October 13, 2017
Iron Maori founder an inspiration for wahine
Heather Te Au-Skipworth, the co-founder and CEO of IronMaori, the world’s only annual indigenous half-Ironman triathlon, has been named the winner of the sports category in this year’s Next magazine Woman of the Year Awards.
The supreme winner was aged-care worker Kristine Bartlett, whose five-year battle over her low pay resulted in a gender pay equality settlement that delivered wage rises of between 15 and 50 percent for more than 55,000 caregivers.
Her claim centred on the fact that because workers in her sector were overwhelmingly women, her low pay was the product of gender bias.
The case has led to increased pressure for similar wage rises for education-support workers, mental-health workers, social workers, teacher aides, part-time high-school teachers, school-support staff, midwives, and early-childhood education teachers.
Other category winners were former arts festival director Carla van Zon, East Tamaki Healthcare co-founder Ranjna Patel, education publisher Dame Wendy Pye, and Auckland University research fellow Dr Melanie Cheung, a world expert on Huntington’s disease.
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