INTOUCH : Indian women at work

How do ethnic minorities integrate into the New Zealand workforce? That’s question explored in recently launched book that narrates the experiences of Indian women whose roles range from senior manager to entrepreneur and from doctor to volunteer worker.
Sari: Indian women at work in New Zealand is the result of six years’ research carried out by Edwina Pio who is an associate professor at AUT’s Business School and also an Indian woman whose work focuses at the intersect of management, psychology and spirituality.
Forming what she describes as the “warp and weft” of Sari are her personal interviews with 100 women and conversations with more than 600. Stories of fabulous success merge with underemployment and no employment across group that, while distinguished by their Indian ethnicity, includes not only first-generation migrants but the Kiwi descendants of families who arrived here as far back as the goldrush days. While these highlight much that is right, they also look at what needs urgent redress.
Pio makes the point that the integration of immigrants is not only national issue but local one – at which level employers are perhaps the most important of all the stakeholders in terms of assisting the integration process.
The book was launched mid-April and copies are available in the shops from this month.