Trailblazing feminist economist Dame Marilyn Waring is allegedly retired. But she’s never been busier.

Reporter Yvonne Tahana chatted with the Kiwi who has lost none of her fire – particularly in her latest fight against controversial pay equity changes in New Zealand, which were passed into law under urgency in May 2025.

Q: You have a brilliant story about the time former prime minister [1975–1984] Robert Muldoon introduced you to royalty when you were an MP. Can you share it?

When Muldoon introduced me to Anne, the Princess Royal, he said, ‘This is Marilyn Waring and she’s interested in women’s issues.’, which is not a term I use.

And Princess Anne pulled herself up to her height and looked down on Muldoon and said, ‘Prime minister, every issue is a women’s issue.’.

Q: Did you smile in that moment?

Yeah, of course! You never know where your allies are coming from. 

Q: You’ve moved up north to the Bay of Islands, a beautiful place, living the good life, so how is it that you’ve now found yourself leading the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity?

I’d received a call from a friend in Wellington, sort of despairing and saying, ‘Is there anything else you can think of?’. So, about that time I went for a swim, which is good thinking time, and I kept thinking – the real problem is 180,000 to 190,000 women have just had their lives affected in a really major way and none of us could see the evidence. 

There needed to be a significant response to something that was so appalling.

Q: As a recap, the government cancelled more than 30 pay equity claims and has raised thresholds for making a claim. What is the committee hoping to achieve? 

I thought, how can I get the evidence that a select committee would normally get? And I was thinking of the women who have served in parliament and I made two calls: one to Jackie Blue [former National Party MP] and one to Sue Bradford [former Green Party MP]. And they leapt down the phone, like ‘Hell, yeah!’.

There’s a lot of OIA [Official Information Act] requests going on, and certainly there are some questions about whether or not parliament’s own checks and balances came into play. So, we’re exploring that.

Q: Let's talk dollars and cents. The government says it’s going to save NZ$13 billion from its pay equity changes – what do you make of that?

For the past three or four years in the budget, pay equity has appeared as an unquantifiable risk and then, all of a sudden, it’s had all of these numbers beside it. So, there’s another question: where did they come from? Who invented those?

Q: There’s an irony here, isn’t there – you’ve spent quite a lot of your career researching and publishing about the size of women’s unpaid work. But all of you on the committee are doing this work pro bono?

If all of those people [impacted by the pay equity changes] didn’t go to work tomorrow, the place falls to pieces – they are just so undervalued. So, I think it’s really important that those of us who have had some advantages really step up.

Q: What’s your assessment on how far the dial has shifted on unpaid women’s work since you wrote If Women Counted in 1988?

On the one hand, it’s universally accepted that unpaid work is the single largest sector of any nation’s economy.

All these countries think they can draw up an annual budget without the single largest sector in the budget. And I say to people, imagine if the minister of finance rocks up to parliament and says: ‘Oh, no, you won’t find dairy in this year’s budget, we left it out. No forestry either, that’s too complicated’. But they’re very happy leaving out the single largest sector. Why? Because they would have to redistribute resources.

In New Zealand, we don’t have a good recent estimate of the value of all women’s unpaid work but last year there was research done into the size of Māori women’s unpaid work. It found wāhine Māori generated NZ$5.9 billion value-add to all sectors in 2022 [1.9% of national GDP], but with the inclusion of unpaid work, the size of the wāhine Māori economy doubled to NZ$12.5 billion – about 3.2% of GDP.

Q: Do we have any consistent figures for all New Zealand women?

We don’t. And there’s still a problem even with that figure [presented in the research]. That’s the base rate without double time, triple time, holiday, superannuation contributions, sick leave. [Likewise, the figures don’t reflect workload in areas such as transportation, primary health care, relationship mediation and other skills that would attract remuneration in the paid sector.]

In Australia, a 2017 PwC report found that when unpaid childcare was given a market value, it was by far the country’s largest industry, bigger than financial and insurance services, construction and manufacturing combined.

Q: Turning to GDP – it's an important economic indicator but you’re vociferous in your opposition to it as a measure of how a country’s doing. Why?

It’s a pathological value system. 

If GDP goes up, it must be good, and if it goes down, it must be bad – and most people don’t understand what the parameters are, they don’t understand what’s included and what’s not included. War, for example, is good for [GDP] growth.

It’s an incredible problem for the whole world. The environment is very much treated the same way as unpaid women’s work. When we’re mining it or logging it or otherwise despoiling it, a cash exchange enters the market and suddenly the environment is valuable.

We should be thinking about our environment in terms of its physical characteristics, not in terms of what it’s worth in the market. What’s it worth in terms of pollination, as a habitat for endangered species, for oxygen production? The point is to make the very best budgetary decisions for your own nation.

Q: Are there any countries you think do a better job of measuring economic wellbeing?

The Finns produce a genuine progress indicator every year [a national GPI calculation for Finland 1945–2016] and that includes unpaid work. You’ll find a number of First Nations people who are adapting a genuine progress indicator. The Inuit people of Nunavut in Canada, for example, use unpaid work counting land-based activities such as harvesting food, producing goods, artwork and handicrafts alongside wage-based employment to give a rounded picture of the economy. The Norwegians [were early adopters of a metric for] unpaid work to cover the household activities of what tended to be the eldest daughter still at home.

The thing I think is most important for public policymaking is time-use surveys. It’s an indicator that’s easily comparable across countries, since everyone has the same 24 hours in a day.

And, if you want to target the populations in your economy that need the most assistance, the key indicator is being time poor. Time poverty can strip you of your ability to change your life.

Q: Despite everything, you come across as surprisingly optimistic about the state of the national accounts.

To give up is to give them a victory, right? You just keep going. Defiance creates an energy of its own.  

Gender pay gap resources

CA ANZ Gender Equity Charter & Playbook

Narrowing Your Gender Pay Gap Playbook, 2024 revised edition

New Zealand's gender pay gap

Take action: WGEA Employer Guides and Resources