During the 1930s the world was struck by a crippling economic slump due to the crash of the American stock market. The world soon started to call this slump “The Great Depression”. Until 1935 the New Zealand government was a coalition government consisting of the Liberals and Reform Party, later known as The Nationalists, these two very conservative parties thought that they could help New Zealand through the depression by cutting government spending and focusing on the farmers, who they considered to be the backbone of New Zealand’s economy. This ultimately caused a lot of poverty and unemployment amongst the middle and lower classes of New Zealand’s society. On December the 6th 1935 the Labour Party took office with a very unique ideology,
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Because of this misogynistic attitude women were not allowed to apply for the unemployment benefit while New Zealand was under the Coalition Government. Women who were lucky enough to keep their employment during the early stages of the depression had to pay a tax on their wages and received no financial help at all; as Sutch states “though women paid the unemployment tax on wages they received no relief work or pay” . This changed after Labour was elected as they introduced benefits for not only the unemployed women but also the childless widows of the nation; but it didn’t just stop at benefits it has been recorded that “the new Government believed that all New Zealanders were entitled to a job or an unemployment benefit, an income adequate for a family with three children.” The Labour Government had much more modern and realistic ideas on how to work through the depression and it has been recorded that “the state now provided welfare services appropriate to a modern, urban society” which was incredibly different to the Coalition’s ideas for where the welfare was needed. The Labour Government was concerned with all of New Zealand’s citizens under their governing, “the old, the poor, the unemployed and children benefited” due to the benefit payment increases, free hospital care, including maternity and mental hospital, extremely subsidized medical care, and a free education system all the way up to tertiary level. These schemes were to increase government spending and bring New Zealand out of poverty and ultimately stop The Great Depression in New
Because of this misogynistic attitude women were not allowed to apply for the unemployment benefit while New Zealand was under the Coalition Government. Women who were lucky enough to keep their employment during the early stages of the depression had to pay a tax on their wages and received no financial help at all; as Sutch states “though women paid the unemployment tax on wages they received no relief work or pay” . This changed after Labour was elected as they introduced benefits for not only the unemployed women but also the childless widows of the nation; but it didn’t just stop at benefits it has been recorded that “the new Government believed that all New Zealanders were entitled to a job or an unemployment benefit, an income adequate for a family with three children.” The Labour Government had much more modern and realistic ideas on how to work through the depression and it has been recorded that “the state now provided welfare services appropriate to a modern, urban society” which was incredibly different to the Coalition’s ideas for where the welfare was needed. The Labour Government was concerned with all of New Zealand’s citizens under their governing, “the old, the poor, the unemployed and children benefited” due to the benefit payment increases, free hospital care, including maternity and mental hospital, extremely subsidized medical care, and a free education system all the way up to tertiary level. These schemes were to increase government spending and bring New Zealand out of poverty and ultimately stop The Great Depression in New