Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977
The Same System
The Same System
New Zealand is facing an economic crisis, the magnitude of which I believe is not yet imagined by most people As a result of this, women are again being placed in a position where they are being brutally utilised by the powers of big-business in this country to "assist" New Zealand to "tighten it's belt".
Women are the unpaid and unnoticed unemployed. They are the people who don't show up on the statistics. Solo mothers are being presented to the public of New Zealand as the real reason for the recession. They are being hounded back into unsatisfactory relationships. The call is going out from all the conservative elements in the country for women to get back to the home.
The Royal Commission's report and the efforts of those who wish to deny women the control of their own bodies are part of this same scenario.
In New Zealand women have been fighting in an organised way for the right to control their lives since the late
1960's. Already the majority of New Zealanders support their position, and the position of women has been improved. Ranged against them, they have a pressure group as well financed and politically entreched as the liquor lobby.
When we celebrate Suffer age day, we remind ourselves of the women who gave so much of themselves for our rights. We can feel confident that the eventual outcome of out campaign will be successful. We can say to ourselves, we have only just begun.
-Lisa Sacksen.