The Work of the Maori Women’s Welfare League

By 1954, there were 303 branches and 3842 members in the MWWL. The league’s influence went well beyond formal membership, with many Maori (and numbers of pakeha) women working informally with its branches. The branches, too, had a great deal of interaction with other groups and individuals, Maori and pakeha. There was also much networking between the branches and district councils (whose numbers had quickly increased), whereas other Maori women’s organisations generally remained locally or area orientated. Taken together, it was clear that Maori women, especially those who were educated and/or making proactive efforts to adapt to modernity, were increasingly prominent in running the affairs of their people – whether in tribes, sub-tribes or whanau, or in newer collectivities. This trend became more pronouncedpage 73 as educational opportunities improved for women in urban environments. Maori women leaders often brought new perspectives on ways of progressing Maoridom, and Maharaia Winiata noted that a number of Maori women leaders were ‘assuming the role of mediators and representatives vis-a-vis the Europeans’.

The MWWL constitution worked well, despite the misgivings of some about state financial and ‘moral’ support. Based on flaxroots activity but with ongoing coordination from higher representative levels, the central secretariat and annual conferences, the MWWL quickly became a highly influential body both within Maoridom and in representing it. With the absence of regional and national layers in the MWO’s committee machinery, the league became the main arena of discussion for issues of regional or nationwide significance – such as education, health and housing – for the rest of the decade. Although its constitution declared it to be non-partisan and non-political, it did what it needed to do to represent Maori women and their concerns to officialdom and politicians. As these concerns often had strong resonances with those held by Maori men as well, the MWWL became a powerful voice for Maori causes in general. Government and officials treated its annual conferences and their resolutions seriously. Throughout each year, its headquarters acted as a vibrant clearing-house for ideas, a number of them provoking or embarrassing the Crown.

But the MWWL did need to operate within parameters that generally reflected, or did not fundamentally challenge, the dominant culture and the interest and worldview of the state. Its main emphasis, for example, was on improving Maori family life and upholding values which were also generally those of pakeha leaders and society. Cooper urged Maori women to ‘take their rightful place as leaders in the homes of our people. Take care of your children, see to their education, make the home the centre of your family life, be real helpmates to your husbands and assist them in their efforts to provide happy and contented homes’. The league, in short, assisted Maori to adjust to modern conditions, with similar goals (and sometimes methods) as the Crown; it acted as a welfarist (and, from the Crown’s perspective, cheap) complement to ‘the welfare state’.

Families not coping well with the adjustment to urban living or modernity were often helped by the MWWL in a variety of practical ways. Its members assisted poor families by providing basic necessities, raised money to educate and clothe needy children, and gave budgeting advice. Over the years, the MWWL promoted (among other things) good parenting, immunisation, mental well-being, training programmes for the unemployed, increased electoral enrolment, the playcentre movement and housing improvements. It took an ‘active interest in all matters pertaining to the health and general well-being ofpage 74 women and children of the Māori race’. In essence, the principal thrust of the league’s activities gelled with state assimilationist values and goals. The Crown was particularly interested in how the MWWL could assist adaptation to the post-war world, especially in the cities.

Here the league helped both to tackle problems arising from the visibility of Maori in the cities and towns, and to address social difficulties arising from urban adjustment. An important part of its early work dealt with racial discrimination. The Maori women of the MWWL were often aided by pakeha women members and associates, a reflection of their constitution’s aim of promoting ‘understanding between Maori and European women’ as well as of a growing liberal trend in non-Maori society. The league also worked closely with Maori Affairs officials, particularly the welfare officers, both male and female. And while the ultimate Crown goal remained assimilation, the league promoted Maoritanga and teaching te reo Maori/the Maori language in schools.

A particularly pressing issue for the MWWL was that of improving housing in both urban and rural spaces. Welfare officers increasingly concentrated their work on the provision of modern housing, while MWWL members gave instruction in the ‘care and maintenance of home and garden’. In 1947, Prime Minister Fraser had acknowledged that despite a Maori housing drive at least half of all Maori housing was of insufficient quality, and the problem continued despite the subsequent economic boom. In 1951, Auckland’s school medical officer investigated ‘dirty and neglected’ children in the large urban Maori community in Freeman’s Bay and concluded that the most significant causes related to overcrowded living. In its early days, the league made the difficulty of finding affordable, decent urban accommodation a central campaigning issue. Cooper lobbied Corbett and secured resources for a broad survey of Maori housing in Auckland, and this confirmed widespread substandard housing and squalor. The results gave the MWWL a firm platform for many representations in governmental and bureaucratic circles. Improvements of various types gradually eventuated, with slums demolished and quotas of state and council housing for Maori increased. The Crown was among those parties which acknowledged the beneficial results of the efforts it had been pressured into making. Housing crusades assisted not only individuals or families, but also helped further the government’s promotion among Maoridom of what an official called (in 1957) ‘civic responsibilities [to] live up to normal European standards’.⁵

Because of the MWWL’s successes, especially with aiding the needy and working with those attempting to adjust to city life, the state came to give it a great deal of supervisory and welfare work that had formerly been mostly within the province of the tribal committees. Indeed, DMA officials eventually considered the MWWL to be, in effect, the female counterpart to the tribal committees and executives – and some believed that it had been established bypage 75 the department for this very purpose, albeit with a subordinate role to that of the official structure. The league was said to have been ‘created to assist tribal committees on aspects of welfare which are the prerogative of women’, namely activities which ‘are centred on the house and all its aspects’. The MWWL had only been ‘born as a voluntary body with a constitution of its own’, wrote the Assistant Secretary of Maori Affairs in 1955, because it was ‘beyond the normal exercise of prudence to have two distinct organisations function separately under the same Act’.

The Maori Women’s Welfare League has been variously interpreted as an agency of autonomous operation, as a quasi-Crown body, or as some kind of combination of the two. It was voluntarist and genuinely flaxroots in terms of its everyday operations, and its constitution ostensibly gave it independence from the Crown. Winiata concluded that the league could ‘be seen as an illustration of the general urge to self-determination which had also produced the Ratana movement’, Kingitanga, ‘cultural revivals in various districts’ and other expressions of Maori autonomy and assertions of rangatiratanga. But as observers have frequently noted, the MWWL came into existence with extensive state assistance and, indeed, under its patronage. The Crown provided its administrative support, and the league worked closely with the (especially female) welfare officers of the MWO/Welfare Division. Among the leading Maori who advised the MWWL and attended its conferences were long-time bureaucrats such as Michael Rotohiko Jones. In 1952, the league invited DMA and Health Department representatives to join its executive, ex officio.

The MWWL’s increasing capacity to access project-based government funding brought danger that its activities might be skewed to suit state needs. The state, seeing great usefulness in the league and its work, was careful to avoid appearing too overbearing. The DMA denied, for example, ‘any thought whatever of attempting to say, in any way, how the League should do its work’. But, with the MWWL’s Secretary-Treasurer an employee of the DMA, it had to insist that the league’s funds qualified as ‘public moneys’ and that standard ‘western’ accounting procedures be followed. Clearly the league was not fully independent of ‘the Maori Affairs’ and its intensive monitoring and ‘guidance’. An authorised chronicler of its activities has said that the MWWL was a ‘quasi-voluntary organisation … more or less formed by government officials, and it constituted an integral part of the department’s welfare organisation’. A Maori scholar later wrote that while the league was ‘born out of Māori enthusiasm and initiative, it was often perceived as a vehicle for the aims of the Māori Social and Economic Advancement Act 1945 and too closely linked with the Department of Māori Affairs’.⁶

On the other hand, the league’s work would have been much diminished without governmental support. Cooper found in Corbett a source of ‘muchpage 76 help and encouragement’. In 1953, she thanked him for the ‘personal interest’ he had shown in the MWWL: ‘We know that without your sanction and deep understanding of our basic problems and the help of your Department, our organisation would not have flourished as it has done in the past two years.’ In the DMA’s assessment, the costs and difficulties involved in supporting the league sometimes outweighed the advantages of its addressing significant socio-racial issues. At times, indeed, officials appeared keen to abandon support for the MWWL. In June 1953, the Secretary for Maori Affairs enquired as to whether the league would be ‘in the happy position’ of assuming ‘complete autonomy’: the ‘Department is happy to continue its assistance to the League, but the thought is that the League should work toward its fulfilment in handling fully its own affairs’. Cooper responded hotly: ‘It would appear from your letter that the department is somewhat anxious to get rid of this organisation’, but the league ‘cannot be considered anything other than an auxiliary organisation to the Department and to the Welfare Division’.

Cooper argued that her league’s work assisted both parties equally. The league was ‘entitled to whatever the department is able to give us since our work is basic and fundamental to all phases of Maori life’. While the objective was that the league should eventually achieve full independence from state assistance, this should only be when it decided that was possible: ‘financially the league is not yet ready’. The MWWL would continue in the following years to insist on Crown assistance and argue that it was premature to disassociate itself from government. At the 1955 annual conference, Cooper invited Corbett to ‘just say yes to our wants’, prompting a lecture from the minister about the difference between wants and needs.