This above picture is what our children will soon learn in primary school. This picture is shown on the back of buses in America.
This small essay focuses on the need for local Government to follow through on gender equality when providing guidance and well being in community services for the public.
To identify more clearly the opportunities and threats involved in such a stand it is useful to follow a PEST analysis of local government and its well-being services to the public. Pest is simply a framework for analysing the political, economic, sociological and technical environment within which local government operates.
To date, there has been popular debate on how best to produce true equality and equity between the sexes while New Zealand has passed laws deliberately enforcing accountability on gender discrimination. It is time for New Zealand to recognise this in the public community sector as all laws in New Zealand are carefully drafted to be gender neutral.
The main question that needs to be answered is whether males are deserving of the same rights and care as women in our societies when dealing with domestic violence. Finding answers to this question entails providing laws and policies, researching information on the way we deal with this in the present day and why, presenting documented reviews from interested parties and looking to the future.
We must remember that men are an important part of society. According to the database of people in urban and rural areas for 2006 consensus New Zealand had 1,965,618 males and 2,062,329 females. Yet socially we offer very little in services to the male population in comparison to the female population.
Another question needing to be answered is whether we have equality. It certainly seems New Zealand has done well according to a report (2008) produced by the World Economic Forum which stated New Zealand is ranked fifth out of 130 countries for gender equality. Dr Judy McGregor (Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner) said New Zealand had closed the entire gap in educational attainment, had closed over 97 per cent of the gap in health and survival, more than 77 per cent of the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity plus the gap between men and women in political empowerment to closing over 39 per cent.
POLITICAL ANALYSIS
The purpose of the Local Government Act 2002 is to promote the well-being of communities, in the present and for the future. Local Governments have a commitment to listen to and consult with communities, define and enforce appropriate rights within communities, develop and advance community viewpoints and provide for effective participation. The stated purpose of the Act is: “… democratic and effective local government that recognises the diversity of New Zealand communities…”.
Other laws affecting the well-being of communities and enforcing diversity particularly around gender issues come from Human Rights and other neutral Government laws. The Human Rights Commission of New Zealand clearly stands against discrimination based on gender. Correspondence with Rosslyn Noonan (April 2008) enlightened the fact that men have not used the processes available to make formal complaints in a large enough number to affect Government policies. But none the less the Human Rights Commission had put forward a number of rights for men based on work within Women’s organisations.
One of the reasons this has come to be is because gender analysis is the brainchild of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs which was established in 1984 to promote equality for all women, according to Dr. Muriel Newman of NZ Political research. She writes that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs has now changed to a focus on “equity” instead of equality. As explained, “Gender equality is based on the premise that women and men should be treated in the same way while they believe equal treatment will not produce equitable results, because women and men have different life experiences.”
In this respect programmes and refuge for domestic violence follows a model where men are considered the perpetrators of domestic violence in society and where women and children are considered the victims.
But is this a fair and reasonable excuse for men to be shut out of their own democratic say on their well being and protection?
The Domestic Violence Act is gender-neutral legislation. It covers all genders in domestic relationships, including family relationships which means that the legislation is being mislead. As it stands, we don’t have laws to hold any other gender seriously accountable except for ‘Man assaults Woman’. There is no ‘Woman assaults Woman’, ‘Man assaults Man’ or ‘Woman assaults Man”. In this way we discriminate through legislation any other gender that is not heterosexual female.
ECONOMICAL ANALYSIS
While there is a great need for more resources and funding within local governments to tackle the problem of domestic violence in a fair and reasonable way New Zealand also has to recognise the economy is presently in recession. The money just isn’t there to pay for the well being of communities as it was previously and is desired in the future.
Added to this is an analysis for long-term council community plans (2009 – 2019) showing that local authorities are planning significant rates increases over the next 10 years to fund their extra spending which they have already allocated.
The Department of Internal Affairs report shows councils are planning a 41% increase in total operating expenditure over the next 10 years, despite attempts to cut costs. If this expenditure is confirmed, it will mean an overall increase in income from rates of 48% by 2019.
The Family Violence Unit of the Department of Social Welfare commissioned Coopers and Lybrand in 1994 to estimate the economic cost of family violence. The results indicate an annual cost of family violence in New Zealand of at least $1.2 billion.
The budget for women alone and domestic violence shelters has entered into the millions and continues to grow in financial need from direct government funding, funding through health, child, youth and family, local governments and community based donations. Yet, it won’t be long until men build enough as a group with a strong voice asking for the same treatment women receive.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Police statistics presented by NZ Family Clearing House show 56 women, 26 men and 39 children under the age of 17 were killed by family domestics 2000 – 2004. And yet this doesn’t cover other injuries or abuse that continues to increase year after year.
At present women are encouraged to speak out through the campaign “It’s not OK” regarding abuse as victims while men are encouraged to speak out as abusers. According to Women’s refuge hotline, Waitakere women’s refuge, Manakau’s women’s refuge and police we have a policy to put women and children in safe houses and send men to anger management courses and/or prison.
In respect for democracy and public well-being local governments need to take note of statistics coming through from overseas since NZ often follows sometime in the future. Figures, from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics 2007, show 2336 women faced court on charges of domestic violence, mainly for bashing their husbands, compared with just 818 in 1999.
The Christchurch Health and Development Study showed rates of assault on males by females were similar to rates of assault on females by males. Mothers were just as likely to assault fathers as fathers were to assault mothers on the basis of the reports made by their children.
But Family Commissioner Principal Policy analyst Radha Balakrishnan argues against taking into account women’s violence, “We are talking about the most serious and lethal cases where perpetrators are predominantly men and the sufferers are predominantly women and children.”
Yet the approach of men = perpetrator and women and child = victim does not seem to be working for cases that are not serious or lethal.
Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier told the participants (16 February 2009) at a hui for anti-violence providers in Auckland that too many offenders were dropping out of anti-violence programmes, possibly partly because of the current “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Boshier asked: “If there is a one-off act of violence, which is limited to and caused by a certain context, should we really be requiring offenders to attend a programme that assumes the violence is a continuous or systematic feature of the respondent’s relationships?”
Even though the head judge dealing with domestic violence sees the problems with treating men and women under the framework of men = perpetrator and women = victim, it is unlikely he can stand up to “pressures from vested interests and those who frame issues and manipulate the policy agendas.”
Stuart Birks, the Director of the Centre for Public Policy Evaluation states in a written article titled Rethinking Stopping Violence Programmes:
“…one of the most puzzling aspects to me is that we allow interference in our lives to an extreme degree, up to and including the routine destruction of relationships between parents and their children. This is permitted despite the open admission that the theories are questionable, the data are problematic, and the effectiveness of the interventions is unknown. The people proposing and implementing these policies are subject to limited accountability and may not have the training, skills, experience, awareness and impartiality to justify our confidence in them.”
What many however, have not considered, is the mighty movement of men through technology. The Internet alone has thousands of men’s voices who are passing on the message to millions more. Even mainstream media is being attacked article after article on a global scale. The day of men taking it are well over despite the lack of funding available to men’s groups.
TECHNOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Luddite Journo is a radical feminist who has her own blog and sometimes blogs for International feminist sites. In one article she writes about another feminist who stated online, “The reality is that we all know people who rape, just as we all know people who have been raped…….” Instead of men online agreeing that women were victims to men once again, the comments back attacked the writer’s belief that all men are potential rapists.
New Zealand isn’t the only country where this is happening. The USA has formed an online army to lobby which is in the tens of thousands and includes mothers and second wives. One lobby group targeted a domestic violence campaign that used posters of children on buses. The site owner Glenn Sacks wrote, “One ad depicts a happy little girl with the message “One day my husband will kill me.” Another shows a smiling boy with the message “When I grow up, I will beat my wife.” The kids are talking about their fathers, and their pathology is due to their fathers’ violence. The ads are, to put it bluntly, hate speech against fathers.” His lobby group for this was made up of several mainstream groups including mental health.
Yet this is just one small part of the network among men that has reached global proportion.
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that gender disparities in representation exist in local government today but in the near future men are going to demand their political rights. After all, that is what the suffrage movement was for. There was only 3 years between men’s right to vote and women’s right to vote in New Zealand.
With the need for costs to be monitored and the need for the same services for men as women local governments are going to have to share resources between the genders one way or the other.
Local government can lower women’s services to provide for men’s services which is going decrease the number of available services and create loss of jobs for women in particular or it can build on what is already available and offer the services to both men and women and other genders. In this way building costs and other overheads will not be doubled saving financial resources while extra jobs will be available in the expansion offering more placements for diversity in decision-making.
Councils are obliged to follow other enacted laws alongside the Local Government Act when providing for the well-being of the public. It may be that a new law is needed for local governments to be guided towards gender equality or that gender equality can be added into the purpose of the Local Government Act.
Bibliography
AAP. “Husband-beating on the rise.” Yahoo! 7 News. 22 June 2009. http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5669489/husband-beating-on-the-rise/
Birks, Stuart. “Rethinking Stopping Violence Programmes.” Centre for Political Research New Zealand. 28 Feb 2009. http://www.nzcpr.com/guest135.htm
Collins, Simon. “Judge says violence strategies miss targets.” NZ Herald. 17 Feb 2009. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/new-zealand/news/article.cfm?l_id=71&objectid=10557123
Collins, Simon. “Domestic violence campaigners accused of bias.” NZ Herald. 13 November 2006. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10410452&pnum=0
Fergusson, DM. “The Christchurch Health and Development Study: An overview and some key findings.” Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 1998; 10: 154-176. http://www.chmeds.ac.nz/research/chds/publications/1998/findings.pdf
Haas, Anthony. “Democracy and well-being.” http://guide.localgovt.co.nz/tbp/democracy.html
Hide. Rodney. Beehive.govt.nz. “Local government faces serious spending issues.” 8 June 2009. http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/local+government+faces+serious+spending+issues
LudditeJourno. “What kind of feminist is ok?” LudditeJourno Ramblings in Aotearoa/New Zealand. 4 Feb 2009. http://ludditejourno.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/what-kind-of-feminist-is-ok/
Newman, Muriel. “Tackling the Tough Issues.” Centre for New Zealand Political Research. 1 March 2009. http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly169.htm.
NZPA. “NZ fifth in world for gender equality.” 15 November 2008. http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/719233
“Reference Documents.” New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse. July 2007. http://www.nzfvc.org.nz/PublicationDetails.aspx?publication=13530
Sacks, Glenn. “New Campaign–Protest Father-Bashing Domestic Violence Ads!”GlennSacks.com. 27 October 2008. http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2881
Related links
No help for solo dads, study finds
Male abuse is being ignored
