Women Together in 1993 and 2018: Taking a fresh look at the history of women’s organisations in the context of women’s suffrage celebrations and feminism
Ensuring that the inconvenient history of feminism, in Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere, will not once again disappear until it is rediscovered by another wave of activists.
Presented by
Description
Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies.
Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand / Ngā Ropū Wāhine o te Motu* was published in 1993 to mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Thanks to an initiative by Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage, it is being updated and going online for the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage. This paper begins by looking back at the complex and conflicting responses to the 1993 suffrage centenary, compared with the apparently very different context for Suffrage 125. It then discusses the significance of the original Women Together project in terms of women’s and national history. Its digitisation is then analysed in terms of its role in ensuring that the inconvenient history of feminism, in Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere, will not once again disappear until it is rediscovered by another wave of activists. The paper concludes by considering some of the themes emerging from the process of updating Women Together to cover the last 25 years, and their potential for generating new insights into the current state of feminism and gender relations in New Zealand.
* Anne Else (ed.), 1993: Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand / Ngā Ropū Wāhine o te Motu. Wellington: Historical Branch of Internal Affairs/Daphne Brasell Associates.
Speaker Bios
Dr Anne Else was one of the four women who co-founded Broadsheet in 1972. Working largely as an independent scholar, over the last 46 years she has authored or co-authored many feminist articles, papers and reviews, as well as four books on women, history and society, and a memoir. In 1993 she was commissioning editor for Women Together: A History of Women’s Organisations in New Zealand / Ngā Ropū Wāhine o te Motu. Completing an MA in English in 1968 (Auckland) and a PhD in gender studies in 2006 (VUW), she was made an MNZM for services to women and literature in 1994.