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Introduction

I was 27 before I understood how poor the lot of working women in New Zealand really was. And I learned this in the New Zealand Public Service in early 1955.

An only child of Scottish working class parents who revered education, I went to Auckland Girls' Grammar School for five years, Auckland University College for four and Auckland Teachers' Training College for one, before teaching for four years at the Hutt Valley High School. Although 1 earned less in holiday work than my male student contemporaries, and earned the lowest of the three teaching rates (married men, single men, women), I still had not realised I belonged to an inferior class. In teaching, women were allowed to work as hard as men inside and outside the classroom. The occasional sneer from male colleagues about the inferiority of women teachers I put down to their own faulty character. Like my female colleagues, I accepted the larger wage for single men and of course we all knew that married men had more responsibilities and needed more money.

I joined the public service in September 1954, dropping a large amount in salary, but expecting to make it up in a fairly short time. In early 1955 I was persuaded by a friend, Cara Shouler, to go to a lunch-time women's meeting in the old Dominion Farmers Building in Featherston Street. Then began my education about the depressed status of women. The occasion was to form a new Women's Sub-Committee as recommended by the Wellington Section of the PSA in late 1954. I was spotted by a couple of women I had met through a small group I belonged to, the Human Rights Organisation, and nominated to the committee. I did not know the formula for refusing, so, very dazed, found myself elected.

Appalled by my ignorance about these 'injustices' to women in the public service, I sought the help of my old friend Jim Delahunty, who was then working at the PSA national office. He provided me with a lot of literature to swot up before the first meeting of the sub-committee.

I was hardly able to believe what I read. Women in the clerical division, because they were women, were pinned down in the lowest grade by three bars, were junior to every male entering the service, and were tossed out after 30 years while men worked 40 and often 45 years. (It was believed normal to work for 40 years.) Then I discovered that clerical women were much better off than those in 'women's work' such as typing, cleaning, telephone operating or dental nursing. Their scales were tied to the lower parts of clerical scales, and rising was not just damned difficult — it was impossible. I realised also that the women's lower rates in teaching scales were reproduced in occupational groups like vocational guidance and child welfare. I saw, in fact, that I belonged to a powerless class.

Women in the professional division, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, had no barriers such as the clerical 'bars' put in their way, but their promotion page 2 opportunities were minimal. Everyone 'knew' that women were too emotional to be good bosses, and even if there were exceptions, men would not work under them. Supposing that, in the odd case, a man did not resent a 'good' woman boss, everyone again 'knew' that the woman would be claimed by marriage, but even if she were not, she had only 30 years to go, which was not a complete career span. There was no way to win. One or two professional women did make it — a dentist won promotion on appeal, a woman lawyer starting in the early 1950s ultimately became her department's chief legal adviser — but this was rare.

My decision to make equal pay my cause took me right into the PSA world for the next seven years. I learned that things were better in 1955 than a decade earlier, when Jack Lewin, then president, negotiated the transfer of thousands of women into the permanent ranks of the public service. 1 learned, too, that I was taking part in just one more campaign to get equality. The PSA had adopted the policy as far back as 1914 and it had been pursued in intermittent waves ever since.

Every just cause needs its dragon and George Bolt, chairman of the Public Service Commission, was a very satisfactory dragon. None of this namby pamby public relations stuff— he knew women were inferior and said so. If ever one remark kept me going over the next five years it was Bolt's 1955 answer to the question 'Why arc women paid less?' He said, 'Why pay 10 bob for an article you can get for five?'

I can recommend fighting for a cause within the PSA. It has the structure, the resources in terms of money, staff of calibre and a regular journal, and the stature to attract public notice to make a long-term campaign viable. Before and after the period 1955–60 I have been involved in many voluntary groups where raising money, doing every facet of the work ourselves, and coping with constant changes of people, take up much of the energies. In the equal pay campaign our energies could all be directed into working out policies and activities.

The years 1955–60 were pretty intensively devoted to equal pay. The inner knot of campaigners became very close to each other. Hardly an evening passed but some move would be made — telephone calls, a press statement drafted, a reply composed to a critical letter in the paper, or a tactic planned for the next executive meeting. Throughout the period, as well as being on the Wellington Women's Sub-Committee and a member of the National Executive Equal Pay Committee, I was a section delegate until 1959 for the Department of Statistics and a member of the National Executive, first as women's representative and then as Canterbury section delegate. From the end of 1956 I was also secretary of the Council for Equal Pay and Opportunity. People like Margot Jenkins (Rodden), Joyce McBeath, Cath Eichelbaum (Kelly), Grace du Faur (Miles), Dan Long and Beverley Riley (Hurrelle) were equally involved.

Not only were we planning forward moves but we were responding to criticisms from groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Employers Federation and from public servants too. Even General Secretary Jack Turnbull, and President Mike Mitchell, were not totally committed to the equal pay cause. Total support from the top came with the two later presidents, Jim Ferguson and Dan Long.

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Many women supporting equal pay had to cope with criticism from their workmates and supervisors, from the so-called humorous remark and sly innuendo to heavy-handed sexist comments. I was fortunate in the census and population branch of the Department of Statistics, possibly because of the extraordinarily kind and sensitive section head. Bob Mustchin, and the nature of the branch itself. Several were in poor physical health, there were immigrants struggling with the language and older manual workers coping with clerking. It was a group of people to whom I felt great devotion, and from whom I received no barbed remarks. I was doing an individual writing job and unlike many low paid women had no supervision responsibilities. I take this opportunity to thank the Public Service Commission for providing me with a job that left me with plenty of energy to help run the equal pay campaign.

Despite the resources of the Association and the commitment of the equal pay campaign, at times it seemed more like riding a rocking horse than a charger. Friendships grew strong in this atmosphere. In my case I married Dan Long, a close associate in the battle. When he took over the convenorship of the executive's Equal Pay Committee, I believe it became a more seriously regarded committee. Even an organisation with over 40 years of support for equal pay had a lot to learn about attitude changing. Not that I suggest that his chairing the committee was mere tokenism. He was a particularly able, astute and optimistic convenor. As Grace du Faur wrote in a recent letter, 'My memories of Dan Long are very warm indeed — he was dedicated to a cause which he regarded as an important issue of social justice. Through times of frustration Dan always regarded knockbacks as a message that another route had to be found. ...'

Some of the people who gave us support will not be found in the official records. Dr W. B. Sutch, then economist for the Department of Industries and Commerce (now Trade and Industry), produced a paper on equal pay for the 1955 PSA Women's Conference. What is not generally known is that Bill Sutch was my guide and adviser in the earlier years of my involvement in equal pay. When I began to meet with women from organisations like the Business and Professional Women, the Federation of University Women and the YWCA, I found that Bill Sutch was their mentor too. In fact over several years of writing and lecturing, Bill Sutch had laid down and popularised philosophic bases for the equality of women in all spheres. He was a great educator.

Terry Hogan, Chairman of the Canterbury Section which I represented on the executive, was another passionate believer in equality for women. Looking back, I realise Terry was one of the very few men I knew then who foresaw and welcomed the changing roles of men and women. His untimely death prevented his seeing some of the changes he had hoped for, as well as the goals yet to be achieved.

Daphne John, a research officer in the Department of Labour, was our mole, producing for us ILO and United Nations documents and other overseas material to underpin our arguments.

The overseas connection was relatively strong. We drew heavily on the British Equal Pay Act of 1951 for support and had a top woman public servant visiting New Zealand to address meetings. In fact the British act was more limited in scope than our own was to be and it took seven years to implement page 4 compared with our three. It had, however, the virtue of being there. The PSA received other overseas material, particularly from Canada and the United States, both of which had women's bureaux.

In 1958 I represented the PSA and the Council for Equal Pay and Opportunity in Sydney at an equal pay conference convened by the Australian Council for Trade Unions. All states had trade union representation there, and women's organisations were heavily represented. I observed that Australians were more militant than New Zealanders and I saw traces of a kind of feminism still rare at home. For example, a woman teacher who was described to me as 'very conservative' moved the motion that they march on Parliament, and many of the married women I met kept their birth names, with the honorific 'Miss'. I knew in New Zealand only of my friend Miss Shirley Smith, married to Bill Sutch, who used her birth surname. However, we did get our Equal Pay Act before the Australians. A lot of publicity resulted from the Australian trip, including a radio talk with Barbara Basham, several press and PSA journal articles and visits to a number of sections and women's organisations reporting on the Australian scene. The Waikato section, with the incomparable Dean brothers, Maurice and Geoff, and their secretary organiser, Roger Kearney, were great equal pay supporters. Roger particularly put in a lot of ground work for my visits to Hamilton and Rotorua.

We owed much to the Parker case. What could be happening in New Zealand when a woman who had won an appeal lost £230 a year and her supervisory position? It brought a wave of public support. It also, I believe, brought greater unity among Association members. An aftermath of the case was Prime Minister Holland's invitation to women's organisations belonging to the National Council of Women to take morning tea with him.

For the first time I met women, many of them older than me, who, without the backing of a wealthy organisation like the PSA, had been battling for years for a better deal for women in many areas. For people like Challis Hooper, Vera May, Nessie Moncrieff, Peg Hutchison, Patricia Webb, and Margaret Hayman, a government Equal Pay Act was only one point in a slow and continuous scraping at the walls of ignorance, prejudice and male power. Through meeting representatives of the Maori Women's Welfare League like Mira Petricevic (Szaszy) and Joan Stone, I learned that if we, as European women, were badly off, Maori women had additional burdens to bear. As a group, Maori women workers were the most poorly paid sector in the workforce. Inadvertently, the Prime Minister had laid the first stone for the Council for Equal Pay and Opportunity.

A few trade unions joined the infant Council for Equal Pay and Opportunity. Tony Neary brought in the electrical and the rubber workers, and George Hobbs the local bodies officers. At different times we had support from the Engineers and the Storemen and Packers Unions. I used to visit trade union secretaries to try and enlist their unions into the council, but not with much success. The militant unions of the day — drivers, watersiders, carpenters, freezing workers and seamen — had one award so that any women employed there would receive male rates. The reality, however, was that these were male bastions which women were not then ready to challenge. On the other hand, Shop Assistants and Clerical Workers Unions had high proportions of 4 page 5 women workers, but in the 1950s they were not forcefully demanding equal rates. This changed in the 1960s when Des Nolan of the Clerical Workers Union was an active member of the Council and an architect of the 1972 Equal Pay Act.

Of the other state unions only the Post Primary Teachers Association was actually active. Julia Wallace, their representative on the council, was particularly involved in the committee which worked out the implications and detail of the act. The primary teachers' representative attended sometimes, but in a detached manner. In the late 1950s the Post Office Union and the three railway unions seemed either not interested in or opposed to equal pay and opportunity. Their women workers were in such lowly positions that the possibility of a better status did not seem to have occurred to them. The New Zealand Registered Nurses Association was a foundation member of the council but to the horror of the then president, Challis Hooper, and myself, withdrew in the early months. They said that they did not consider the council's activities — for instance, organising questions to be asked at pre-election meetings — appropriate for an organisation which had to negotiate with the government on pay and conditions. It has been heartening to observe their recent militancy.

Today I greatly admire the way in which many women's groups run their affairs by consensus, avoiding the tight-knit structures and rules of male organisations but achieving the desired level of efficiency. In my time in the PSA, women strove to prove themselves 'as good as men' in meeting procedures. I went to two public speaking courses, was conversant with the PSA constitution and rules of meeting, as well as with parliamentary procedures which were there to fall back on. We knew how to challenge the chair, move that the meeting pass on to the next business, move an amendment to an amendment and call a point of order. Taking the male structures and methods as the norm, we proceeded to prove ourselves equal to handling the norm. Ignoring or bypassing these was not something we thought to do. It would have merely confirmed a suspicion that women were not ready for equality!

Young people sometimes ask, 'Did public service women get equal pay by themselves?' We no more won equal pay by ourselves than New Zealand women won the vote by themselves in 1893. If there had not been a sufficient number of men in powerful positions in the PSA convinced that equal pay was a just cause, we would have made little progress. Women acted as persuaders — of their colleagues at work, of their PSA section committees and of the national executive. This meant that an act was achieved sooner rather than later. Certain key men in the PSA, all left wing in politics, particularly Jack Lewin, Geoff Sorrell, Jim Ferguson, Dan Long, Terry Hogan and Barry Tucker, supported equal pay. This made the goal realistic and acceptable. May Palmer had been one of the two executive vice-presidents of the PSA in 1934–35 but in the 1950s there were no women in control positions in the Association structure, staff or honorary. I was the nearest, being defeated once as vice-chair of the Wellington section and narrowly defeated once as an executive officer of the NZPSA.

Jim Ferguson, who when president was never interested in the trappings of power nor in the 'correct channels', sometimes invited a woman to accompany page 6 the executive officers to the Prime Minister or to the Public Service Commission. He said this was to let us see for ourselves the obstacles in the way. This path was open to us only by invitation. The other way, and we certainly used it, was to have gatherings with the four women MPs, three Labour and one National. All four supported equal pay. The women on the executive (a peak number of four) also voted together on equal pay issues, though on other issues this was not necessarily so.

Of the late Jack Turnbull, General Secretary of the PSA until 1960, I can say that in my first years of involvement in Association affairs, I was dismayed at the lack of his wholehearted support. Looking back, I believe that once he realised the seriousness of the Association's commitment to equal pay, he threw his fine intellect and his energies into the campaign. Two court cases he was responsible for initiating, the Moss case on seniority and the Parker appeal, were crucial elements in the campaign. His ingenuity in getting the Equal Pay Bill drafted and introduced was considerable. His work on the Implementation Committee in laying down the general structures and details of equal pay in the State Services was admirable.

Although a number of the women working on the equal pay campaign in my time were married, I can recall only one with a young family. This was Alison Tallulei whose Samoan sisters-in-law took it in turn to look after Alison's young children. Very few women indeed worked after the birth of their first child, although a number, including myself, worked until late in their first pregnancy. We were not looking at the total life of women, but only at their current period of work. Concern with their life after children had to wait for a later wave of women activists. I recall one ludicrous example of how far some were prepared to go in trying to ensure exact equality between men and women if equal pay was to be introduced. A motion was moved in the Wellington section from the Government Print Group that women should forgo the maternity benefit if equal pay was introduced. The motion moved by the only woman in the Print Group was defeated but it had a number of supporters.

The fact that the campaigns of 1955–60 actually resulted in statutory changes was a wonderful conclusion. This did not mean that we worked harder than previous campaigners, just that combinations of circumstances inside and outside the service made the time ripe. ('The time is not yet ripe' was probably the most constantly used response to our calls for equal pay.)

Finally, I am delighted that the Public Service Association decided to commemorate the 25th anniversary of equal pay by commissioning Margaret Corner to write this history. Later historians will naturally question interpretations, but the fact that this book is published is the important thing. The story of the vote for New Zealand women was known to many generations through the two or three lines afforded it by William Pember Reeves in his history of New Zealand. This was repeated by later historians, until the whole struggle and women's major part in it was retrieved by Patricia Grimshaw. I am very pleased that the story of equal pay in the government service in New Zealand has been retrieved while many of the participants arc still living.

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