Women and the Law in N.Z. 1975 by Pauline Vaver and Kaye Turner published by Hicks Smith and Sons Ltd.

Reviewed by Diane Hooper

If you're a female, Women and the Law in N.Z. is a book that you should keep on the same shelf as your dictionary. It is full of useful and, in fact, necessary information that pertains in particular to female survival in this country.

Women and men live in a deadly bureaucratic and legalistic world. However men in the past have been the better equipped to hurdle the legalistic and bureaucratic barriers that crop up from time to time in one's life. Men are the more 'worldly", the better educated, the more experienced. A woman's worldly education stops short when she is bound to unpaid baby minding and house caring. Most women in New Zealand are placed in invidious and impotent positions by the nature of nuclear family marriage situations. Women and the Law in N.Z. if it is read by those most needy, will help women to clarify their positions from a legal point of view and thus help themselves at least to a better deal in society.

Since no-one can dispute that women have an equal right to knowledge and opportunity in any society it must follow that the appearance of this book, the first of its kind in N.Z. should be heralded. It is rather worrying though, to consider that the very women to whom this book is most important in N.Z., more often won't than will be able to afford the purchase. There are many married women with children who cannot and do not spend precious housekeeping money on books however politically relevant and practical the publication may be. Women and the Laic in N.Z. will probably grace many a bourgeois bookshelf giving many already liberated women even larger advantages over their poorer more oppressed sisters.

It is a great pity in western countries that governments do not provide "community texts" that aim to teach at the most fundamental levels the most fundamental skills needed by adults in living life today. Life is no longer simple. The uneducated and the uninitiated miss out on their rights by the sheer lack of knowledge that they may have any at all. It is a pity that Women and the Law in N.Z. could not have published as a government subsidised text. To have to pay when you cannot afford to for knowledge of ones legal rights is a farcical situation.

Although this book would be most usefully read by overtly oppressed women, it is not a book that stops at this point in its usefulness. Did you know for example that a man is legally obliged to sufficiently maintain his wife and children; that if he does not, the wife may apply to the court for a maintenance order whether she is separated from him or not? Did you know that a girl under 17 who has intercourse may be deemed delinquent and placed under the care of the Social Welfare Department? That housewives who are financially dependent on their husbands can claim in the event of injury from the Accident Compensation Scheme? That if you are single, more than six months pregnant and unsupported you can apply for a sickness benefit? If your employer is not giving you equal pay he could be convicted and fined a maximum $1000 fine? Also that there are over 30,000 working women in N.Z. and only less than 150 child care centres of various types to care for their children? A chapter on marriage describes how in the event of a breakdown in marriage a woman may successfully claim an interest in any of her husbands property that she has indirectly contributed towards. This may refer to her unpaid household services or any unreceipted financial loans or contributions.

The chapter on contraception and abortion is rather too brief. The editors adhere rigorously to the legal information, giving little, if any wider advice on this important topic. To the woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, or to the girl who is too afraid to approach a doctor for contraceptives, this chapter rather unfortunately offers little solace.

Despite the general excellence of Women and the Law in N.Z. it falls short in a typically Pakeha way. New Zealand continues to possess a number of first language Maori speakers many who, in the increasing move to our urban areas, would find such a book invaluable if published in Maori. Recently a Consumers' Rights book was printed by the Government both in English and Maori. This was a first. There is a lack of regard for the possible publication of informative books such as Women and the Law in N.Z., in Maori. New Zealand has also, a large and increasing Island population many of whom have only a skeletal knowledge of the English language. Such a book as Women and the Law in N.Z. should be rewritten in both Maori and some Island languages. To deny women in minority groups the same opportunities that women as a sub-group of the human race are denied by men, is ludicrous.

Just as there is a need for Women and the Law in N.Z. so too, when all is said and one, is there a need for many books of its kind in this country. As a follow up. The Maori and the Law in N.Z. is a title worth suggesting. Or perhaps Everyman and the Law in N.Z. would be even more appropriate, especially if it were introduced into high school liberal studies classes, or widely distributed as a subsidised national text.