Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 2. March 5 1979

New Zealand Working Women in the C19th

New Zealand Working Women in the C19th

In New Zealand's earliest colonial days there was very little factory legislation to protect factory workers from extreme exploitation. The worst cases of exploitation caused by economic lawlessness were those of women and girls in the clothing industry. Extensive unemployment, the absence of any trade union or social security system and competition for work forced wages to starvation levels. The workers would spend a long day in the factory and then carry a pile of work home to work on until the early hours.

The lot of working class women was, of course, inextricably linked to the lot of the working class generally. The working class movement in New Zealand at this time was comparitively weak, but it wasn't long before they began to organise. One of the first important working class organisations was the Knights of Labour, formed like a friendly society lodge into districts and branches "for the purpose of organising, educating, and directing the power of the masses without distinction of trade or craft". Both men and women could join and many women did. They combined with the rather conservative craft unionists and the several associations of women to form a broad, largely working class and small farmer movement that was primarily responsible for the improvement in social conditions of people in New Zealand, including the protection of women and their partial emancipation.