New Zealand Listener – August 10, 2019

58 LISTENER AUGUST 10 2019

80 YEARS

Women of influence

I

f there’s a vignette

that captures the place

of women in politics

for much of the past

80 years, it’s the time

Sir Robert Muldoon poked

his head into the Evening

Post’s press gallery office, saw

reporter Rae Lamb at her desk,

muttered, “Heh! There’s no

one here,” and stalked off.

That was the early 80s, when

a peek inside the cupboards in

any ministerial home told the

story about the expected role

of women: making big dinners

for their husbands’ important

associates. In their own right,

they might host a morning tea

for the other political wives.

Ministerial houses were the

last hurrah of the 12-place

matching dinner set and

30-place tea service.

Electorate MPs’ arrange-

ments were similar. While the

MP was in Wellington, his wife

was expected to work in the

electorate as (unpaid) organ-

iser, secretary and hostess.

Those who didn’t get involved,

or who even had their own

careers, were considered a bit

funny.

The female MP was still very

much the exception till well

into the 1980s.

When the Listener first

published, there was only one,

and she had doubled the total.

This was Catherine Stewart, a

former Glasgow weaver who

had emigrated to Wellington

and worked with special needs

children.

Six years earlier, newly

widowed Elizabeth McCombs

had become the first female

member, succeeding her

husband, James, who’d held

Lyttelton for Labour. Steeped

in progressive liberal politics

including workers’ rights

and women’s

equality, she

was, the papers

reported,

apt to give

constituents a

flea in the ear

if she thought

they weren’t

trying hard

enough to help

themselves.

But her

historic

breakthrough

did not precipitate a rush.

McCombs died two years into

the job, and by the time the

first Listener hit the streets,

there was still only one female

MP, Labour’s Stewart (Wel-

lington West). Mary Dreaver

(Waitemata) joined her in the

Labour caucus in 1941. Mabel

Howard, Hilda Ross and Iriata

Ratana arrived soon after –

Howard later becoming the

first woman in Cabinet – but it

wasn’t till the later 1970s that

the election of women could

be described as even a trickle.

Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan,

in 1967 the youngest woman

thus far elected, at 35, and

later the first Māori woman

in Cabinet, was still only the

11th woman to sit in the New

Zealand Parliament.

Tellingly, Howard’s cost-of-

living activism was most often

shorthanded as her having

brandished her bloomers in

Parliament.

Coverage Tiri-

katene-Sullivan

received for her

Māori welfare

work may not

have been quite

as extensive as

that of her strik-

ing wardrobe,

which featured

kowhaiwhai and

other traditional

motifs.

Even the first

Minister of Women’s Affairs

was a bloke, National’s Jim

McLay.

Young National back-

bencher Marilyn Waring’s

querulous attitudes to poli-

cies including abortion and

nuclear arms took the patri-

cian 1970s National Party by

indignant surprise, but helped

build awareness that female

politicians could be power

units in their own right.

But it wasn’t till the Lange

administration that women

in – and with – power came to

seem the norm.

Some of his five women

ministers had big-ticket port-

folios, notably Helen Clark in

health. Fran Wilde achieved

household-name status from

the whips’ bench through her

successful crusade to legalise

homosexuality.

Next decade, women finally

got their hands on the real

levers of power, cracking the

male sanctum sanctorum of the

Prime Minister’s kitchen cabi-

net. There were only two of

them, lawyer Ruth Richardson

from 1990 and former primary

school teacher Jenny Shipley

from 1993, but they turned

the elements right up in Jim

Bolger’s kitchen with their

ultra-dry approach to welfare

spending and advocacy of

bootstraps self-improvement.

Richardson held education

and later finance, display-

ing an appetite for head-on

conflict unknown in National

since Muldoon. When the

imposing figure of farmer

Shipley first visited Parliament

as a prospective candidate,

people actually whispered to

one another: “She might be

National’s next leader.” And

she was.

Dismayed at Bolger’s later

ousting of her colleague and

mentor Richardson, Shipley

eventually gathered the caucus

numbers to supplant him,

becoming our first woman