Pacific leadership and community-driven solutions
are the preference according to Pacific perspectives,
there is also the need to support Pacific leaders and
business owners in their endeavours to support their
community.394 The literature indicates that it is not
enough to reinforce to Pacific business owners that
help and services are available when problems arise.
Rather, these business owners must also be provided
with support outside of economic development
services such as mentorship, pastoral care
programmes and other methods of social uplifting.395
Furthermore, the literature also suggests that
possible solutions to the Pacific Pay Gap are not likely
to succeed in the long term unless developed by – or
at minimum with – the specific communities they are
aiming to help.
The literature makes it clear that designing policy
interventions for the Pacific Pay Gap is about
recognising that there needs to a be space for Pacific
communities, employees and employers to provide
insight into experiences of the Pacific Pay Gap. Good
government policy responses acknowledge, address
and produce transparency in the nature and reasons
for discrimination within the workplace against
racialised bodies.396 In order to achieve this, it is vital
that, alongside statistical evidence of discrimination,
contextual information is gathered to explain the
numbers.397 This means that, alongside ensuring a
meaningful space for Pacific communities, it is also
important that employers are given space to share
what knowledge they utilise in decision making, what
their assumptions are about Pacific peoples and
the implications these assumptions have on their
employment processes. Utilising this contextual
information would strengthen understandings
and therefore policy responses to the Pacific Pay
Gap.398 Collecting data in this way would enable us
to understand not just that there is inequity but how
this inequity happens and inform possible policy
interventions.
The public service approach to addressing and
understanding the Māori and ethnic pay gap
may give insights into possible approaches for
the Pacific Pay Gap.399 Through this approach,
there is encouragement for accurate information
and measurements and utilising guidance from
government bodies to ensure policy responses and
initiatives remain relevant and receptive to change
and further developments.400 However, alongside
accurate information and measurements, there
needs to be an overall aim to remove bias from
workplace systems, policies and practices.401 This
can be achieved through creating policies that are
explicitly guided by Pacific employees’ views instead
of only allowing their perspectives to supplement
decision making.402 Policy responses from the
Government also encourage policy that emphasises
the necessity for mobility, illustrating the current
landscapes of deprivation and low income for
racialised bodies.403 Policies that aim to address
certain social disparities need to be careful in their
construction, ensuring that the policies are shaped
to target their desired population specifically.404
Policy responses must have strong roots in providing
consistent, measurable instruments or goals moving
forward to allow for successful structural change.405
394
Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Pacific Aotearoa Lalanga Fou, 28.
395
Pacific Business Trust, A Pacific Sole Trader’s Landscape, 17; Tuatagaloa, Exploring Pacific Entrepreneurship, 39.
396
New Zealand Treasury, Statistical Analysis of Ethnic Wage Gaps, 17.
397
Neumark, David. “Experimental Research on Labour Market Discrimination.” Journal of Economic Literature 56, no.3 (2018):
789.
398
Neumark, “Experimental Research,” 76.
399
Public Service Commission, Guidance Measuring, 5.
400
Public Service Commission, Guidance Measuring, 5.
401
Public Service Commission, Guidance Measuring, 5; Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Pacific Employment Action Plan, 1-6.
402
Public Service Commission, Guidance Measuring, 5; Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Pacific Employment Action Plan, 1-6.
403
New Zealand Treasury. A Descriptive Analysis of Income and Deprivation in New Zealand. Wellington: New Zealand Treasury,
2012, 15. https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2012-05/t2012-866.pdf.
404
New Zealand Treasury, A Descriptive Analysis of Income and Deprivation, 16.
405
McAllister et al., “Glass Ceilings in New Zealand Universities,” 282.
Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry Literature Review
55