Women’s Conference 2021

By Annie McCauley, Lyt­telton Loc­al 43 Women’s Rep

After months of plan­ning along­side our Nation­al MUNZ Women’s Rep Fiona Mansell, a strong group of 24 MUNZ Women from around New Zea­l­and atten­ded the Coun­cil of Trade Uni­ons Bian­nu­al Women’s Con­fer­ence in Wel­ling­ton on 19 and 20 July 2021.

This year’s theme was Maranga mai wahine ma – mean­ing rising above, and boy does that state­ment ring true for our Uni­on.

Through pure determ­in­a­tion from our Nation­al Women’s Rep we had the largest ever MUNZ del­eg­a­tion to attend the Womens Con­fer­ence. For the second time in a row the Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and was again the talk­ing point of the con­fer­ence for all the right reas­ons.

In all hon­esty it was a very hum­bling exper­i­ence to be a part of, a super proud moment to be able to change our Union’s past his­tory of par­ti­cip­a­tion at this event.

From someone who has been priv­ileged to attend four of these events there was no deny­ing the two days of Con­fer­ence were full on and there was a lot to take in.

There was a slightly dif­fer­ent take on events this time round. Due to COVID there were no inter­na­tion­al guest speak­ers. How­ever the organ­izers need to be com­men­ded for the pro­gramme.

Day one kicked off with Hon Jan Tin­etti who is cur­rently our Min­is­ter for Women, Min­is­ter of Intern­al Affairs and Asso­ci­ate Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion. I have to be hon­est she didn’t do much for me, due to the lack of sub­stance of answers to some pretty hard ques­tions by our fel­low uni­on­ists.

Up next was well-known writer and journ­al­ist Rebecca Macfie who was truly cap­tiv­at­ing. Rebecca spoke about her recently pub­lished bio­graphy of the late Helen Kelly and time spent with her hear­ing about all the cam­paigns she was involved with.

Rebecca also spoke about her oth­er book Tragedy at Pike River, and of Helen’s con­vic­tion and pas­sion for the fam­il­ies involved. Rebecca believed that if Helen was still with us, Helen would see our cur­rent hous­ing crisis as a “work­ers crisis” and be cam­paign­ing for change.

After lunch we had anoth­er cap­tiv­at­ing speak­er Jen­nifer Ward-Lea­l­and who is the pres­id­ent of Equity New Zea­l­and (the Uni­on for Act­ors.)

Jen­nifer has an incred­ible list of accol­ades and was hon­oured as the Kiwibank New Zeal­ander of the year in 2020. An amaz­ing woman that has over a 40 year plus back­ground in tele­vi­sion, radio, both theatre and film indus­tries. Jen­nifer spoke of the roles of an Intim­acy Co-ordin­at­or (which isn’t quite what you may think it might be).

From the moment Jen­nfi­er stepped up to speak she had us all in sus­pense of what was com­ing next. I was in awe of her pas­sion, ded­ic­a­tion of com­mit­ment for chan­ging mind sets in her selec­ted field for the bet­ter.  

She noted one in three people exper­i­ence sexu­al har­ass­ment in their lives – not just women.

My first Work­shop after lunch was Fem­in­ism 101: A short His­tory of fem­in­ism in Aotearoa.

This was a very hands-on work­shop work­ing in groups of six to eight. It was inter­est­ing learn­ing of the dif­fer­ent inter­pret­a­tions of the fem­in­ist move­ment over time.

Work­shop two was on How to rep­res­ent Mem­bers and win. This was an in depth work­shop with lots to take in. We were giv­en a detailed handout to refer back to after the Con­fer­ence.

Day two kicked off with the remit pro­cess.

To give you a bet­ter idea this is the pro­cess is where policies such as the paid 10 Days Domest­ic Viol­ence leave and increase to 10 Sick Days per year have all been advoc­ated for.

Hot top­ics on the remit agenda included advoc­at­ing for the remov­al of GST on all fresh fruit, veget­ables, meat, fish, and dairy products. I have to say this was anoth­er very inter­est­ing pro­cess to be part of too.

I am sure a few of the first timers were also inter­ested by it, now know­ing that this is where our Uni­ons advoc­ate for change to the gov­ern­ment.

I am sure it gave them food for thought, to be able to hear the oth­er 14 Uni­ons present have their dis­cus­sions on the dif­fer­ent top­ics put for­ward.

Dr Eliza­beth Kerekere fin­ished off the morn­ing ses­sion, which then went onto our after­noon ses­sions and get­ting to mingle with oth­er like­minded trade uni­on­ists.

To end the day came with the Group photo – once again MUNZ was noticed for our awe­some Appar­el, Branded and proud the cap­tion read.

Last but not least once again I want to thank the Women of my MUNZ Branch Loc­al 43 for all your sup­port dur­ing the con­fer­ence. It was a pleas­ure to attend along­side you all.

Many thanks to Fiona for let­ting me assist with the Appar­el and be a part of this amaz­ing MUNZ His­tory.

In Unity.