Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ in 1793, there has been a women’s movement in the English -speaking world. Mary, you will remember, was famous for arguing that women’s apparent inferiority to men stemmed from their lack of education, not their nature. She argued for a social order founded on reason, not gender.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, a contemporaneous philosopher, also known ironically as the father of freedom for his views on the education of boys and men, decried Mary’s argument. Women, he said, should be educated for the pleasure of men. He said a lot more too, but I will not bore you…
Born in the 18th century (though there are respectable arguments for earlier beginnings, such as the movements that sparked the Salem witch trials in the USA), feminism, the belief in the full equality of women with men was not even given a name until 100 years after Mary’s death. Then, it was linked at the end of the 19th century with the work of women to get the vote in New Zealand and, later, in other English-speaking countries, and subsequently around the world. I believe Switzerland was the last of the established democracies to give women the vote, in 1971.
Kate Sheppard who led the movement to get the vote for women in New Zealand, was a feminist. The reason for getting women the vote was to bring about social change towards equality in the areas of social, political, legal and economic life. Kate believed in equal pay for women workers.
Other aspects of feminism were evident in New Zealand after both the first and second world wars, when women workers were forced back out of the workforce as the men returned home. Women got the right to stand for Parliament in 1919, and many did so, although none were elected until Elizabeth McCombs took over her husband’s Lyttleton (Christchurch) seat after his death in 1933.
The resurgence of the 1970s saw a feminist torch burn brightly for a long time in New Zealand, and turned many women, and me, into lifelong feminists.
So many movements, so many fights for change. But it is true to say that, while at every point enduring changes were made, the fight for equality for women in all aspects of life has been a gnarly one.
Each call for change brought a backlash, not only from men but always in the interests of men. Mary was denigrated for generations, the fight for the vote was downplayed – that men gave it to women, not that they worked for it (trudging from one end of the country to the other, collecting the signatures of a quarter of the women in the colony) – misrepresenting the nature of the movement and so on. Women were ‘man-haters’, feminists were radical idiots, feminism was unnecessary. A whole generation born after 1980 refused, for a long time, to contemplate the need for feminism. It became very unfashionable indeed to declare oneself a feminist.
Backlash politics have proven very effective in the fight for equality for women. I now see this as the equivalent of climbing Everest. Over time, various base camps have been established. The right to the vote is one, equality in financial dealings and the right to a pension is another. These have built on each other until, a partial route up the Everest of equality has been established. But being halfway up a mountain is not a destination!
In 2012 a woman called Laura Bates started a website blog called ‘Everyday Sexism’, dealing with the daily sexist slings and arrows affecting women. At first, she got huge backlash: “Again and again, people told me sexism is no longer a problem – that women are equal now, more or less, and if you can’t take a joke or take a compliment, then you need to stop being so ‘frigid’ and get a sense of humour”. But, as the number of stories and contributions from women all over the world increased, her arguments became much more influential. The backlash was muted as the scales, once again, turned in favour of women’s equality.
And from this sprang the #MeToo movement, which is women’s everyday experiences of sexual politics writ large. There is already backlash, of course, and this will only grow. But a new basecamp has been established on the long march to sexual equality. Here is New Zealand, this is best viewed in the remarkable fight for equal pay for women’s work, overcoming the endemic undervaluing of what we do. Thanks to the work of the unions, and women such as Christine Bartlett, last year’s New Zealander of the Year, change is underway.
Ten years ago, I thought the backlash would go on for fifty years, and that I would die without seeing any substantive improvements in women’s position. I am well pleased with the establishment of this first busy base camp of the 2000s. I am now confident that, however slowly, and however many setbacks and barriers are experienced, that the final stages of the climb to sexual equality will happen in our fair nation and hopefully around the world.
No political system or creed can justify the treatment of women as second-class citizens or as the slaves or property of men. This inexorable principle will guide the women’s movement into the future. The summit will be achieved one day: we will “knock the bastard off”.
Dr Liz Gordon began her working life as a university lecturer at Massey and the Canterbury universities. She spent six years as an Alliance MP, before starting her own research company, Pukeko Research. Her work is in the fields of justice, law, education and sociology (poverty and inequality). She is the president of Pillars, a charity that works for the children of prisoners, a prison volunteer, and is on the board of several other organisations. Her mission is to see New Zealand freed from the shackles of neo-liberalism before she dies (hopefully well before!).
New Zealander Lydia Bradey has climbed Everest 4 times and was the first woman to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen.
In fact NZ women feature strongly in NZ mountaineering history
It’s just a shame their pay hasn’t reached similar heights, eh, Andy??
Hasn’t it? I thought Jordan Peterson debunked that one
No, people in similar positions with comparable experience, hours, etc…, will earn pretty much the same money regardless of gender.
Its to demeaning to tell women “your dream of being a astronaught or what ever is out of your reach.”
More equal if there is pay transparency, which means not equal without it.
Then there is the glass ceiling in promotion and the pay differentials with female dominated professions.
Pay transparency would be a problem across the board. Were this put in place, we’d almost certainly see a lot so people aren’t being paid the same wage/salary for the same work but with zero correlation to gender. There are professions where women a lot more than men – e.g. modelling.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/12/13/highest-paid-models-2018-kendall-jenner-leads-with-22-5-million/
Not seeing a lot of men on that list.
No, Andy, Jordan Peterson hasn’t debunked it. You need to get back to reality instead of your male privileged fantasy world.
In what way are women not treated as equals in NZ?
Meh. I’ll raise my eyebrows when I see a push by feminists to abolish gender in sports (i.e. no more separate men’s and women’s events). Or perhaps feminists acknowledge there is a genuine physical difference between men and women? Women were obviously treated very unfairly in the past (primarily by men), but feminism in the 21st century seems to be more about “sticking it to the man” – literally – than the righteous striving for actual merit based equality in the previous century.
Wikipedia.
“Lydia Bradey is a New Zealand mountaineer. She is known for becoming the first woman to summit Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1988. She has gone on to summit Mount Everest at least three more times in 2008, 2013, and 2016.”
And I’m proud to say Lydia’s a friend of mine.
My Mother and my Aunt, as sheep and cattle farmers, worked harder physically than most men I know.
She, nor my aunt, never clambered up a mountain in search of notoriety, however. They just spent their lives growing agrarian export goods and who then got swindled, literally, by a manager of the BNZ in Timaru during don brash’s 22% interest rates years which ultimately, and after nearly fifty years of farming, left my ma, pa and aunt homeless and destitute in their older age. And some of you may wonder why I say the fuck word a lot. My seething hatred for the BNZ’s framework and of the criminal matrix that is grifted farmer funds ‘post farm gate’ to line the pockets of the AO/NZ urban bankster/financier OldBoys $-cult is sometimes unbearable.
My trigger words: BNZ bail-out/Fay Richwhite Group/bolger/NBA.
The fact that AO/NZ women are paid less because they’re women should be a flash point for rage against a misogynist, office bound, little-withered-dick mentality that needs correcting immediately.
Cynically? I’d argue that the gender pay gap is simply a strategy to extract more labour for less expense by and for the foreign banksters.
Andrew – when they are around you.
Perfect riposte!
I was hoping this would be a rebuttal of MacSkasey misogynist rants of the past few days and it kind of is as it asserts that women are female because of their SEX – not because of what it in their imagination.
The biggest risk to women at the moment is appropriation I think. When any man can claim he is a woman (including claiming he is a lesbian) and he is regarded as one then natal women’s SEX-BASED rights have been lost. Such a man is now eligible for women’s services, women’s prizes, places on short lists, refuges, counselling services – both as client and sensitive issues counsellor and they are then eligible to use our bathrooms changing rooms and to be housed in women’s prisons. This has every likelihood of making women’s SEX-BASED rights meaningless. Happily the law that would have encoded this even more determinedly is deferred pending consultation and an impact assessment across the various domains it is impacting
Ms Rivers: if you’re trying to close down the debate of transgender rights, at least be more honest about it. Calling Frank a “misogynist” is as far from the truth as you could possibly get (going by everything he has written I’ve read) and there’s obviously a degree of personal attack going on here. I read his last 2 blogposts and as usual he’s been meticulous with his research. So much so that I notice you haven’t talked to any of the points made.
You talk about transpeople using bathrooms? Is that a variation on the stranger-danger scare? I hope not. You should know the facts. Most sexual assaults take place in the HOME, not in public toilets or changing rooms.
If you’re going to call people misogynistic because you disagree with their pro-trans views, then be careful where you throw that label. I’m now thinking firmly in the equal rights for trans people camp and if you call me a misogynist I’ll give you a piece of my mind I usually reserve for my kids if one of them breaks their curfew time!!
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