Episode Details

I'm joined this week by Davinnia Tan, an employment relations leader who has served as a member of the Employment Relations Authority, an independent reviewer of ACC decisions, and a peer reviewer for workplace investigations. While serving as a member, Davinnia became only the second person in the ERA's 25-year history to have a baby, and what followed was a front-row education in just how far Aotearoa's institutions still have to go when it comes to caregiving. Outside her day-to-day work, she writes Ngākau Reworked, exploring the motherhood penalty and matrescence through a tikanga-informed lens.

Davinnia shares the confronting reality of being declined a four-day week with no reasons given, having to choose between full-time daycare or leaving her statutory role, and being told to pump breast milk in a CCTV hearing room with the screens covered. We talk about the stark contrast between her experience and her husband's, whose employer became part of their village, and what that taught her about the power of paid partner's leave.

We also get into why New Zealand hasn't measured the motherhood penalty since 2018, has never measured the working dad experience at all, and what Sweden's 50 years of parental leave reform can actually teach us about what works. This is a conversation about systems, statistics and the deeply personal cost of a country that still treats caregiving as a "nice to have."

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• What happened when Davinnia was declined a four-day week with no reasons given, and the impossible choice it created
• Why being a statutory officer meant she had no rights under the Parental Leave and Employment Act
• How her husband's supportive employer became "the village" that held their family together
• Why New Zealand hasn't measured the motherhood penalty since 2018, and has never measured the working dad experience
• What Sweden's "use it or lose it" parental leave reforms reveal about what actually shifts father engagement
• Why flexible working needs consistency, not just policy, to stop pushing mothers out of the workforce
• How outcomes-based, output-focused job design could ease pressure on managers without more red tape
• Davinnia's case for parental support to be recognised internationally as a human right
• Her message to any dad on the fence about taking parental leave

Resources discussed:

• https://substack.com/@ngkaureworked
• https://www.instagram.com/ngakau.reworked/
• ShortChanged - The Pay Equity Podcast Investigation

Connect with Emma

This podcast was funded and created by Emma Mclean, the founder of Works for Everyone. Emma Mclean is a mum of three and founder of Works for Everyone, a professional development business that partners with NZ's leading corporates to help them retain and grow their working parent talent. She does this through innovative leadership programmes, executive coaching and keynote speaking. She founded her business in 2019 following a 20-year career in corporate strategy where she experienced first-hand how hard it was to have a career and a family. As an impatient optimist when it comes to system change, she launched her successful podcast "How to Smash the Motherhood Penalty" in 2023 where she talks to humans who are actively working to change the system that creates financial penalties that only mothers pay. And in 2024 she launched the first NZ Part Time Power List, to shine a light on those senior roles in NZ that