Contemporary collective regulation and working women in New Zealand

Women’s labour force participation in New Zealand is one of the highest in the developed world. Yet women remain over-represented and segregated within certain sectors and occupations, with implications for the gender pay gap and their location in vulnerable employment. This article examines the nature and impacts of recent collective regulatory forms of particular relevance to working women. Drawing on interview and documentary evidence, it finds that formal employment relations regulation has ‘thinned’ and, all things being equal, looks unlikely to significantly ameliorate women’s work and wider circumstances. The article evaluates how collective regulation might be reconceptualized and extended to this broad end.