QUARTERLY WINTER/HOTOKE 1997 $10 ISSUE 214 Property of the Auckland College of Education Library. iPlease do not remove from the library. 25r fl BIRTHDAY ISSUE! A fabulous final fling from New Zealand’s own feminist m a g a zine amousyeministsyarewell Broadsheet PAM CORKERY SANDRA LEE "The worst part about being on the 'left' "Twenty-five years of continuous publish­ side of politics is when opinion polls come ing a world record surely for a feminist out and Jim Bolger's one of the most magazine. For me, it seems there has al­ favoured political leaders. You feel kinda ways been Broadsheet. Every issue of lonely. The same problem lies with being a importance to women has been high­ feminist and reading th a t' Baywatch is the lighted, often to the irritation of the world's most popular programme. For that establishment. I think of issues raised by reason alone, Broadsheet has been pivotal Donna Awatere, by Phillida Bunkle and by in many feminist's lives; those of us who Sandra Coney. I think of the issues to do have revelled in the realisation that we're with education and employment. I recall not alone. Broadsheet has awakened the coverage given to women active in thought, given information, and often just literature, the arts and film. The list is end­ plain solace to New Zealand women of less. many ages. Long may its messages en­ In my opinion, the number of Maori d ure ." women in Parliament is in part due to the unremitting conscience prodding by Broad­ sheet So Broadsheet is dead, but long live feminism!" HELEN CLARK "Broadsheet played a very important role in the rise of feminism in New Zealand. It was bold and assertive in encouraging women to step out of the social constraints imposed on us. The fact that it is going out of print does not signal that there are no barriers for women to brush aside. Indeed there are plenty! But Broadsheet can be proud of its work in leading the way in articulating new perspectives for women over 25 years." Collective Comment Twenty-five years of Bro a d she e t magazine. In July 1972, a small group of women, fired up with the new ideas of an international Women's Liberation Movement, put together the first issue of Broadsheet, New Zealand's own feminist magazine. What were the issues in the early 1970s? Are they still issues now? Are there new ones? 9 Remember back when a woman couldn’t 9 Abortion was a biggie in the 1970s. Re­ get a mortgage, and had to have her husband’s member that poster of the woman signature to get Hire Purchase or a department haemorrhaging on the bathroom floor? Today store charge card? So many petty discrimina­ women in need (except West Coasters) have tions in law and in business practices. These access to safe legal abortions - and around days women’s money talks as loudly as men’s 12,000 a year do. [ASK FAMILY PLANNING] So - we get send credit cards in the mail and end clearly effective contraception and sex educa­ up with his debts as well as our own. tion are still important issues. 9 1972 was the year they passed the Equal 9 Just why was it that we wanted to get into Pay Act, ensuring that men and women doing the Northern Club instead of the KG Club? One the same job in the private sector would get the of the keys to women organising around their same pay. Of course it took a 15 year campaign own issues in the 1970s was women-only by women to get this. And 18 years later we space - and what a fuss that caused at first. It almost got them to pay women the same as became quite acceptably for a while - minding men for jobs requiring comparable skills. The the kids on consciousness raising night, drop­ Pay Equity Act was repealed within 3 months. ping Mum and male child under 13(11? 8?) o ff Equal Pay is still on the books, and still on the at the women’s music festival. In the 1990s cards, if there happens to be a guy doing the there’s a new angle on delineating women’s same job in the same firm and - in these spaces - who gets to decide what a ‘woman’ is. deunionised, privacy-protected times - you can find out what he’s being paid. 9 Early issues of Broadsheet have a lot of material of alternative family structures - ohus, 9 Sex role socialisation, sexist education and socialist communes, group living situations. education about sex were feminist issues. In Many of those involved in Women’s Liberation the 1990s girls know they have to do better were young married women with young chil­ than boys to get the same jobs. Girls no longer dren, and they were optimistic about finding stop trying to achieve in their mid teens be­ new ways of living with their men, something cause ‘girls don’t really need education’ and different from the nuclear patriarchal family. ‘intelligent women let the men win’, and the ’Ms’ caused a lot of fuss, but is now standard change is clear in the education statistics. The on all official forms. Miss, Mrs, Ms? - single, boys still goof o ff in school, and there are married or feminist? worrying suggestions that they’re the ones who now need a leg up. Still, after 25 years of 9 The Domestic Purposes Benefit legislation ‘Girls Can Do Anything’ the fastest way to find came through in 1973, partly in response to a feminist is to tell a girl she can’t. changing ideas about adoption, and a decade Broadsheet Winter / Hotoke 2 5th Birthday Issue 1997 1 after the divorce laws changed. Did it destroy the 9 Sexuality - an assertion of personal iden­ sanctity of the family? Yes, thank god. And a lot tity or still a minefield in the war between the o f its hypocracy too. When did you last hear the sexes? (However many there may now be.) We phrase ‘living in sin’? had a quick round to decide our Collective position on this one. Three days and several 9 As relationships and the family were a main lost friendships later, the consensus was.... focus of 'second wave’ analysis, there was a lot either way, Broadsheet’s idea of a brave new of talk about feminists being to blame for the feminist world was never male strippers. divorce rate. Probably true, since dissatisfied women currently initiate three-quarters of them. 9 Violence against women was a focus from Now divorce has become another rite o f passage the mid-1970s. Feminists named rape as and the talk is about marriage rates. Those violence, not rough sex. Feminists named 1970s feminist battles, personal and collective, wife-bashing and gave other women refuge. have changed the shape of the New Zealand Feminists said the word incest out loud and so family. Family law is slow to catch up, but Social many answered, 'It happened to me.' Pornog­ Welfare is catching on. Don’t forget Jenny raphy the theory, rape the practice. Ideas that Rankine’s marital advise (Broadsheet 212), for have changed the country’s thinking, but has official purposes, s/he is always ‘the flatmate’. it made New Zealand a safer place for women? Still the most dangerous time of a woman’s life 9 Yes, it’s the L word. Any good feminist could is when she leaves her man. be called a ‘hairy legged lesbian’ in the early days, but some gay women would have denied the F 9 The feminisation of poverty - there’s a lot word. Now the Topp Twins are in the Woman’s about it in this issue, as women and children Weekly, and the cultural/sexual/socio-economic bear the brunt o f economic downturn, unem­ significance of leg shaving has got very con­ ployment and job casualisation, as well as fused. Top sportsmen do it too. From label to cuts in state support. But it’s also a result of lifestyle in 25 years was a learning curve for inadequate personal and collective economic Broadsheet alright - especially during the Great provisions to support the wide-spread social Broadsheet Split in the late 1970s. A painful changes in the way we live and love. But why subject still for some and a Women’s Studies is it the men who are better o ff and the women essay topic for a new generation. They have the worse off after divorce? It’s the old story - the sympathy of one or two wrinklies on this Collec­ guys still aren’t pulling their weight in looking tive - it’s so much harder to seem radical these after their kids. days. 9 One issue that attracts intense ipterest 9 Another fraught area o f learning has been from young women now was barely around in around Broadsheet's coverage - or lack of it - of the 1970s - the complex and sometimes de­ issues for Maori women. There have been a few structive relationships between self-image and Maori women and women of colour on collective, food. Feminists then objected women’s bod­ and some serious efforts to publish more o f their ies being used to sell cars, and to padded writing. Perhaps the best of these was the serial up-lift bras (burned only in some media man’s publication of Maori Soveigntyhy Donna Awatere imagination). But Twiggy hadn t entirely taken - which significantly impacted on subscriptions.