Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 6. April 4 1977

WRAC report

WRAC report

Saturday's meeting of the Women's Rights Action Group, was marred by the lack of debate. Apart from a mild attack from the Auckland Women's Rights Officer on National office in relation to the timing of the meeting, most proposals for action met little opposition.

This was probably due to the lack of any real organisation on most of the campuses and the timing of the meeting. However the womens rights representatives present from Otago, Victoria, Auckland and Waikato all seemed enthusiastic and future activity looks promising.

Proposals for action centered round the report of the Koyan commission on contraception, Voluntary Sterilisation and Abortion, which is to be released publicly on the 18th and 19th April. Discussion centred round the need to bring students' attention to the "abortion question" and to emphasise that the delaying of the Gill Bill for one year is only a breathing space, not a victoyr.

Another important proposal for action was centred round the Domestic Purposes Benefit To women, the Domestic Purposes Benefit makes the difference between being able to keep their children or having to give them up for adoption; being able to leave a relationship or being forced to stay because of financial hardship. The D.P.B. is barely adequate and usually must be supplemented by part-time work. Access to the benefit is jealously guarded and the Social Welfare Department at present seems to expect that once a woman is having a sexual relationship with a man, then he should support her. An example of this was in the Dominion on Friday March 25, in which two people in Hamilton claimed that they had been approached by members of the Social Welfare Department and had been asked to sign a declaration stating they would only have sexual relations once a fortnight.

In October of last year, many different organisations made submissions to the Government's special committee on the benefit. As the results of the report are very important to the lives of many solo parents, especially women, we felt at the meeting that it should be made public.

It was also felt that the whole issue of Domestic PUrposes Benefit should receive wider attention from University students. To this end we discussed the possibility of having a speaker from the Single Mother and her Child, a letter-writing campaign, and approaching the N.Z. Association of Social Workers.

During the afternoon, WRAC was addressed by three invited speakers. First was Therese O'Connell, organiser for the Wellington clerical Workers Union. This served a useful purpose in focussing attention on the wages Student Associations. Next was Geraldine Whiteford, National Co-ordinator of Working Women:s Alliance, who spoke about the Waorking Women's Alliance Prices Week.

The final speaker was Sue Green, Research Officer for the Pacific Women's Resource Centre in Suva