Barrie Davis: Global Women

An article in the Sunday Star-Times, “Global Women adds Treaty bill to heavy workload” by Dita De Boni, 29 September (here), makes two specious claims which I shall critique. I will first show that Global Women is irrational and second that it is mistaken in its two main claims.

The article introduces Global Women as a group of influential and high powered political and business women representing diversity and inclusion in New Zealand. They had a hui at Waitangi in June of this year and according to the article “they came away from the event more determined than ever to f... shit up”. Let’s take a peek at how they intend to do that.

The article features Global Women chair Dame Theresa Gattung and CEO Agnes Naera who discuss their organization’s stance against “a coalition government seemingly moving away from using policy settings to respond to Te Tiriti” and “a broad swing against diversity and inclusion initiatives in the wider corporate world”.

First let’s see how their Treaty argument is false. Global Women intends to make a submission on the Treaty Principles Bill based on the following understanding: “‘What we've seen is a conversation that divides the country, as opposed to bringing us together,’ she [Agnes Naera] tells the Sunday Star-Times. ‘We’re very clear that the Treaty was signed by the Crown and Māori. And Māori need to have a say if they're the other partner in it’.”

Now, it has been conclusively shown that the Treaty does not mention partnership and that the Chiefs made clear in speeches on 5 February 1840 that they understood they would be subject to Queen Victoria (here) and again at the Kohimarama Conference in 1860. I have summarized the argument against partnership here.

(Selected Sources: Sir Apirana Ngata (1922), The Treaty of Waitangi: An Explanation (here); Dr John Robinson (2024), a) “A Broken Nation” (here), b) Who Broke the Treaty? (2024), c) The Kohimarama Conference 1860 (2022), d) Corruption of New Zealand Democracy: A Treaty Overview (2011); Mike Butler, The Treaty: Basic Facts (2022); Twisting the Treaty: A Tribal Grab for Wealth and Power (2017 Revised), a collection of chapter essays by six authors who provide various perspectives.

After the Treaty was signed the chiefs retained their chieftainship and the Maoris including the chiefs lived as British and subsequently New Zealand citizens subject to the Crown. In the middle of last century, the bulk of the Maori population deserted their tribal homelands in the countryside and moved to the European cities. In so doing the Maoris abandoned their traditional life, including tribalism and with it the chieftainship of the chiefs. Until then, New Zealand was a unified nation with everyone subject to the Crown. But in 1975 the Treaty of Waitangi Act brought about the Waitangi Tribunal who subsequently asserted that there is a partnership.

For there to be a partnership there needs to be separate partners comprising, in this instance, Maoris and non-Maoris. So now we have Global Women proclaiming “We’re very clear that the Treaty was signed by the Crown and Māori. And Māori need to have a say if they’re the other partner in it.” So the Waitangi Tribunal is the first cause of racial segregation in New Zealand and it is the likes of Global Women who are contributing to widening the gap. Yet, in the same breath, they condemn themselves with, “What we've seen is a conversation that divides the country, as opposed to bringing us together.”

They are talking out of both sides of the mouth when they claim to despise in others that which they demonstrate in themselves; a clear case of negative transference.

The Global Women argument for partnership is false because it is not based on the available evidence and it is not rational; it is not in accordance with reason or logic.

For my argument regarding diversity and inclusion I will draw from the idea of evolution. A lot of thinking these days is based explicitly or implicitly on evolution and genetics. These topics are relatively new and they point to a second dimension to our existence which we were not aware of until only a couple of centuries ago.

Here briefly is my understanding of evolution. It comprises three components: replication, variation and selection. In humans, replication is brought about by the female, which makes women the axis of human evolution. It is women who put us on the planet both individually and as a species. It was not until relatively recently that we discovered that men provide half of the recipe; that is, one of the two gametes that combine to form a zygote or fertilized egg.

But men adapted to do something else and made themselves somewhat useful by providing a suitable environment in which the women could bear and raise her offspring, such as procuring food, clothing and shelter. That is, women and men evolved to contribute to the purpose of life in a complementary way, which for humans is to have and to raise children until they are of an age where they can in turn reproduce.

As a consequence, men and women are very different; we are quite different creatures genetically, psychologically and culturally. So, we do different things: broadly and overall, women are people oriented whereas men like things. Because we are predisposed to different outcomes, those who support Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) are mistaken, from which it follows that trying to realize the dogma by instituting quotas or other means is misguided. It is natural and therefore appropriate that women should be out of the workforce to have and to raise children and that absence will result in less promotion for women.

There are now more female doctors than men; so are Global Women going to anguish about that? A large gang of men (and one woman) are presently finishing a very nice job of putting a cycleway through the Island Bay shops; are Global Women going to have a female quota for that? Or is it just management positions they are interested in; in which case it is a power grab like the Maoris. European men built modernity; they are responsible for practically all of Western philosophy, science and technology. European men were also responsible for the Enlightenment; so are the women and the Maoris now taking advantage of our new found liberties by being ‘more determined than ever to mess stuff up’?

Global Women and perhaps women generally are not so rational. In comparing themselves to men, they have become vain and bitter.

Finally, Theresa Gattung made a third point which is worthy of comment: “The Māori economy is not a ‘grievance’ economy - it is a burgeoning economy; an opportunity. The mindset has shifted in my 40 years of being an adult in New Zealand, and we don’t want to go backwards.”

The Maori politicians and iwi leaders have been claiming that Maoris want autonomy. Now that they have a rapidly increasing economy, they have the opportunity to increase their autonomy by funding Maori specific programs for themselves. The time has come to move all Maori specific costs, such as the Te Ahu o te Reo Māori program, out of the mostly non-Maori taxpayer funded State coffers into the Maori world (te ao Maori).

Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.