‘My hero was Tarzan’
Childhood in a small Malayan village helped shape what Gill Greer calls her “accidental career” on the world stage.
A childhood in a small Malayan village helped shape what Gill Greer calls her “accidental career” on the world stage.
Gill Greer was a toddler when she and older brother Michael moved to Malaya with their parents, John, a civil engineer, and Pauline, a journalist. That move had an unexpected and tragic outcome for the family but influenced career choices that led Greer into international advocacy.
A runner-up in a Miss New Zealand contest, Greer excelled academically, graduating from the University of Auckland aged only 19. She taught for two decades and became a convert to the work of Katherine Mansfield and Robin Hyde, writing several books about them.
Greer was the head of the Family Planning Association of New Zealand before moving to London in 2006 to become director-general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She oversaw an annual budget of US$125 million, with 300 services delivered every minute to women in 189 countries. US President Donald Trump is now targeting the organisation for funding cuts because of its pro-choice policies.
Recognised in
2012 by the British Government for services to international health and women’s rights, Greer was appointed a CBE. She became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2005 for services to family planning and literature. A mother of two and grandmother of four, she is just about to step down after five years as head of Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA), based in Wellington. She plans to travel in Europe with her partner, playwright Lorae Parry.
How did your accidental career start?
When I left school, the choices were to be a teacher, maybe a journalist if you were lucky, a nurse or a secretary. That was about it. When I was at university, there was one female graduate at the law school and no female engineers. I recently spoke to Engineers Without Borders and there were a great number of women in the room. VSA’s young female engineers from Downer Group to [international professional services company] GHD are amazing and a model for young women in the Solomons, so the change is continuing. I became a teacher, and I love teaching and I owe it all sorts of things. Then as a solo mother, still teaching, a number of things happened that I didn’t expect. I detested Katherine Mansfield when I was at school, but when I went to Wellington Girls’ College, I had to teach about their most famous old girl. I picked up [Mansfield’s husband] John Middleton Murry’s version of her letters and her journal, highly edited by him as I found out later, and I found a completely different woman from the one I had met at school.
So, you were hooked?
Yes, and I went to the Alexander Turnbull Library and looked at what was there.
The immediacy of seeing her writing, her tear blots on the page when she discovers her husband is having an affair with Princess Bibesco, her writing “I cry as I write – it is hard to make a good death” changed my life, and I made a film with Sue Kedgley and Julienne Stretton [ A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield]. I wrote a couple of books that were translated, I travelled around the world talking about her, so that was
“When I left school, the choices were to be a teacher, a journalist if you were lucky, a nurse or a secretary. That was about it.”
an accident and led me into all sorts of things I would not otherwise have done, such as Beauty and the Beast [1970s and 80s New Zealand “agony aunt” panel discussion television series].
You had a rather privileged life in Malaya as a small girl. How did that shape your sense of social justice?
In a tiny village called Gemas, which is on the railway line between Singapore and Malaya, we had one of just four large houses. My father was in the railways as an engineer in the dying days of the British Raj. It was during the communist emergency and my closest friend – this sounds very colonial, and it was – was our cook’s daughter. She and I played together. But when I went out with my mother on the streets of Gemas, I realised my life was very different from the people around me. But I was very happy there. There is that wonderful saying of actress Geena Davis about how “if girls can see it, girls can be it”. Well, my hero was Tarzan. I tried to swing from tree to tree and do all those sorts of things.
What happened to your brother?
Michael was a year and a half older than me and I adored him. He was in Malaya when we were living in Ipoh, prior to Gemas. He said to my mother, “I can’t see well, I have headaches”, but my father said, “Don’t mollycoddle him.” It was not easy in those days to find good medical care – the country was not what it is now – and he was diagnosed with a tumour on the brain. We were to fly to London for treatment, which was a long haul in those days, but he died in his sleep the night before we were to leave. By the time we moved to Gemas, I was the only child. Michael was eight when he died.
How was the rest of your childhood?
At eight, I was sent to boarding school in New Zealand. No Tarzan, no mother. I guess that is when I learnt to be resilient and eventually that you can’t be liked by everyone.
Now that you’re stepping down from VSA, how will your voice be heard?
I would like to blog more, but will anyone read it? I’d like to continue to mentor
“There is that wonderful saying of actress Geena Davis about how ‘if girls can see it, girls can be it’.”
young women and sometimes young men, too. I worked for a principal once who described herself as a “queen maker”, and that has always stayed with me, so I hope to be able to work with younger women in relation to their own journeys around leadership.
Is there another book in you?
Yes, I have a couple in me. I wrote a book about George W Bush years ago, which I never published. It was written with Noel Harrison, a dear friend who has since died. I want to take a couple of those chapters and do a Trump overlay and say, “If you thought it was tough then, this is going to be tougher.” Also, with my unusual childhood, I would like to talk about some of the people and places and things that have mattered to me.
And whose books interest you?
The books by the bedside are On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town, by Susan Herrmann Loomis – I won’t be able to restore an old house as she and her husband did, but I can manage some of her recipes. There’s also Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, by Anne Sebba. The juxtaposition of the period and place and the desperation and quiet courage of so many women’s lives have always fascinated me. Lorae and I are doing a week-long intensive French course in Paris, so not surprisingly the third book in the pile is a French phrasebook – three new phrases a night.
Where else in France are you going?
We are going to a village south of Toulouse where the movie The Hundred-Foot Journey with Helen Mirren was filmed. It’s quite different from Menton, where I’ve spent time because of Mansfield. Part of this is my transition from full-time work to contracting. When I tried doing it last time, I read a good book called Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges, about how to manage change in your life. I thought I had nailed it last time with a couple of weeks in Villefranche, so this time I am going to take a bit longer, start writing, go for long walks and get reading for the next phase.