Women’s Rights Party opens its Election campaign today

The Women’s Rights Party opens its Election campaign today [Saturday, 27 June] as members celebrated the Party’s fourth Annual Conference on-line so members from all over New Zealand could participate.

The Women’s Rights Party was founded in April 2023 after the shocking violence experienced by mostly women at Auckland’s “Let Women Speak” event in Albert Park on 25 March that year.

Co-leader Jill Ovens says the arrival of UK women’s rights advocate Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker) at Albert Park quickly deteriorated into a dangerous situation that had been whipped up over the previous week by media and leaders of both Labour and the Greens.

“Those of us who had been involved in political parties of the Left watched in horror as our leaders whole-heartedly supported the ‘trans mob’ before and after Albert Park,” she says.

“We couldn’t vote for a Party in that year’s Election which didn’t respect our right as women to speak about women’s rights, of all things! So, we started our own political Party.”

The Party will be on the ballot in 2026 in every polling booth across the entire country so women, and men, can vote for a Party that is clearly focused on protecting and promoting sex-based rights.

Ms Ovens says a strong vote for the Women’s Rights Party will send a message to all politicians not to give away hard won rights of women and the safeguarding of our children. “This includes politicians on both the Left and the Right!” she says.
The Women’s Rights Party is campaigning on the following priorities:

Women and girls have the right to single-sex gatherings for any purpose. This includes the right to women-only social media groups.

Single-sex spaces preserve women’s and girls’ safety and dignity. These include, but are not limited to toilets, changing rooms, prisons, refuges, rape crisis centres, saunas, swimming facilities, hospital wards and other facilities.

Birth certificates should be what they say they are – the baby’s biological sex at birth. The correct sex, usually observed on scans well before the birth and recorded at the birth, should not be changed, unless in the rare instance of a child born with an undetected difference of sexual development (DSD).

Birth certificates should not convey the legal fiction that a person was born the other sex. Having factual information about a person’s biological sex is also necessary for the provision of services and spaces for women and girls, and the gathering of accurate statistics.

Including ‘gender identity’ as a protected ground for discrimination in the Human Rights Act will undermine the exceptions that allow for protections based on sex.

The current Coalition Government has shelved the Law Commission’s Report recommending sweeping changes that would undermine protections for women in the Human Rights Act, saying it is not a priority. But what if there is a change of Government in November? Will Labour and the Greens, potentially supported by the Opportunity Party, resurrect the recommendations and pass these as law?

The Women’s Rights Party supports the aim of the Conversion Practices legislation to protect lesbians, bisexuals and gay people from conversion practices and to promote open and respectful discussions about sexuality.

However, the current legislation mandates ‘gender affirming care’ under which adolescents struggling with their sexuality are encouraged to ‘transition’ to the opposite sex, medically, psychologically and socially; ironically a form of gay conversion, i.e. “transing the gay away”.

So-called ‘rough sex’, involving strangulation and other forms of violence and sexual abuse of women, has proliferated with the spread of pornography on-line. It has become normalised even as the forms of sexual abuse have become ever more extreme.

The tragic case of young backpacker Grace Millane in Auckland did not end with her murder by strangulation during sex.

At his trial, her killer claimed she died accidentally during a ‘sex game gone wrong’. Grace couldn’t speak for herself’ after her death, but the man who killed her could ‘simply say she wanted it’. This is a travesty. The law should be clear – you cannot consent to serious injury or death.

The Women’s Rights Party supports a ban on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat children and adolescents under the age of 18 who are presenting with “sex-related distress”, and to restrict Government-funded masculinisation or feminisation cosmetic surgery to those aged over 25 (currently aged over 18).

Early last year Associate Health Minister Casey Costello wrote to Health New Zealand directing the agency to use “clear language” including use of the word “women” in its communications about women’s health issues.

However, Health New Zealand has ignored the directive and goes out of its way to avoid use of the word “women”. This matters. It is an inconvenient fact that women have particular health needs that are not common to both sexes, and have been overlooked in health priorities, including funding and research.

The media, too, goes out of its way to avoid using the word “women”, and even uses the pronoun “she” when referring to men who think they are women and who commit sexual crimes against women.

“Women are adult human females. A man in a dress is still a man,” Ms Ovens says.