Remarkable NZ women feature in history books

What better time to take a look at books about the lives of remarkable New Zealand women than during Women’s History Month. It’s an opportunity for both men and women to explore stories that highlight diverse women’s experiences who have made positive changes for themselves, their wha¯ nau, and their communities.

Barbara Brookes’s much anticipated volume, New Zealand Women, charts the lives of New Zealand women from Polynesian settlement, through colonisation and the World Wars to modernity. It’s a comprehensive history of Aotearoa seen through a female lens. Brookes depicts women from all walks of life — women who spoke out against government incursion on Ma¯ ori land, women who worked on farms during World War I, women who painted and wove, sang and wrote.

Womankind: New Zealand Women Making a Difference by Margie Thomson and Simon Young is a landmark book of profiles and portraits of 50 New Zealand women who have set out to make a difference in the world. These leaders share their views on what it’s like to be a woman in New Zealand today, the contributions they are most proud of, challenges they have faced and still face, dreams they have and goals for the role of New Zealand women.

Published in 1991 The Book of New Zealand Women, Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa, edited by Charlotte McDonald, Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams, grew out of a desire to put together an alternative history — an exploration of the hidden history of the women of Aotearoa. With a Suitcase and a Sari also explores a similar theme of “hidden” women with stories of the first Indian women to immigrate to New Zealand.

The book is written by their daughters and granddaughters and offers a personal and deeply touching insight into the journey of an immigrant.

The common thread in these stories is that they feature women who have set out to make a difference in the world, whether that be on a global stage, or in their local communities.

They celebrate the success and diversity of New Zealand women across many spheres, cultures and backgrounds from the past into our present.