Biographical essays on some three hundred prominent women of New Zealand.

What would a history of New Zealand look like that rejected Thomas Carlyle’s definition of history as ‘the biography of great men’, and focused instead on the experiences of women? One that shifted the angle of vision and examined the stages of this country’s development from the points of view of wives, daughters, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and aunts? That considered their lives as distinct from (though often unwillingly influenced by) those of history’s ‘great men’? In her ground-breaking History of New Zealand Women, Barbara Brookes provides just such a history. This is more than an account of women in New Zealand, from those who arrived on the first waka to the Grammy and Man Booker Prize-winning young women of the current decade. It is a comprehensive history of New Zealand seen through a female lens. Brookes argues that while European men erected the political scaffolding to create a small nation, women created the infrastructure necessary for colonial society to succeed. Concepts of home, marriage and family brought by settler women, and integral to the developing state, transformed the lives of Māori women. The small scale of New Zealand society facilitated rapid change so that, by the twenty-first century, women are no longer defined by family contexts. In her long-awaited book, Barbara Brookes traces the factors that drove that change. Her lively narrative draws on a wide variety of sources to map the importance in women’s lives not just of legal and economic changes, but of smaller joys, such as the arrival of a piano from England, or the freedom of riding a bicycle.

Girl of New Zealand presents a nuanced insight into the way violence and colonial attitudes shaped the representation of Māori women and girls. Michelle Erai examines more than thirty images of Māori women alongside the records of early missionaries and settlers in Aotearoa, as well as comments by archivists and librarians, to shed light on how race, gender, and sexuality have been ascribed to particular bodies. Viewed through Māori, feminist, queer, and film theories, Erai shows how images such as Girl of New Zealand (1793) and later images, cartoons, and travel advertising created and deployed a colonial optic. Girl of New Zealand reveals how the phantasm of the Māori woman has shown up in historical images, how such images shape our imagination, and how impossible it has become to maintain the delusion of the “innocent eye.” Erai argues that the process of ascribing race, gender, sexuality, and class to imagined bodies can itself be a kind of violence. In the wake of the Me Too movement and other feminist projects, Erai’s timely analysis speaks to the historical foundations of negative attitudes toward Indigenous Māori women in the eyes of colonial “others”—outsiders from elsewhere who reflected their own desires and fears in their representations of the Indigenous inhabitants of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Erai resurrects Māori women from objectification and locates them firmly within Māori whānau and communities.

The definitive account of the New Zealand suffrage movement, Women's Suffrage in New Zealand remains the only study of how New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote. It tells the fascinating story of the courage and the determination of the early New Zealand feminists led by the remarkable Kate Sheppard, whose ideas and attitudes still resonate today.

This book is written for the New Zealand context. The simplest questions are answered, from deciding to have a baby through to the first months of a child's life. Medical knowledge is clearly presented and a full range of issues is addressed - from what kind of nappies, advantages of breastfeeding or bottle-feeding, to choosing between homebirth or hospital birth. How you feel in this book is as important as what you do. Topics include: development of the foetus, your changing body, services before and after birth, ante-natal and post-natal visits, options for care and delivery, cloths, baby clothes and equipment, feeding and hygiene, coping with other commitments at work or within the family, and useful New Zealand organisations.

"This book explains the ambiguities of wartime changes in the private and public lives of New Zealand women. It considers women as mothers, wives and lovers, as well as workers, using many examples from real lives. Deborah Montgomerie's main argument is that despite the changes, the war was essentially a conservative period, pointing out that understanding the continuities in gender relations is as important as cataloguing female 'firsts'. Her book stylishly challenges accepted wisdom and offers a clear, fresh view of a period often viewed through the blurry lens of nostalgia and anecdote."--BOOK JACKET.

Despite what happened at Lord's in 2019, New Zealand has won a Cricket World Cup. It was at Lincoln in December 2000 that New Zealand beat Australia to win the Women's World Cup. The first recorded cricket match in New Zealand between teams of women had been played in the Wairarapa as long ago as 1867 and the New Zealand women played their first Test match in 1935. In 2014 Debbie Hockley became the second New Zealander after Sir Richard Hadlee to be inducted into the International Cricket Council Hall of Fame.This is the story of women's cricket in New Zealand, from its earliest humble origins to its glory days on the international stage. It is also the story of the women who have come to be recognised amongst the very best in the world at their sport. It is the story of a game played for the sheer love of it, and of the hard work of the dedicated souls who built and sustained women's cricket, often in the face of challenge and adversity. Most of all it is the story of every woman who relished the warm sun on her face as she enjoyed the