What pay equity means when you’ve lived without it
Sunday, 22 February 2026
Ria Bond (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) is a former New Zealand First MP and current Invercargill City Councillor known for her advocacy on women’s rights and pay equity.
OPINION: My working life began long before politics, before Parliament, before select committees, in a boardroom or anywhere remotely glamorous. It began in the late 1980s, at high school, learning entry level hairdressing.
By the time I left school, studied at Southland Institute of Technology, got engaged and fell pregnant, the verdict from home was swift and unforgiving.
I was told bluntly by my father: “That’s it. You’ve stuffed your life up. There’s no career for you now.”
He was wrong, but proving that came at a cost that still shapes how I view pay equity today.
Read more:
The direct line between pay equity and the crisis among our children
Social worker vs air traffic controller: meet the pay equity matrix
Poverty is a policy outcome.
In the mid 1990s, apprenticeships were collapsing as the system shifted over to the Industry Training Act. Salons weren’t taking trainees. Work and Income sent me on a CV course where I learned how to translate survival into employable skills: budgeting as financial management, parenting as organisation and teamwork.
After dozens of rejections, I finally secured a hairdressing apprenticeship only because of a government wage subsidy scheme. Even then, childcare costs swallowed more than I earned which meant more debt before I ever saw stability.
My first year as a mum was brutal, a masterclass in survival. At times we lived in poverty. Food banks kept meals on the table and the power on. I walked or rode my ten speed bike to part-time work while pregnant.
There were no treats, no safety net, no family bailout. At one point I couldn’t produce enough breast milk because I wasn’t getting enough nutrition myself.
That is what low pay in a female-dominated industry looks like when it collides with real life.
I eventually became a small business owner but the reality was unavoidable. I had entered an industry that is essential, skilled, and overwhelmingly female, yet treated as if it requires neither expertise nor respect and persistently undervalued.
Hairdressing is skilled work. The pay doesn’t reflect It.
Hairdressing in New Zealand requires training, emotional labour, physical endurance and constant upskilling. Yet many qualified workers earn near the minimum wage, especially early on.
Apprenticeship pay often fails to cover basic living costs. Rent-a-chair and self-employment models offer flexibility, but strip away security, sick leave, and retirement certainty.
It remains a textbook example of how women’s work is systematically undervalued, treated as less worthy of dignity and stability, not by accident but by design.
A new generation, same old story.
Those experiences came rushing back as I listened to young people presenting their submissions to the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity.
What I heard from their own stories, experiences was not abstract ideology, it was lived reality, echoed across generations and painfully familiar.
Young workers told us the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 was rushed through under urgency without consultation, cancelling 33 active pay equity claims affecting more than 150,000 workers.
These weren’t fringe jobs. They were nurses, teachers, librarians, care and support workers, the backbone of our communities.
One submitter said pay equity had finally allowed colleagues to “keep up with the mortgage and start saving.” Another said, “The repeal took women’s rights back decades.”
A young librarian told us the impact the cancellation of claims had on her.
“When I woke up and saw the news on the morning it was announced, I felt sick, and upset in a way I have not felt in a long time. I did not realise till that point how much I had been relying on the promise of a pay equity claim to keep going with the work I do,”she said.
“Despite it feeling like a shot in the dark, the claim gave me hope that I might someday be paid better. More recently I have struggled to save enough to buy a new heater when my old one broke, right at the beginning of winter.
“Taking away our pay equity claims means taking away any chance of stability for the hard working women whose jobs are undervalued. It is like kicking the bucket out from under the feet of those who are already trying to stand in a wobbly space, while their counterparts are standing firmly.”
Warnings, not whinging
Youth were clear eyed about the consequences. They spoke of being undervalued, underinformed, and afraid to speak out. They described how gendered stereotypes and economic insecurity were shaping life choices including whether to have children at all. Māori wāhine aspiring to careers in male dominated fields warned the Act signalled their futures were expendable.
The message from youth submitters was clear. Weakened pay equity protections don’t just lower wages today, they erase security for them tomorrow. One submitter told us, “workers are left wondering if the word of the crown can be relied upon at all.”
These were not exaggerations. They’re warnings.
Signals matter
This is why the Coalition Government’s actions matter beyond any single bill. When the Government, the country’s largest employer, weakens pay equity protections it sends a signal across the entire labour market that undervaluing women’s work is acceptable.
When women’s work is undervalued, entire futures shrink. When legislation is rammed through overnight to protect a budget bottom line, it tells workers their voices are optional and their labour expendable.
That doesn’t just erode fairness at work, it erodes faith in democracy.
A promise worth fighting for.
I know where I came from. I know what low pay looks like when it collides with motherhood, housing costs, and survival. The young people who spoke to us know it too and they are right to be angry.
Pay equity is not a historical footnote to be admired from a distance. It is a living promise. Breaking it isn’t just a policy choice. It’s a betrayal not just of workers today, but of the futures young people are trying to build and is the difference between survival and collapse.