Comment: For a few days, New Zealand argued about one word.
Not the changes to pay equity legislation. Not what those changes might mean for thousands of women working in undervalued occupations. Not the long-term impact on women’s earnings, retirement savings, or financial security.
Just one word.
It started when Sunday Star-Times columnist Andrea Vance used the word to describe Nicola Willis and other female government MPs, claiming they had betrayed underpaid women workers. Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden then became the first person to say the word in Parliament when she condemned Vance for using sexual language to attack female MPs.
The debate became known as C**tgate. It generated headlines, hot takes, and endless commentary. Depending on who you asked, the word was justified, offensive, refreshing, or beneath Parliament.
Almost immediately, the conversation shifted away from the substance of the debate and onto the behaviour of the women at its centre. Were they or were they not c**ts? Can women call each other c**ts? Why are women doing this to other women?!
The same instinct showed up in another way after the Government announced changes to the Pay Equity Act. One of the most common responses I heard was: “But it was a woman who changed the legislation.”
That single sentence carries a heap of baggage. It implies women are a bloc and that one woman can speak for, or on behalf of, all women, and that her gender alone tells us something about the fairness of the outcome. It doesn’t.
Women are not a homogeneous group. A woman in Parliament making decisions about legislation is not interchangeable with a woman working in the aged care sector, in the classroom, or behind the checkout, whose pay and retirement savings that legislation actually determines. They don’t share a pay cheque, a KiwiSaver balance, or a set of interests just because they share a gender. Class, occupation, ethnicity, and power shape a woman’s stake in this legislation far more than her gender does.
So, when a woman leads a law change that affects other women’s pay, sure, that fact tells us who was in the room. But it tells us nothing about who it was decided for, or what it will cost them.
Equality has never been measured by who delivers a decision. It’s measured by the impact that decision has on people’s lives. Representation matters, but it isn’t the finish line. If it were, every organisation led by a woman would automatically be equitable, and every policy shaped by a woman would automatically serve women’s interests. We know that’s not how power, or systems, work. A woman’s presence in the room doesn’t automatically erase the structures that decide whose work gets valued and whose doesn’t.
Reducing a debate about pay equity to the gender of the minister is tempting, because it simplifies a complicated issue. It turns a question about structures – and about which women benefit and which women lose – into a tidy story about individuals.
And that’s exactly what happened with C**tgate. We became absorbed by a moment instead of the system surrounding it, and by a single word instead of the many different women whose economic futures were actually on the table.
None of this is to suggest language doesn’t matter. Civility in public life matters. Parliament should be robust, but it should also be respectful.
Still, it’s worth asking why a single swear word generated more sustained public debate than changes with profound implications for women’s economic futures.
Outrage is immediate. Structural inequality is complicated.
One produces headlines. The other produces lifetime financial consequences.
This is exactly why we created Shortchanged. Because behind every headline is a bigger story about money, power and whose experiences we choose to take seriously.
Years from now, most New Zealanders won’t remember the exact parliamentary exchange that became C**tgate.
Many women, however, will still be living with the financial consequences of the decisions made around it.
That’s the story that deserves our outrage not who is or is not a c**t.
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