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Taking stock of women's roles in New Zealand

By: Sandra Dickson

Sandra Dickson is a feminist studying journalism at Whitireia Journalism School. She has worked to prevent violence against women in organizations in the UK and New Zealand, helping establish the counter-trafficking Poppy Project where she wrote "Sex in the City, Mapping Commercial Sex across London," the first attempt to map the commercial sex industry. Now living in New Zealand, she is active in the Women's refuge movement. She blogs as Luddite Journo. The opinions expressed are her own.

New Zealand was formally colonised late in world terms, after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with indigenous Maori in 1840. Colonists came with grand ideas of building a "better Britain." All could aspire to own property, and the most advanced indigenous people in the world were to be treated the best by the most humanitarian settlers.

This "better Britain" included fewer restrictions on women's roles, partially shaped by Maori societies with quite different gender norms about what it meant to be a girl.

By 1893, New Zealand became the first nation-state to enfranchise women, congruent with the developing self-image of an egalitarian society with no class divisions, racism or sexism.

According to politician William Pember Reeves, "they simply asked for the vote, and we simply gave it to them."

New Zealanders largely continue to believe girls can do anything. Inequality and gender conflict are minimized, while women's successes are well-noted and often receive world renown.

International Women's Day events on March 8 will be attended by women working hard to ensure the rhetoric matches the reality ... more

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