‘You’re nothing if you can’t vote’
When I started as Women’s Editor for Southland News in 1962, I was the only female in the office. There wasn’t even a toilet I could use, I had to go down two flights of stairs and out past the printing presses for one I could use.
Eventually, I just started using the men’s one upstairs.
They got so used to me doing that, that they would bang on the door and say ‘Pat, phone!’
My role as Women’s Editor was to compile stories of interest to women. Anything about education, recipes, travel, nursing, health, kindergartens, weddings, funerals, home, fashion and families.
Fewer women were working then, so the concentration on home and family was real.
And just as there is a dedicated sport section at the back, back then there was a dedicated women’s section in the middle.
I come from a family of people who write, with five brothers – four of whom are in journalism.
We were all at various stages of journalism so we weren’t all cluttering up papers with the same surname at the same time.
To a certain extent, not a lot has changed in journalism.
There are all the physical changes that are enormous.
I didn’t write on slate, but we did write in pen and paper. And you bought your own typewriter and paid it off with your pay.
The snap of typewriter’s keys is something I miss from the newsroom. As technology developed and computers took over, newsrooms became quieter and quieter.
But here is something that hasn’t changed.
The point of the paper is to connect us all to the community.
Establishing connections and maintaining them, that’s what a newspaper does.
We are still telling the news the same and we are still finding the same sort of stories.
The Women’s Editor is not around anymore, but it has just evolved.
A lot of those specialist roles are gone. Farm editor, sports editor, racing editor – they’ve all evolved down and reporters are picking up more.
Regardless of the titles, the job of being a reporter is the same thing – finding out things and reporting them.
When I was the only woman in the newsroom, I think I was one of the best paid women in Invercargill.
And by the 1970s, there were lots of women in journalism, and more getting into roles once only a man would hold.
Women won the right to vote 125 years ago, but I think it was quite a while before the full impact of the suffrage movement came in.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was a movement that began in the United States in the 1800s, when people were appalled at the amount of drinking in pubs.
Some would be drinking away their small pay packet and that led to a lot of needless poverty.
When it came to New Zealand, it gathered a lot of support in Invercargill, Gore and Lumsden, amongst other places.
Kate Sheppard led the New Zealand union, and from that the push for suffrage came.
They weren’t for prohibition, because they knew there would be a backlash, but rather for temperance or moderation in drinking. They weren’t anti-man but anti-booze.
Women realised if they had a vote, they had a say in the country. You’re nothing if you can’t vote.
Once the vote came in, Kate Sheppard formed the National Council of Women – the organisation that still exists to reflect the views of New Zealand women. I joined it when I first joined a newspaper. I went to a meeting of theirs in 1962, and I was amazed at these women who were so well-read and so wellreasoned.
They were working towards the fair-play in equal society that I had always believed was right. So I joined them and I am now a life member.
They would, and still do, look at every bill going through Parliament, looking at it through the lens of a woman.
It’s difficult for us to get a totally united view on everything. Because although we are women, we all have different views on lots of things.
I find it hard to understand why people think, that just because women wanted the vote, they would have hairy legs and be burning bras. People think of those women to be rowdy, yelling and aggressive.
But when I look at Kate Sheppard, I see an attractive lady.
And when I look at people in the National Council of Women, I see very reasonable and balanced people.
I see the sort of women now that impressed me 55 years ago.
They are all gone, but now I am one of those women.