In New Zealand, the part of the government that has the most power is called the Cabinet. It is the 20 most influential ministers who meet separately to set the government’s political course. For the first time ever, there are now equal numbers of men and women in the important Cabinet. It happened when Willow-Jean Prime was promoted to cabinet minister on Wednesday 12 April. Actually, Prime had completely different life plans. As the daughter of a locomotive driver, she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. – I wanted to be a train driver, but back in 1997 I was told that women could not become train drivers. They can do that today!, she has previously written on her Facebook. Instead of a train driver, she is now minister for nature conservation and the country’s youth. Apart from being a woman, the new cabinet member is also Maori, who are New Zealand’s indigenous people. Willow-Jean Prime will be the sixth Māori in the cabinet, and thus New Zealand not only sets a record for women at the top of politics, but also a new record for the highest number of Māori in the cabinet to date. More equality in the world’s parliaments New Zealand is far from the only country in the world where women have gained more political power in recent years. In 2020, 25 percent of the world’s members of parliament were women. But in just three years, the figure has risen to 26.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2023. And it is part of a development that has been going on for a long time. If we look even further back, to 1995, only 11.3 percent of the seats were occupied by female politicians. So more than twice as many women have entered politics over the past 30 years. Although the proportion of women in politics is increasing, it is frequently criticized that women often hold the more “soft” ministerial positions, compared to the more prestigious and powerful ministerial positions still held by men. This is also true to a certain extent in New Zealand, where women hold ministerial posts for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Sustainability, the Ministry of Women and the Ministry of Education, but they also manage the Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Economy and Finance ministries. At the same time, the cabinet is only part of the ministerial posts, but if you count all the ministers both in and outside the cabinet, there are actually now more female than male ministers in New Zealand.
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The New Zealand government achieves equality
