Women Want Equal Pay teatowel

This famous equal pay cartoon was imported from the United States of America and used by the New Zealand Clerical Workers’ Union in its 1985 campaign seeking equal pay for work of equal value.

The image provides a humorous way into the issue and it's ironically printed onto a tea towel – a symbol of women’s unpaid domestic labour (i.e. women get to do the dishes regardless of working and getting paid less than their male colleagues).

Some aims take decades, if not centuries, to be realised: first wave feminists had begun campaigning for equality in employment in the mid-1890s. Equal pay for women was legislated for the public service in 1961, and the private sector in 1972, but it is far from resolved.