonged. In addition, it was a period of
frustration, as while I knew that students highly valued tutors and
1 As posts at the rank of lecturer and above are typically distinguished by a paid research component, I have opted to use the term “research-active” to distinguish these roles
from teaching-only positions. This is not to suggest that research-active positions do not have substantial teaching or pastoral care loads (or, indeed, that teaching-only sta
do not undertake research) but rather that it is this paid research component that allows for the relative security and mobility within these roles relative to teaching-only ones.
the work we did, this was rarely matched by the institutional value
placed on tutoring. In fact, tutors’ poor employment conditions and
exclusion from institutional and departmental decision-making
seemed to have become a kind of ideological common sense—one
that I began to feel had a gendered dimension.
Women outnumber men in junior academic positions and are
significantly more likely to occupy these roles than senior research-
active positions. This is particularly significant when considering
posts that fall below the rank of “lecturer,” a role which is typically
permanent and marks entry into the academic pathway for
progression. According to the Ministry of Education’s academic
employment statistics for 2020, women made up 28% of Professors
but 62% of Other Academic Sta on average in our universities. As
advised by the Tertiary Sector Performance Analysis Team, Other
Academic Sta (hereafter termed OAS) refers to teaching-only or
combined teaching/research sta and includes assistant lecturers,
senior tutors, tutors, teaching fellows, and visiting academics. The
bulk of teaching-only positions are therefore represented by this
category.
As Table 1 indicates, the OAS category is disproportionately female.
While the University of Canterbury and Lincoln University are two
anomalies in this regard, female representation at both universities
is comparatively low across categories. Furthermore, the MoE’s
2020 figures indicate that while Māori made up 3% of Professors
(20 men and 20 women in total), Pasifika less than 1% of Professors
(5 men and 5 women) and Asians 5% of Professors (60 men, 10
women) as a total average, Māori constituted 7% of OAS (64% of
these women). Pasifika made up 2% of OAS (64% women) and
Asians 16% of OAS (60% women). This indicates that the most
junior academic staing category is disproportionately made up of
women and ethnic minorities relative to the most senior.
While the MoE’s grouping of several positions under the banner
of “Other” may be perceived as a limitation, it makes some sense
given the variety of job titles and descriptions for teaching-only
sta between institutions but also between disciplines, colleges,
and schools within the same institution in a manner that is less
typical for research-active posts. One institution’s “tutor,” for
example, may be another’s “sessional assistant,” or “graduate
teaching assistant” while a “senior tutor” might be known as a
“teaching fellow” elsewhere, or indeed these may be separate
jobs. Given the variety of job titles and lack of consistency and
consensus around what a tutor is and does (an inconsistency
that in my experience can even occur within a single school), I
have opted for a broad use of the term “tutoring” in reference to
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Te Ira Tangata
workshop-style undergraduate teaching as opposed to lecturing.
Nevertheless, issues relating to precarity and/or organisational
exclusion discussed here are likely to apply to others in the OAS
category as well. An additional factor to consider is that OAS
personnel may oscillate between roles in a manner less typical of
Table 1
Percentage of women holding academic posts at Aotearoa’s eight universities in 2020.
Total
Academic Sta Professors Associate
Professors
Senior
Lecturers Lecturers Other
Academic Sta
University of Auckland 2125 31% 39% 50% 51% 61%
University of Waikato 785 25% 35% 51% 50% 60%
Massey University 1580 32% 44% 47% 59% 73%
Victoria University of Wellington 1395 28% 41% 46% 57% 57%
University of Canterbury 995 24% 34% 36% 54% 48%
Lincoln University 245 17% 20% 36% 44% 41%
University of Otago 1585 28% 42% 50% 63% 64%
Auckland University of
Technology
1345 40% 37% 54% 59% 70%
TOTAL 28% 40% 49% 57% 62%
(Ministry of Education, 2021)
2
2 Data was supplied by the Ministry of Education in November 2021 following an OIA request for equity data broken down by university. Figures are rounded to the
nearest percentile
higher-ranked posts.
It might be argued that tutors can be broken down into roughly
two categories: Category A, tutors who are seen as junior sta and
typically paired with course coordinators/lecturers, and Category B,
senior tutors or teaching fellows who sit at a higher rank and may
or may not work alongside course coordinators. The first category
(Category A) has a longstanding tradition in higher education.
Like academia as a whole, these jobs were historically male and
were initially set up as a type of internship for students on their
way to permanent academic posts. Growing female participation
in tutoring has coincided with the greater cultural acceptance of
women entering university and participating in the labour force.
However, it is important to note that the pathway from tutoring to
permanent academic employment is now greatly restricted, with
a significant reliance on workforce casualisation. Tutors in this
category are often (although not always) students and are usually
employed on casual or fixed-term employment agreements.
The second category (Category B) of “senior tutors” or “teaching
fellows” are also often appointed on a fixed-term basis, but
job security may be more likely as some universities do oer
permanent senior tutor and teaching fellow posts (though these
can be at low FTEs). Some Category B senior tutors may share
responsibilities with Category A tutors but have been employed
at a higher rank or promoted due to experience, while others may
have additional responsibilities (for example supervision of junior
tutors, marking coordination, or lecturing). Teaching fellows can be
hired primarily as oering course coordination/lecturing, though
there may be heightened expectations on these sta to also
engage in workshop-style tutoring than for research-active sta.
Category B roles are newer. This lends itself to the argument that
this category constitutes an emerging, feminised “second tier” of
academic, tasked with taking over key responsibilities for research-
active faculty counterparts albeit subject to poorer pay and job
conditions. However, across both categories, there is a heightened
emphasis on teaching and pastoral care as well as facilitating
organisational belonging and student inclusion. Given that “care
labour” is a feminised and commonly devalued form of work
(England et al., 2002), consideration of both categories is critical to
debates on gendered labour in higher education.
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Te Ira Tangata
It is common for many tutors and senior tutors to have more
face-to-face time with students, as at many institutions,
workshops are longer than lectures due to the delivery mode’s
greater emphasis on interactive learning. Students are typically
encouraged to contact tutors with their queries and concerns
rather than research-active sta as a first line measure, to reduce
the administrative burden on the latter. It is the tutor therefore,
who is more likely to get to know individual students and how each
engages with course content and copes with assessment tasks.
They are also often the first to identify students experiencing
personal diiculties or exhibiting concerning behaviours. In this
sense, the tutoring role is more intensively pastoral than the
traditional lecturing role, though this may not be recognised in
either the job description or remuneration (Gill, 2014). While this
delineation is not always clearcut and academic sta may certainly
undertake forms of pastoral care, particularly with postgraduate
students, the system is designed to reduce the teaching and
pastoral workloads of permanent academic sta by outsourcing
as much of this as possible (Cardozo, 2017) to often fixed-term,
teaching-only sta and student services.
Specific studies on tutors, as opposed to the academic precariat
generally, are unfortunately limited. Kahu and Picton (2019),
in a rare study aiming to better understand the benefits tutors
have on student learning and engagement, found that first-year
students rated helpfulness, care, approachability, and “being
hands on” as the most important tutor qualities. In other words,
students emphaisised the value of “soft skills” more traditionally
aligned with female-dominant professions. Students recognised
the diiculties in forming individual relationships with lecturers
given the large class sizes and less interactive environment, and
therefore emphasised that friendly and encouraging tutors who
would empathise with student diiculties; clearly explain key
concepts; and express enthusiasm for their subjects, positively
impacted their academic success as well as their wellbeing and
sense of belonging. This is significant, for as the authors reiterate,
students are more likely to continue with their studies when they
have a positive view of the learning environment and positive
relationships with sta (Coates, 2014, as cited in Kahu & Picton,
2019). The findings are also significant in relation to key principles
associated with bicultural educational models, given the emphasis
on whanaungatanga and manaakitanga in tikanga Māori.
Within our institutions, however, forms of labour with a prioritised
focus on student care and support have been devalued and the
skills that Kahu and Picton’s (2019) students identify are not
adequately rewarded. While the decline in public funding for
higher education has presented notable challenges for university
leaders internationally, our leadership teams are still required to
assess the relative worth of jobs within the institution, resulting
in some employees getting a vastly better deal than others. In
her article “Academic Labor: Who Cares?,” Karen Cardozo (2017)
reiterates that the academic labour market’s two-tiered and
hierarchical system is a gendered and racialised one, reflecting
capitalist divisions between “private and public, home and market,
reproduction and production” (p. 409). Precarious academics, she
explains, are a feminised workforce tasked with tending to the
private sphere of the institutional home by undertaking pastoral
care and teaching labour, while their permanent, research-active
counterparts are engaged in the masculinised and public work of
knowledge production. The feminised workforce is thus stagnant
and disposable, while the masculinised workforce reaps the
benefits of feminised labour in that their time is freed up to focus
on “higher value” tasks that advance their position. This argument
is applicable to both Category A and B tutoring roles. It is worth
noting, however, that the underlying institutional implication that
forms of teaching and pastoral care are less financially valuable is
problematic, as quality teaching in all its forms matters a great deal
for attracting and retaining the student dollar.
How these arguments are responded to is likely to vary, yet those
committed to more equitable workplaces must resist narrow
solutions that only focus on promoting women in leadership
or advancing women through the academic ranks. To do so, as
Catherine Rottenberg (2018) indicates, risks a form of neoliberal
rationalism that obscures the degree to which the advancement
of “worthy capital enhancing women” remains dependent on
disposable Others who undertake much of the care labour. The
more feminist approach to the devaluation of university tutoring,
then, is to argue for both teaching and care work to be valued
more highly in our institutions (Cardozo, 2017) as opposed to
merely coaching tutors on how they can enhance their value on
the academic job market. The latter focus, while important, does
little to meaningfully challenge an inequitable labour system. It
also perpetuates a myth that some forms of tutoring are merely
pathways to ‘real work’ or even a distraction from the research
and not in themselves meaningful jobs. This is an unfortunately
pervasive mentality that discredits tutors and disrespects students.
With this point in mind, it could be argued that the devaluation
of university tutoring has become a kind of “common sense,” with
the various rationales used to support tutors’ precarity, low pay,
and/or poor organisational inclusion constituting a set of myths
perpetuated by senior management, academic sta, and tutors
alike. As Robin Zheng (2018) points out, such myths work to
obscure structural inequality and deflect forms of collective action.
There are two myths that may have a specific applicability to
tutors. The first is the myth that tutoring (especially Category
A) is primarily a form of professional development. This occurs
despite the fact that most tutoring posts are unlikely to develop
into permanent employment, that there are few paid teaching
development opportunities for tutors, and that many long-term
tutors are also locked into what are ostensibly “trainee” pay and
conditions. Perhaps the most insidious feature of this myth,
however, is the way in which it subtly reframes fixed-term tutoring
opportunities as charitable acts of institutional benevolence that
facilitate postgraduate student learning and, as a bonus, provides
a small financial top up for their study. In the wake of Covid-19,
Victoria University of Wellington’s senior leadership team were
able to suggest that tutors could be paid out of their colleagues’
charitable donations (VUW Tutors Collective, 2020), a logic that
relies on an already present charitable discourse in the framing of
this job. This myth also operates to deflect attention away from the
true beneficiaries of the system. The institution benefits as they can
deliver much of their undergraduate teaching on the cheap with
few obligations to fixed-term and casual employees (Gill, 2017).
However, academic sta also benefit from the precarity of their
colleagues, in that their pay, security, and benefits are protected
by an expendable workforce who will be first in line to lose their
jobs or to have their hours reduced as a means of budgetary cost
cutting (Stringer et al., 2018).
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Te Ira Tangata
This logic thus employs egalitarian and inclusive language in order
to mask the deleterious eects curent employment practices have on
tutors (and had long before Covid-19).
The other myth of particular relevance to tutors is their framing as
assistants or support workers, as opposed to an essential and central
teaching and learning service. Within this myth, tutoring becomes
the feminised counterpart not only to research, but to lecturing. The
classification of tutors as teaching assistants implies that permanent
academic sta undertake the majority of the teaching while tutors
carry out supportive duties as directed, when in reality the situtation
is far more variable. While this designation may be true for some
disciplines or courses, in others the labour is more equitably split
with tutors exercising a great deal of independence over their lesson
plans, marking, and engagement with students. The framing of
tutors as assistants further implies that tutoring is a subsidiary of the
lecturing role, rather than a unique mode of practice requiring its own
specialist skillset and teaching methodology. The irony here is that
lecturing is not necessarily considered a superior mode of teaching
practice. The Higher Education Academy fellowship programme, for
example, spends much time debunking myths as to what constitutes
“good” lecturing, repeatedly emphasising the importance of active
learning and interaction in class, aspects that have been more heavily
prioritised in the tutoring mode. This framing also contributes to
another pervasive discourse that measures tutors’ labour by how
much it reduces burden on academic sta as opposed to tutors’
value for student learning.
University tutoring should be a permanent career position with a
salary commensurate with the qualifications and experience needed
to do the job eectively, alongside opportunities for advancement
and adequate organisational inclusion. Such a measure would better
reward forms of labour that are often feminised and devalued as
well as create more job opportunities for our graduates. It would
strengthen our teaching and learning cultures to become more
collaborative and end a practice where one group of employees
holds an ethically dubious degree of power over another. However,
for tutors to obtain such a rise in institutional status would likely
be contingent not only on alterations to the university funding
model and the structure of postgraduate study, but a shift in
organisational values. The below list consists of a set of ideas aimed
at generating cultural change that more eectively includes tutors
within the institution. As such, these measures may challenge the
marginalisation of tutoring and other teaching-only jobs, which are
too often deemed peripheral to core departmental activities, and
to illuminate the gendered biases contributing to this issue. Some
departments or institutions, of course, may already do some of the
things on the list.
1. Many tutors need greater contract transparency that clearly
breaks down exactly what they are paid for and how much time
has been allocated to each task. This may allow tutors to more
eectively lobby to be paid for services that are integral to the job
but are unpaid or underpaid, for example “invisible” labour like the
pastoral care of students.
2. All tutors need to be paid for academic service. This would
better facilitate organisational inclusion as it would allow tutors
to take part in teaching and learning-related strategic planning,
for instance discussions around assessment design, eective
approaches to online teaching, changes to pastoral care codes etc.
This is crucial for building a culture that recognises the labour and
expertise of all sta members, rather than only those engaged in
research.
3. Permanent academic sta should cease requesting that tutors
work for free, for example in delivering an unpaid “guest lecture” to
fill a gap or partaking in extended moderation meetings beyond
contract hours. This is another problematic manifestation of
the professional development myth and is always coercive as
permanent academic sta frequently control tutors’ opportunities
for paid employment within the institution. As tutors are often in
competition with each other for work, they may feel conflicted
about refusing such requests.
4. Tutors should have paid representation at departmental, school,
and faculty meetings. This is important as all employees must
have a voice in decision-making that aects them. However, tutors
are also key stakeholders in our teaching and learning cultures
and likely have vital inputs to contribute to discussions of best
practice.
5. Tutors need to be recognised for the work they do, which means
that when the rest of us discuss teaching practice, we must be
mindful of attributing the right labour to the right people. All
tutors should appear as sta on a school’s public website, job
descriptions and titles should accurately reflect the tutor’s work,
and they need to be recognised in teaching awards 3. Relelvant
award criteria should be developed in consultation with tutors and
require more than positive teaching evaluations or an academic’s
endorsement of their work. Good tutors are highly likely, for
example, to be able to demonstrate their application of evidence-
based teaching practice, the role of decolonising methodologies
in successful teaching, novel approaches to inclusive teaching
practice (e.g. for neurodiverse students, or students with anxiety
etc) and need to be given the chance to demonstrate and be
rewarded for these skills.
6. All institutions should make public regular reports on the ratio
of women (broken down by ethnicity) in their teaching-only
roles relative to the permanent academic ranks. They should
also commission independent reviews into potential gender and
ethnicity bias within job evaluation measures used to assess
both academic and professional/general sta positions. Particular
attention should be paid to jobs that involve heightened levels
of pastoral care to ensure that these positions are not routinely
classed as lower value positions than “higher value” jobs that may
require a similar level of qualification, skillset, and experience.
7. Universities, working with unions, should set up tutor focus groups
to allow tutors to raise concerns and to measure institutional
progress on these matters.
Advocating for these measures, and including tutors’ voices in the
drive for change, is not always easy. However, by recognising the need
for organisational transformation and collectively pushing for systems
that are inclusive and adequately recognise the value of all types of
academic labour, we can begin to move towards meaningful solidarity.
3 I would like to acknowledge Helen Dollery for her bravery in publicly calling out the lack of tutor representation among Massey University’s teaching award recipients.
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Te Ira Tangata
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Zheng, R. (2018). Precarity is a feminist issue: Gender and contingent labor in
the academy. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 33(2), 235—255.
Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hypa.12401
10
Te Ira Tangata
Dr Suzette Dyer is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato, within
the Waikato Management School. Her PhD examined career management
and development within the political-economy of Aotearoa New Zealand
during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Suzette has a keen interest in
women’s organisational experiences, careers, and management pedagogy
and has been teaching, researching, and publishing in these areas for
nearly two decades. Suzette is currently researching the eectiveness of
education on enhancing HRM students understanding of career.
Fiona Hurd is a Senior Lecturer, and Head of Department at Auckland
University of Technology. Her teaching and research focus is on the impact
of changes in work and organisation on business, workers, communities,
and individuals. She also has a strong research background in teaching
and learning research, being involved in research in this area for 10
years. Fiona is currently researching techniques for engaging students in
developing the skills needed in an increasing changing work and societal
context.
Suzette Dyer
SENIOR LECTURER AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO
Fiona Hurd
SENIOR LECTURER, AND
HEAD OF DEPARTMENT AT
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY OF
TECHNOLOGY
corresponding author
Sdyer@waikato.ac.nz
linkedin.com/in/suzette-dyer
Fiona.hurd@aut.ac.nz
linkedin.com/in/fiona-hurd-
52412834/?originalSubdomain=nz
REFLECTING ON HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT STUDENT EXPERIENCES
OF LEARNING ABOUT SEXUAL
HARASSMENT
As management educators, each year we present a lecture on sexual
harassment within the context of a human resource management (HRM)
course. The aim is to develop the capacity of future HRM Practitioners
to address sexual harassment. Analysis of student reflections on this
lecture led us to conclude that sexual harassment sessions within
management education is a necessary starting point for developing
intolerance of sexual harassment at work. However, eradicating sexual
harassment will take a much broader and integrated approach, including
reviewing the current legal framework, widening the scope of education
within the community, and developing intolerant organisational climates.
Introducing the Research Context
As management educators, we embed a session on sexual
harassment within the context of an undergraduate human
resources management (HRM) course each year. The lecture
closely resembles an organisational training session (Pina, Gannon
& Saunders, 2009) and draws on a critical feminist position to
locate sexual harassment within the broader socio-cultural context.
Thus, the lecture explores myths, reviews the Aotearoa New
Zealand legislative framework (e.g., the HRA 1993, the ERA 2000,
H&S at Work Act, 2015); and defines hostile environments and quid
pro quo sexual harassment.
The lecture also details:
• organisational responsibilities (e.g., developing a safe
work environment, managing complaints processes, and
safeguarding against further victimization following reported
incidences);
• victim responsibilities (e.g., informing harassers of oensive
and unwanted behaviour, documenting incidences, and not
defaming harassers); and
• the complaints process and possible outcomes. Such training
is believed to reduce ambiguity (Antecol, Barcus & Cobb-
Clark, 2003), increase reporting (McDonald, 2012), and upskill
managers (Waxman, 1990).
In addition, socio-cultural, organisational (McDonald, 2012), and
power-based explanations (Popovich & Warren, 2010) are used to
analyse the social context surrounding sexual harassment, such
as sexism, the misuse and abuse of power, and hierarchal and
gendered work environments (Pina et al., 2009).
11
Te Ira Tangata
Methods
This project is part of a broader research programme that
explores sexual harassment within university contexts, including
the teaching of sexual harassment, and sexual harassment
understandings amongst university students. Over a three-year
period, students enrolled in the HRM course were invited to join
our research; of the 84 enrolled, 62 volunteered to participate. The
data was based on an assessed reflexive learning journal (Dyer
& Hurd, 2016; Hubbs & Brand, 2010) requiring students to write
500-word reflections on five to eight topics of their choice. Forty-
three participants reflected on the sexual harassment lecture. A
thematical analysis of these 43 reflections (Braun & Clarke, 2006)
was then conducted.
In this article we present and discuss three themes to emerge from
our research examining student experiences of and responses to
participating in the sexual harassment session. These relate to
1) raising awareness about sexual harassment, 2) the normalised
nature of sexual harassment in organisations, and 3) strategies to
redress sexual harassment, as presented below.
Findings
Theme 1: Raising Awareness, Myth Endorsement, and Ambiguity
Participant reflections revealed that preconceived ideas about
typical targets were challenged and while readily identifying quid
pro quo behaviour and physical contact, such as ‘slapping someone
on the bum’, as sexual harassment, the session revealed the hostile
environment behaviours that constitute sexual harassment. The
session also raised awareness about the psychological, physical,
and financial harms experienced by victims; the reluctance of
witnesses to intervene; and the variety of tactics used by harassers
and their supporters to silence or devalue victims. However, myths
that women invite sexual harassment through their own actions
or clothing choices, remained, as illustrated here: women ‘wearing
revealing clothing or [acting] flirty [only] claim sexual harassment
to ensure their own reputation’. Moreover, some felt that ambiguity
existed between personal, cultural and legal definitions of
inoensive and oensive behaviours as well as ambiguity about
which behaviours should be reported. For example, participants felt
that they could ‘usually laugh o’ sexual comments but deemed
being touched as ‘crossing the boundary’; yet felt that behaviour
would need to be ‘more extreme and on ongoing than’ touching
before they would consider reporting an incident.
Theme 2: Sexual Harassment and Cover-ups as Normal and
Complex Organisational Practices
Nearly half of the participants (20) had personally experienced
or had witnessed sexual harassment. Reflecting the socio-cultural
explanation (Kensbock, Bailey, Jennings & Patiar, 2015) some of
these experiences occurred in the wider community, such as being
stalked, being called inappropriate names, and being groped by
strangers and during medical consults. Experiences mirroring
organisational explanations (McDonald, 2012) included being
propositioned by male managers and peers for sex, being groped,
and witnessing the harassment of women in ‘traditionally female
jobs with less authority’. Many participants linked the industries
they worked in, including childcare and hospitality, as placing them
in an inherently sexualised position, including the required dress
code of tight fitting singlet and shorts’, and reflecting that ‘you can’t
put up a force field’ in the context of client rapport.
Participants revealed that covering-up experiences of sexual
harassment was both a normal and power-laden practice. The
tactic of devaluing sexual harassment was illustrated when a
participant dismissed hostile environment behavours experienced
by a close friend by suggestiung that it was ‘lucky’ that her
friend, who was the only woman in a male dominated work group,
‘adapted to the crass behaviour and lewd photos’. Participants
also expressed powerlessness, fear, or concern for others, as their
reasons for covering up personal experiences of sexual harassment
by remaining silent and/or leaving their jobs to remove themselves
from the situation.
These 3: Strategies to Redress Sexual Harassment
Most participants (35) reflected on strategies to redress sexual
harassment. Macro-community level suggestions included the
need for community-level educational programs and changes to
the legal framework that incorporates clearer definitions, better
complaints procedures, stronger consequences for harassers, and
better outcomes for victims to address ‘justice for victims’ who ‘just
lose everything’. Organisational strategies focused on improving
policies and processes and fostering intolerance, with some
participants considering how they might do so in their future roles
as HR Practitioners.
Reporting incidences was the least likely personal strategy and
was invariably qualified by comments such as ‘at least I hope I
would report’. Those who had experienced sexual harassment
reflected that it is ‘very diicult … to make a complaint’ and were
among those who stated that, to avoid suering the cost and
consequences of sexual harassment and subjecting themselves
to inadequate reporting procedures, they would just leave. Others
declared that they would monitor their own behaviour to avoid
becoming a target. Equally concerning, is that five of these HRM
students felt that ‘nothing could be done’ to deter or eliminate
sexual harassment. This skepticism was summed up by one
participant who concluded his reflection by asking: ‘if the harasser
is a male-manager, who are you going to tell?’
Discussion and Conclusion
This research examined student reflections from attending a
critically informed sexual harassment lecture that also resembles
a typical organisational training session. The findings reveal the
importance of embedding sexual harassment training within the
context of a HRM program and management degree. This value
and necessity were particularly evident for raising awareness about
the complexity of the behaviours, costs, and consequences of
sexual harassment, and as a space to start developing intolerance
for sexual harassment among the future HRM workforce who
may be charged with designing policy and managing incidences
in their working lives. Indeed, the research found that through
training and reflection, students became aware of the full range of
behaviours that constitute sexual harassment. There were also a
range of cover-ups identified by participants that resembled Scott
and Martin’s (2006) analysis of the tactics used by harassers. For
example, ensuring no witnesses and/or using their own supporters,
including the victims reporting managers, to discourage formal
complaints. The participants reflected on how these behaviours
were likely to impact their future careers.
However, aligned with Walsh, Bauerle, and Magley (2013), our
findings also reinforce that education is not enough to overcome
the socio-cultural and organisational contexts characterised by
12
Te Ira Tangata
References
Antecol, H., & Cobb-Clark, D. (2003). Does sexual harassment training change
attitudes? A view from the federal level. Social Science Quarterly, 84(4),
826–842.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology.
Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
Butler, S.J., & Schmidtke, J.M. (2010). Theoretical traditions and the modelling
of sexual harassment within organizations: The military as data. Armed
Forces & Society, 36(2), 193-222.
Charlesworth, S., McDonald, P., & Cerise, S. (2011). Naming and claiming
workplace sexual harassment in Australia. Australian Journal of Social Issues,
46(2), 141-161.
Dyer, S.L., & Hurd, F. (2016). ‘What’s Going On?’ Developing Reflexivity in the
Management Classroom: From Surface to Deep Learning and Everything in
Between. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(2), 287-303.
Hubbs, D., & Brand, C. F. (2010). Learning from the inside out: A method
for analyzing reflective journals in the college classroom. The Journal of
Experiential Education, 33(1), 56-71.
Kensbock, S., Bailey, J., Jennings, G., & Patiar, A. (2015). Sexual harassment of
women working as room attendants within 5-star hotels. Gender, Work and
Organization, 22(1), 36-50.
McDonald, P. (2012). Workplace sexual harassment 30 years on: A review of the
literature. International Journal of Management Reviews, 14(1), 1–17.
New Zealand Employment Relations Act (2000). Employment Relations Act
2000. The New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Oice, Retrieved from:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2000/0024/latest/DLM60340.html
New Zealand Employment Health and Safety at Work Act (2015). Health
and Safety at Work Act. the New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Oice.
Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0070/latest/
DLM5976660.html
New Zealand Human Rights Act (1993). The New Zealand Parliamentary
Counsel Oice. Retrieved from: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/
public/1993/0082/latest/DLM304212.html
Pina, A., Gannon, T. A., & Saunders, B. (2009). An overview of the literature on
sexual harassment: Perpetrator, theory, and treatment issues. Aggression
and Violent Behaviour, 14(2), 126-138.
Popovich, P.M., & Warren, M.A. (2010). The role of power in sexual harassment
as a counterproductive behaviour in organizations. Human Resource
Management Review, 20(1), 45-53.
Scott, G., & Martin, B. (2006). Tactics against sexual harassment: The role of
backfire. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 7(4), 111-125.
Walsh, B. M., Bauerle, T.J., & Magley, V. J. (2013). Individual and contextual
inhibitors of sexual harassment training motivation. Human Resource
Development Quarterly, 24(2), 215-237.
Waxman, M. (1990). Institutional strategies for dealing with sexual harassment.
Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 3(1), 73-75.
gender power imbalances, permissive cultures, and routine cover-
ups. Very few participants felt empowered to make a complaint,
especially compared to the number who stated they would either
monitor their own behaviour to avoid being harassed or would
leave a situation to escape harassment.
Indeed, the raised awareness, as expressed by participants, led
to an intention to monitor personal behaviour, remain silent
or leave. This was a surprising and unintended outcome of
raising awareness about the broader socio-cultural climate, and
complexities of sexual harassment. While these strategies might
seem to oer a sense of personal protection, they fail to address
underlying causes (Charlesworth, McDonald & Cerise, 2011) and
reinforce the myths that targets can deter and are responsible for
resolving sexual harassment. This in turn absolves perpetrators of
accepting responsibility for their actions and prevents managers
from taking responsibly for addressing sexual harassment (Butler &
Schmidke, 2010).
Our analysis leads us to conclude that sexual harassment training
sessions within the context of HRM courses and management
degrees are a valuable and necessary starting point for developing
intolerance. An understanding of definitions and processes for
resolution are no doubt important for those who will be overseeing
these processes within organisations and ensures a greater
degree of compliance with the resolution mechanisms. However,
the individualised strategies of resignation and self-discipline,
and/or refusal and leaving are concerning because they relieve
organisations of their responsibility to manage sexual harassment.
These acts also deflect responsibility away from the perpetrator.
Therefore, strategies to privately and individually deal with sexual
harassment may in fact perpetuate tolerant climates, and the costs
and consequences of sexual harassment to victims, organisations,
and society remain intact. Therefore, we advocate for greater
attention, beyond education and training, be paid to the societal
and organisational practices and processes that create permissive
environments for sexual harassment.
*This research received Waikato Management School Ethics
Approval.
13
Te Ira Tangata
RISE UP, CRAFTIVISTS! RISE UP!
This article discusses the rising tide of activism within the maker
movement, which is rooted in communal work, undervalued women’s
work and the integrity of labour. The article queries the latent potency
of crafting, through a look at craft’s potential to connect us to materials
and a sense of embodiment. Could a maker movement lead us away
from mass resource consumption and back to a quieter, more mindful
use of resources? Can working with our hands, and connecting with
materials creatively, link us back into a matrix of thinking where a sense
of well-being is sourced through connectivity and through using nature
carefully?
Joanne Donovan is an Aotearoa New Zealand born artist, designer, and
activist. Her background is in print-making and she spent many years
working as a freelance designer in Europe. Following this, she worked in
the interior design industry in Aotearoa, ultimately leading to questions
about why we consume, and why we often pursue identity renewal through
‘make overs’ as a goal to feelings of prosperity and well-being.
Joanne has recently completed a practice-led PhD through AUT,
investigating the politics of the everyday and craft as activism in textile
design through felt, locally sourced materials and re-use. The doctoral
research examines ‘prosperity’ through the lens of making as a source
of joy and the meaningful experiences, which can be found through
processes based on resourcefulness.
Joanne lives in Ngongotaha, Rotorua, beside the Ngongotaha stream with
a range of water birds and two dogs. She is also Senior Lecturer in Art and
Design in the Creative Department at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology,
Mokoia Campus, Rotorua, Aotearoa.
Jo Donovan
TOI OHOMAI INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY
joanne.donovan@toiohomai.ac.nz
Writing in the foreword of ‘THE CULTURE OF CRAFT’, (Dormer,
1997), historian Paul Greenhalgh draws attention to the ‘pluralities
of meaning’ and ‘partially formed definitions’ leading to an ‘epitome
of confusion’ when talking about craft (ibid., p.ix).
Greenhalgh points out that the connection between the word ‘craft’
and making by hand, came about relatively recently. As far back
as the eighteenth century, he says, ‘crafty’ meant ‘political acumen’,
‘skill in evasion’, and ‘shrewdness’. In that context, the word had
nothing to do with objects made by hand but conveyed a sense of
access to a powerful and somewhat secret knowledge.
As the industrial period began, the word ‘craft’ came to occupy a
binary position representing things ‘handmade’ and ‘humanised’,
tacitly contrasted with things ‘machine-produced’, and was
‘dehumanised’. This meaning came into use as individual makers
began to be superseded by new modes of production (Greenlagh,
1997).
Greenhalgh organises what he sees as craft’s discursive threads
of meaning into three intersecting categories: decorative art, the
vernacular, and the politics of work. The vernacular refers to ‘the
authentic, natural, voice of a community, communicated through
everyday things’, (Greenhalgh, 1997, p.25), which is the aspect of
craft I would like to discuss in this essay.
Craft as an emancipatory power, termed ‘craftivism’, according to
Bratich and Brush (2011), is a process where individual acts of craft
may subvert larger social power structures through reframing and
re-appropriating traditional forms (2011). The ‘bitch and stitch’
knitting movement is one such example (Stoller, 2004). Ostensibly
it is a platform where people, many of them younger women, may
unite in a community to talk and to knit. Minahan and Cox (2007)
discuss the political and counter-culture aspects of the movement.
They identify five aspects to what they see as a ‘new form of
organising’ including discussion, progression, and resistance.
Observing the movement’s subtle revolutionary nature, one of
the knitters is likened to a contemporary subculture version of
‘Madame Defarge’ (ibid.).
‘Craftivism’, according to knitter and activist Betsy Greer
who invented the term in 2002, seems to contest consumer
material values and to empower people who feel increasingly
disenfranchised by the status quo (Greer, 2007; see also Simmons,
2014). A symbol of the movement is provided by the image of
a woman wearing a knitted, pussy-eared pink hat, (alluding to
Russian punk band and art group, Pussy Riot), which first appeared
in the New Yorker just after Donald Trump’s inauguration. She
carried a homemade sign that read ‘you know things are messed
up when librarians start marching’ (Rochlin, 2017). More than
470 000 other people joined her in January 2017 for the Women’s
March on Washington to demonstrate: ‘in the spirit of saying no
to hate and yes to justice, equity, and social change’ (Wallace &
Parlapiano, 2019).
The knitted pink pussy hats, dotted through the crowds at this and
similar protests across the U.S.A, provided a ‘grassroots’ metaphor
for women’s empowerment and support (Gökarıksel, & Smith,
2017). Fibre and knitting have become an emancipatory gesture
of quiet urban resistance emerging from the ‘craftivist’ movement
(Janigo, et al., 2017).
The power of the individual maker as activist specifically connects
American traditions of self-reliance to current imperatives for a
politics of counter-consumption. Kirsten Williams (2011) examines
ways in which craftivist approaches are reviving traditional
customs ranging from permaculture to blacksmithing, textile
crafts, and film/photography. Williams posits that practitioners of
‘craftivism’ contribute socio-political value in terms of ethics, thrift,
mindfulness, and support a culture of sustainable use.
14
Te Ira Tangata
Through reintroducing and legitimising cultural memories and
practices, ‘craftivism’ has the power to support a new world order
that may contribute both local and global sustainable perspectives.
Similarly, Aotearoa New Zealand is steeped in traditions of ‘making
do’ and a resourceful creative enterprise. Journalist Rosemary
McCleod (2005) presents a collection of work from homemakers
in Aotearoa New Zealand, between 1930-1950 in her book Thrift to
fantasy. She describes the work as a ‘picturesque vernacular’ that
represents the hopes, dreams, and creativity of women working in
the home at the time:
[The skills are] …arts not taught in schools, they are passed
on from one woman to another and from one generation
to the next, through demonstration and example. They are
the means of expression of ordinary people. …they are not
designed to impress art dealers and patrons, but to please the
makers in the privacy of their own lives (McLeod, 2005, p. 40).
McLeod emphasises the quality of individual and community
creativity that happens when people turn to what they have to
embellish their environment and imagine worlds beyond their
physical limits (McLeod, 2005).
According to designer and theorist, Ezio Manzini, the things
we make as part of everyday life are always the product of a
community. Crafted things are at once central to ourselves
biologically and in terms of place, while becoming a creative nexus
point of materials, influences and relationships. Craftwork is made
within our physicality and simultaneously reaches beyond the local
proximity through our imaginations. The things we make are both
near and inter-connected to the greater environment, at the same
time (Manzini & Coad, 2019, p. 78). Taken from this perspective,
all things that are designed and crafted as part of daily connected
existence, evolve in a kind of co-design; representative of a network
of materials, community and place. This concept of craft seems to
align with mātauranga Māori, which holds to a holistic world view
of the material realm where we, along with nature and its resources,
are essentially interconnected (Harmsworth et al., 2016; Hēnare,
2015; Pohatu, 2011). This is a view expressed by wahine raranga
and academic Gloria Taituha (2014) who acknowledges the innate
power held within Māori woven artefacts. Traditionally, raranga was
often used to impart important symbolism. It was not only used to
create useful or charming objects, but also functioned as a ‘critical
activity’ holding the potential to activate important decisions and
to impart status, adornment, and nobility within iwi, through the
things that were made.
In my own experience as a maker, the individual and collective
creativity that is born out scarcity, is a generative force. Where
I grew up, in the rural South Island of New Zealand, self-reliance
was an important community value during the 1970s when
import restrictions severely limited the goods that were available.
Resourcefulness and an attitude of ‘making do’ was a social attitude
at the time, coined in the common vernacular as ‘a number eight
wire’ mentality. The idiom references the ubiquitous use of a thick
gauge of wire that people often used to solve all kinds of fixes
on farms or in factories and homes (Derby, 2015). The phrase
supplied a metaphor, which described commonly expressed pride
in problem-solving using action, found materials, and hands-on skill
Figure 1: Montage of images showing the dye/felt process
(Donovan, 2020).
Figure 2. Boro felt story. Mixed media felt, dyed, embroidered and
applique (Donovan, 2019).
I return to and draw upon this generative dynamic when making
my own work, through limiting myself to materials that are freely
available: local fibre, ‘op shop’ finds, discarded handwork pieces,
and worn-out clothing. Each piece is imbued with past connections,
such as signs of daily work, visible in worn patches. Meticulous
stitches are another sign, speaking of a hand and a needle darting
back and forth. The fibre and cloth I collect for the textiles, are
treated as if they are living, with a past, a history, and a geography,
which are threads that are woven together into a textile. Felt and
stitch are the connective methods I use to make small textile
narratives of human touch. As craft, the textiles are an embodied
expression of interaction in a social continuity.
15
Te Ira Tangata
These examples seem to suggest that craft does possess
an innate potency. Hidden within the quiet and humble, the
embodied and the authentic, exists an emerging superpower, a
force that may connect us back to ourselves. Through craft, we
experience materiality via work, touch and the action of our body.
We experience living inter-connectively and closely to the things
we need to use. It is a dynamic that has the potential to realign
us. This is a realignment that can forge a subtle refusal of the
empty stu of malls and superstores, perhaps returning us to a
collective joining within a community and place, through materials,
work and inventiveness (Hopkins, 2013). Within the quiet, the
humble, through ‘getting on with it’ and through making, can
we lead ourselves out of mass resource use and into a counter-
consumption revolution? Only time will tell.
References
Bratich, J. Z., & Brush, H. M. (2011). Fabricating activism: Craft-work, popular
culture, gender. Utopian studies, 22(2), 233-260.
Derby, M. (2015). The ‘no. 8 wire’ tradition. In Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New
Zealand. Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga. Available:
https://teara.govt.nz/en/inventions-patents-and-trademarks/page-1
Dormer, P. (Ed.). (1997). The culture of craft. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
Greenhalgh, P. (1997). The history of craft. In P. Dormer (Ed.), The culture of
craft (1st ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Greer, B. (2007). Craftivism. Encyclopaedia of Activism and Social Justice, 1.
Gökarıksel, B., & Smith, S. (2017). Intersectional feminism beyond US flag hijab
and pussy hats in Trump’s America. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(5), 628-644.
Harmsworth, G. R., & Awatere, S. (2013). Indigenous Māori knowledge and
perspectives of ecosystems. Ecosystem services in New Zealand—conditions
and trends, 274-286. Lincoln: Manaaki Whenua Press.
Henare, M. (2001). Tapu, mana, mauri, hau, wairua: A Māori philosophy of
vitalism and cosmos. In J.A. Grim (Ed.), Indigenous traditions and ecology:
The interbeing of cosmology and community, 197-221. Harvard: Harvard
University Press, The Centre for the Study of World Religions.
Hopkins, R. (2013). The power of just doing stu: How local action can change
the world. Croydon: Transition Books.
Janigo, K., Lastovich, T., DeLong, M., & Sanders, E. (2017). Grabbing back: The
form and meaning of the Pussy Hat. International Textile and Apparel
Association (ITAA) Annual Conference Proceedings. 8.
Available: https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/entities/publication/0fce7871-5c51-4e91-
9bb9-9db4cb4aaefc
Manzini, E. (2019). Politics of the everyday; designing in dark times (Translation
by R.A. Coad). London: Bloomsbury visual arts.
McLeod, R. (2005). Thrift to fantasy: Home textile crafts of the 1930s-1950s.
Auckland: Harper Collins.
Minahan, S., & Cox, J. W. (2007). Stitch’n Bitch: Cyberfeminism, a third place and
the new materiality. Journal of Material Culture, 12(1), 5-21.
Pohatu, T. W., & Pohatu, H. (2011). Mauri: Rethinking human wellbeing. Mai
Review, 3, 1-12.
Rochlin, R. (2017). You know things are messed up when librarians start
marching [Image]. Retrieved 28 October 2019 from
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-much-needed-
humor-of-the-womens-march
Simmons, H. (2014, June 14). Betsy Greer’s craftivism trades picket signs
for knitting needles. Washington City Paper [on-line]. Retrieved 4
November 2019, from https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/books/
blog/13080805/betsy-greers-craftivism-trades-picket-signs-for-knitting-
needles
Stoller, D. (2004). Stitch’n bitch nation. New York: Workman Publishing.
Taituha, G. (2014). He kākahu, he korowai, he kaitaka, he aha atu anō? The
significance of the transmission of Māori knowledge relating to raranga and
whatu muka in the survival of korowai in Ngāti Maniapoto in a contemporary
context (Doctoral dissertation, Auckland University of Technology).
Retrieved from https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/handle/10292/8233
Walker, R., Last, N., Osnos, P., Borowitz, A., Thomas, L., & Tolentino, J. et al.
(2019). The D.I.Y. Revolutionaries of the Pussyhat Project. Retrieved 4
November 2019, from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-
d-i-y-revolutionaries-of-the-pussyhat-project
Wallace, T., & Parlapiano, A. (2019). Crowd scientists say women’s march in
Washington had 3 times as many people as Trump’s inauguration. New York
Times website. Retrieved 16 November 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2017/01/22/us/politics/womens-march-trump-crowd-estimates.
html
Williams, K. A. (2011). “Old time mem’ry”: Contemporary urban craftivism and
the politics of doing-it-yourself in post-industrial America. Utopian Studies,
22(2), 303-320.
16
Te Ira Tangata
This whakataukī is often interpreted as meaning ‘By
wāhine and land, tāne are defeated’. Dr Rangimārie
Rose Pere notes that it also refers to the essential
nourishing roles that wāhine and land fulfil, without
which humanity would be lost. Wāhine are the
essential element (Mahuta, 2018)4. As we push
forward for equity in Aotearoa New Zealand, we can
draw strength and nourishment from wāhine who
have gone before. In each issue we will profile one or
more treasured wāhine who have carved a path for us
to follow. Our successes are founded on their mahi.
As part of looking towards the future for women,
equity and activism in Aotearoa, Kylie Cox and Sarah
Proctor-Thomson share some excerpts from their
conversation with Sharn Riggs, a feminist, union
activist and leader.
HE WĀHINE, HE
WHENUA, E MATE AI
TE TANGATA
4 Mahuta, N. (2018). A legacy of Mana Wahine – Women’s Leadership. Opening address to the Māori Women’s Welfare League 66th National Conference. Available from:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/legacy-mana-wahine-%E2%80%93-womens-leadership
17
Te Ira Tangata
Kylie and Sarah worked together in the TEU supporting women members
under the leadership of Sharn Riggs. They are lucky to continue their mahi
for fair pay and work conditions in Aotearoa New Zealand in unions that
have strong women leaders at the helm.
Sharn Riggs
PAST NATIONAL SECRETARY
TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION
SHARN RIGGS ON OCCUPYING SPACE,
BUILDING COALITIONS, AND BEING
STRATEGIC.
Historically the union movement in Aotearoa has had very few
women leaders. Sharn Riggs, now retired, was one them for more
than 20 years, leading the Association of Sta in Tertiary Education
(ASTE, 1997-2009) and the Tertiary Education Union (TEU, 2009-
2020). In a conversation reflecting back on her life and career,
Sharn shared some glimpses of what it was like to be a feminist and
unionist in the early days and what we can learn for the progress of
equity and activism in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Occupying space
In 1976 I went on my OE to London and ended up applying
to be a bus driver. I was told I would never be a bus driver
because I wore glasses, but they gave me a job as a bus
conductor. When I arrived on my first day, a guy came up to
me, said welcome and gave me a union card. I said “I will just
have a read of that and get back to you”. He looked at me,
smiled and said “No, you sign up or you don’t work”. It was a
closed shop. The workers had all voted that you had to be a
union member. A few weeks later, I attended my first union
meeting. I was late and when I opened the door and walked
in, there was complete silence. Once I got accustomed to the
smoke in the room, I realised I was the only woman there.
There weren’t any women drivers (did all the previous female
applicants have glasses?) and only a third of the conductors
were women. Of these I was the only one who turned up to
the meeting. It wasn’t a place where women were welcomed
or encouraged. Well, I decided to ask a question and put my
hand up. It was obvious that they had seen my hand go up,
but they didn’t acknowledge me during the entire meeting.
Building coalitions
In the late 1970s there was a job going with the New Zealand
Clerical Workers Union as an educational organiser. In those
days, the Clerical Workers Union was one of the three biggest
unions in the country and was at the forefront of doing some
interesting political campaigns.
It was a female-dominated union, and almost all of the
organisers were women, but it was led by a man. I got the
position and worked on some great campaigns. We ran a
huge campaign around sexual harassment at work that
extended across unions. The women in the union movement
had to push this through by subterfuge. Back in those
days, private sector unions were part of the Federation of
Labour and it was almost entirely male. The governing body
were all male. When we were fighting for things like sexual
harrassment clauses, male trade unionists were saying
things like ‘girly calendars are the last bastion of joy for
an old man, what’s your problem?’. It was hard. Women, as
organisers, activists, and researchers formed a group called
the Women’s’ Subcommittee. It wasn’t even a committee, just
a sub-committee and we had to fight to get that! One of our
missions was to get women like Sonia Davis and Theresa
O’Connell onto the Federation of Labour executive. It wasn’t
about hating men; it was just about knowing that inequality
was wrong.
Being strategic
After a long and challenging debate, the New Zealand
Association of Polytechnic Teachers (NZAPT) created a
women’s oicer position. I applied for the job and got it. One
of the first things I did in that role was work on the starting
salary policy. There was a common pay scale across the
polytechnics; men would be appointed at step eight and
women would be appointed at step one. Women didn’t ask
for more partly because they were too scared, but mostly
because they didn’t know what men were being paid. We
shed light on this issue and encouraged our members to be
open about what they got paid. We told them “You should
always tell your colleagues what you earn. Why is it a secret?
Career glimpses
curated by Kylie
Cox and Sarah
Proctor-Thomson
Kylie Cox
Organiser, Public Services
Association
kylieycox@gmail.com
Sarah Proctor-Thomson
National Women’s Oicer,
Tertiary Education Union
sarah.proctor-thomson@teu.ac.nz
18
Te Ira Tangata
The only people that benefits is the employers”. But we also
needed to be strategic. Rather than simply encouraging
women members to talk about their salaries, we also needed
to ensure that the structures, policy and systems that
governed the allocation of pay were fair and equitable.
The future of women, equity and activism in Aotearoa
New Zealand
Workers today have a number of protections that were fought for
and won by women union activists like Sharn. Sexual harassment
protections, paid parental leave, and family violence leave are all
enshrined in legislation and available to most workers in Aotearoa
New Zealand making employment a more hospitable place for all.
Even so, there remains deep inequalities which are traced along
intersecting lines of gender, race, age, class, disabilities, sexuality
and gender identity.
The tactics employed by feminist unionists like Sharn in previous
decades can continue to be usefully deployed today. Women
need to continue occupying spaces that have traditionally been
male dominated. Across the union movement things are starting
to change with a number of women leading some of our largest
unions including Etū, PSA, NZNO, NZEI and of course the TEU.
But there is more to do to make the value of women’s union mahi
recognised and valued.
Sharn’s comments also highlight the ways in which building
coalition within and between unions has underpinned successful
campaigns for workers that contribute to the progress of equity.
Campaigns like “26 for babies” extending paid parental leave and
protected domestic violence leave have been fought for by unions
working together. Today mahi on pay equity claims is an important
area where coalition is providing a key tool in union activism.
It’s important to organise, but it’s also really important to have solid
legislation. As Sharn noted:
Think about it, all the talk about nurses and cleaners being so
treasured and valued during the pandemic, it’s bullshit. The
economic structures in place show you how valued they are.
The pay equity legislation is a key tool for shifting the way
that work dominated by women is valued. The recent pay
equity claims and settlements have shown us how the right
legislation can support our aims.
While progressive legislation can be attacked or undone by
incoming governments, it remains a third critical area of feminism
and unionism activism. If we don’t have fundamental rights to
things like sick leave, holiday pay, and health and safety, then we’re
in trouble. At the end of the day, workers need to act collectively
to keep their rights and their entitlements, the things that make
it okay to be a worker. Fair and equitable pay, safe and healthy
work environments, and creating workplaces that reflect workers’
varied lives are priorities today as much any other time. To make
equity gains in these areas union members will need to operate
strategically at the level of the organisation and legislation. In her
final comments of the conversation Sharn reiterated her strong
belief that the answer to growing inequality is to strengthen
unionism. But she reminded us that within union mahi it is not
always going to be an easy road.
TE RTIA RY EDUCATION UNION
TE HAUTŪ KAHURANGI
