Interview with Liz Millward: Why New Zealand?

Jennifer Roth is an Associate Professor in Jennifer Roth: Women’s Studies at Lakehead University. Congratulations on winning the 2009 CWSA/ ACÉF Book Prize. I loved your book, Women Roth joins in conversation with Liz Millward, in Imperial Airspace, 1922–1937 (McGill- an Associate Professor in the Women’s and Queen’s University Press, 2008). What drew Gender Studies Program at the University of you to the topic? Manitoba and the 2009 CWSA/ACÉF Book Prize Winner. Liz Millward: Thank you. A number of factors combined to bring this topic to my attention. The first is autobiographical. My father worked in the civil aviation industry, and before that both my mother and father worked in the Royal Canadian Air Force and Royal Air Force, respectively. Our lives were regulated by the rhythms of the civil aviation industry and it was dominated by men to the extent that women were almost completely excluded from performing any role except that of providing secretarial support. The very few who occasionally appeared were relentlessly criticized. But because of my mother’s experi- ence in the RCAF—not as a pilot—I knew that women could be involved in the vast infrastructure that supports flight. Growing up in England, I had also heard of Jean Batten and Amy Johnson, two of the pilots I discuss in the book. They were both fêted as national heroines during the 1930s, which made the lack of women in the present even more noticeable, at least to me. Academically, I was drawn to consid- er the place of women in British imperial air- space for three reasons. First, my master’s thesis examined the representation of some of the women who had been involved in civil aviation before the First World War in Canada and the U.S. That research indicated that, from the very beginnings of powered, con- trolled flight, women had tried to earn their living via aviation. So women did form part of the industry’s history: it was never a men-only space. Second, the existing literature about women in aviation tends to focus on the per- sonal characteristics of individual pilots. The

www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 119 literature resorts to popular psychology or examine the processes at work in creating biography as it tries to account for why par- this utterly male-dominated industry, which is ticular women managed to succeed in a field founded on masculinist ideas about the links which was dominated by men. Educational between power, dominance, technology, and experiences, class struggles, being the eldest progress, and which has been used as a tool child, a sporty temperament, a dominant fath- of imperial expansion and, significantly, col- er (or mother), resistance to racism, or having onial resistance. For many of us today, this (or not having) brothers (or sisters) have all industry determines our movements in the been wheeled out to “explain” the apparently sense of which destinations we can reach exceptional character of the inter-war woman in a timely fashion, and the recent chaos pilot (Falloon, 1999; Luff 2002; Gillies 2003; caused by the closure of European airspace Naughton 2004; Render 1992; Rich 1995). because of the volcanic ash cloud, as well as One of the worst examples of this approach is concerns over global warming, should at least Jean Batten: The Garbo of the Skies by Ian encourage us to wonder how this astonishing Mackersey (1990). In their recent discussion edifice came into being in the first place. As of Batten, Anne Collett and Clive Gilson feminist scholars we never assume that any remark that Mackersey’s “construction of realm is always already masculine or femin- Batten’s life relies heavily upon a psych- ine. We have to account for how they became ological interpretation of character and action defined as one or the other (rarely both at the that is largely removed from and uninformed same time). by gendered history. Yet the attitude of per- To undertake that account I needed sonal ambivalence and, at times, animosity the third element, which was the intellectual toward his subject that acts to undermine framework. When I began the book (as a doc- Batten’s achievements, appears to be gen- toral dissertation), I was studying imperial and der-based” (2009, 221). This is a generous colonial women’s history and feminist geog- reading, because Mackersey’s book actually raphy and had been reading Henri Lefebvre seems more like a vicious attack designed to on the production of space (1991). That body destroy any vestiges of respect one could of scholarship discusses the relationship be- have for Batten. Deploying an old technique, tween the domestic and imperial, examines he tries to suggest that Batten’s technological how women undermined the imperial project, competence (as pilot and navigator) was analyzes British women’s forays into the because she was an “unnatural” woman, pos- colonies and dominions as agents of imperial- sibly in a sexual relationship with her mother ism, and explores the brutal suppression and (1990, 33). The individualizing misogyny of forms of resistance of women who were this type of work is actually inspiring, in the colonized by imperial forces (for example, sense that it, and the less offensive but still see Burton 1994; Mills 1996). This is all ex- highly individualized biographical approaches tremely significant work, providing ways to mentioned above, leaves everything un- understand the interrelations of race, class, explained. None of these books analyze how and sexuality, but I thought it should also be aviation became a men’s realm and they do able to account for the ways in which British not treat women pilots as part of the collective imperial airspace was gendered and to pro- category of women situated within larger eco- vide a way to understand the complex role of nomic, political, and social processes. In- settler white women in metropole-periphery stead, the individualizing accounts take men’s relations. Fortunately I was studying under dominance of the technological facets of avi- the supervision of Dr. Bettina Bradbury, who ation and the physical and imaginative realm expected me to expand my analysis well of airspace for granted: these do not even beyond questions of representation and into need explaining. pragmatic concerns with laws, regulations, What I hoped to do with the research and technology—the how and what that was avoid the biographical approach with its needs to be in place before the right “why” heroic accounts of women overcoming their can be discerned. circumstances. Instead, I wanted to closely

120 www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 Jennifer Roth: airside. But in the 1930s, the British appropri- Why New Zealand and Jean Batten, specific- ated Batten and her achievements for them- ally, as an example of the metropole- selves, to bolster British prestige and promote periphery relationship with respect to women British aircraft manufacturing. In her own pub- in flight? lic persona, then, she embodies the tension pulling her, and other colonial subjects, in dif- Liz Millward: ferent directions. The metropole demands— The short answer is because Batten was the always—that everything, every achievement first person in the world to fly from England to and every notable person, belongs to it, while New Zealand non-stop (meaning that it was the periphery also asserts its claims to in- one continuous journey, although she did dependence, whatever that may look like, by land along the way). So she was the first per- holding up the successful public figure as the son to link the two nations by air. The longer epitome of its own characteristics. answer is that since a study of this length Batten and New Zealand provide su- could not be comprehensive, and although perb examples of this tension and of the dual women pilots flew within or across most processes of imperialism and nationalism. regions of the bloated British Empire, I con- Critical geographers Lawrence Berg and centrated on “Home” and the settler society Robin Kearns refer to “decentred geography” furthest from the seat of that Empire. The (1998), which unsettles the dominance of the relationship between England and the Antipo- centre, with its claims to be both represent- des is part of the English national imaginary. ative of certain core values and at the van- New Zealand is as far away from England as guard of significant change, by examining the it is possible to go and, as a cluster of small alternative epistemologies and alternative islands, it physically mirrors the British Isles. geographies which are generated by periph- Many English people—me included—have eral locations. From these places, folk look relatives who settled there. From the signing back at the metropole and also, importantly, of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, it came look sideways to each other, to nearby places under British sovereignty, eventually sharing which are considered to be on the periphery the British model of political, legal, and of power as well. Batten’s multiple inter- educational systems. But it is far from being a actions in New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, simple copy of the metropole. Women won Argentina, and England signified many differ- the right to vote there in 1893, and Māori- ent things and offset any easy perception that Pākehā relations, while certainly unequal and technological knowledge and prestige were oppressive, have been far more complex than being transmitted from the centre of an the more common genocidal and assimila- empire to its peripheral colonies and domin- tionist practices of other parts of the British ions. Batten herself was committed to her Empire such as Canada and Australia. Thus New Zealand identity and worked tirelessly to this peripheral location was no backwater—it manage the differing national, imperial, and, had lessons to teach the metropole, although, of course, corporate demands on her. She as Raewyn Dalziel remarks, “not to be wanted the metropole to see the periphery in heeded has always been the fate of small a new light and believed that because avi- nations” (1994, 62). ation changed the geographical relations be- Because New Zealand is a set of tween places, then New Zealand could re- islands in the Pacific, most arrivals and de- position itself as a central location in regional partures are by air, and Auckland is the coun- power relations. try’s major international airport. After a hiatus in the post-Second World War period, when Jennifer Roth: she fell into obscurity, Jean Batten is again a One of the book’s great strengths is that it major New Zealand icon and her statue deftly intertwines the examination of gender, greets people as they leave Auckland Inter- race, and class with nationalism and con- national Airport. Her Percival Gull, G-ADPR, structions of the metropole and periphery. hangs above the departures hall on the

www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 121 How do you see your study making connec- the aftermath of the war, with geopolitical tions across different theoretical positions? changes and the dispersal of troops, their support systems (such as nurses) and sur- Liz Millward: plus military technology also spread across The beauty of Women’s Studies is its inter- the globe very quickly. Chaperone systems disciplinarity. Each disciplinary approach— vanished. Wartime transport and communica- women’s history, colonial history, feminist tions innovations altered the relations be- geography, critical race studies—has its own tween the global and the local. Social assist- literature, its own paradigm, and its preferred ance programmes developed. Independence body of theory. What I find intriguing—and movements strengthened. While it is import- possible through Women’s Studies—is to put ant not to overstate how unique any particular these different approaches in dialogue with set of years was, the interwar period does each other by engaging them through a body signal an unusually widespread range of of historical evidence. The spatial turn in change and real shifts in gender relations. history and the cultural turn in transportation Even taking into account the serious barriers studies (leading, really, to the new field of to self-determination and the violence experi- mobilities studies) are examples of how enced by many women, this was a period bringing different theoretical perspectives to when more women were claiming sexual sub- bear on specific conditions can give rise to jectivity, engaging in international feminist new questions and approaches. By looking at and pacifist networks, travelling, and working. gender, race, class, nationalism, and geo- The idea that women as a collective group politics through aviation rather than through were entitled to make gender-specific de- maternal policies, settlement schemes, or the mands had some traction. Compared to the subjugation of specific groups, I think that the pre-First World War and post-Second World study reframes these concepts. It can then War periods, this is a fascinating period dur- elucidate connections which go beyond the ing which almost nothing remained certain. existing paradigms. Therefore, critical race theory speaks to the construction of white- Jennifer Roth: ness as a complex racialized category, and What can the study of raced, classed, hetero- explains how different forms of whiteness are sexualized women in the interwar period both gendered and incorporated into national- teach us about gendered, raced, classed, ist claims. Comparing the histories of private sexualized, etc., spaces today, and the chal- aeroplane clubs in England and New Zealand lenges and opportunities feminists face in re- complicates theories of class distinctions and lation to them? privilege. Queer theories of heteronormativity can be linked to nationalist questions not of Liz Millward: maternal responsibility or eugenics, but to Every historical period can teach us some- socialist feminist analysis of breadwinning. thing, but the interwar period presents two important lessons. First, many of the power Jennifer Roth: dynamics and processes which perpetuate The construction of new spaces and how they notions of inferiority and superiority remain open up possibilities for social change is cen- firmly in place. They are obvious around tral to your argument. Why do you consider class, race, gender, sexuality, and in particu- the interwar period to be such a pivotal time lar around the idea that geographical distance in terms of gender and geography? from the centre equates to a lack of civiliza- tion. If these dynamics are not new, then we Liz Millward: can look back to the past to examine how The interwar period is important because they work, what work they are doing, and many social, economic, technological, and what techniques have been used to unsettle political changes occurred very rapidly and all them and to challenge normalizing claims. of them had an impact on each other. The The second lesson is that control over effects of each were therefore intensified. In space—what it means, who is entitled to

122 www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 enter it, and so on—is crucial to social global processes, but we no longer seem to change. Lefebvre (1991) made this point well, be battling everywhere on our own terms. arguing that there is a struggle between the The present-day aerospace industry, for ex- top-down imposition of abstract space to ample, has women in it, but their capacity to facilitate commodity circulation and state question the tenets of that industry is muted. surveillance through regulation, and the world Our challenge is to rekindle that visionary and of meaning-filled everyday space, spaces of witty energy which can sustain and inspire us, alternative epistemologies, which are en- but in the service of our own passion for dangered by that abstract space. The strug- change. gle of diverse women to participate in the creation of airspace, and to occupy it on their Jennifer Roth: own terms, matters today because, as You do an important analysis of the use of technological change continues rapidly, new gendered bodies in imperial projects. What spaces are being brought into being. It is are your thoughts on the way imperial pro- incumbent on us all, I think, to participate in grams used gender at the time, and perhaps the creation of those spaces to ensure that today? they are diverse and meaning-filled, rather than flattened-out relations between com- Liz Millward: modities. Imperial projects used gender to signal their The interwar period was, as I men- possession of civilization. This is something, tioned above, a time of rapid change and had like development and capitalism, which they elements of great energy and possibility. The would bring to the unenlightened mass of pilots flew in the face of violence and sabo- people living in the locations they wished to tage which was designed to keep them on the colonize. The presence of white women was ground or even kill them, because anything used to demonstrate the fitness of a region was better than acknowledging the women for widespread settlement and investment. were as good as or better pilots than men. The local women represented something Clearly there were many challenges facing quite different. As David Omissi indicates, the feminists, but what is striking is how deter- British Royal Air Force killed women (and mined they were to seize the terms of the children) during bombing raids against no- debate. They refuted the idea that only madic tribes (in Afghanistan and in the man- certain spaces were the proper domain for dated territories) who were resisting British women’s concerns (such as municipal play- control. The justifications for these deaths are grounds) and instead asserted that they were eerily reminiscent of those recently deployed better fitted to occupy men’s spaces based in Iraq and Afghanistan. Victims’ lives were on men’s own criteria. Once there, they would considered worthless compared to European define these spaces according to their own women, since they were defined as “property” priorities. The audacity of these women’s ap- by local men. Sometimes they were de- proaches is refreshing and seems to have scribed as combatants, or else the nomadic fallen out of favour. In part, this is because tribe as a whole was held responsible for the today’s media does not lend itself to sus- actions of some members. Furthermore, if tained critique, in part because our recog- warning leaflets had been dropped, then it nition of the diversity and complexity of was really their own fault if they were killed women’s lives means we have become (Omissi 1990). cautious about staking claims based on our gender, and in part because we have been Jennifer Roth: co-opted into operating within a reconfigured You offer a diverse range of evidence for your world which is still, nevertheless and obvious- argument. What did you find to be the most ly, organized around the hierarchy of mascu- challenging aspect of your methodology? line superiority and feminine inferiority, which is additionally rendered through class and race. Of course, feminists continue to take on

www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 123 Liz Millward: last of her record-breaking international The challenges were quite pragmatic. Ob- flights. This was a period of very rapid viously, I had to secure funding to travel to change in the aviation industry, and a dynam- New Zealand and England, but once in the ic period in terms of gender relations and archives, there were a series of challenges. colonial relations. What I was unable to deal At the Public Record Office in England there with in the book is the shift towards militariza- was the problem with what had been de- tion which occurred between 1937 and 1939. stroyed, leaving only the accounts related to In the conclusion, I gesture to the formation of celebrity flights (so judged in hindsight). At the Civil Air Guard in England in 1938, and RAF Hendon there was the frustration that the women, including Amy Johnson, who par- the Jean Batten material had been left in ticipated in that organization and later in the such a shambles by a previous researcher Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), which ferried that it was not in a condition to be consulted. aircraft around Britain. The Civil Air Guard In New Zealand, the archivists at the National and the ATA were both non-military bodies, Archives could not find the Batten material but their purpose was to shore up military until their third attempt on my last day there— activities from which women were excluded. the relevant material had been removed from The remilitarization of airspace is therefore the Department of Internal Affairs files and another arena where gendered power dy- placed in a Batten file instead, but nobody namics are very visible, and it highlights seemed to know that. national differences in the meaning of gender. The other problem was one of how to Recent news reports about the British gov- select among many examples. I had not an- ernment’s public recognition of the role of ticipated that problem: I imagined that there “ATA Girls” in 2008, renaming them, incident- would be very little evidence beyond second- ally, as “Spitfire Girls,” even though they flew hand accounts of a few famous flights. That is many other types of aircraft as well as the impression given by the biographies. But Spitfires, tended to present them as a handful in fact, the archival material includes govern- of brave women, in part because so few ment dossiers brimful of reports and memo- remain living. This representation of them randa, extensive correspondence over many fails to acknowledge the interwar conditions years, detailed newspaper accounts and fea- which had made it possible for substantial ture articles, and personal scrapbooks. When numbers of women to be licensed pilots with there is so much rich material it is difficult to sufficient flying hours to be eligible to deliver decide how many examples are enough to aircraft from factory to airfield in wartime. indicate a trend without drowning the reader Those conditions—subsidies, aero clubs, in the minutiae. On the other hand, it is a ideas about women, flying, and nationalism— great pleasure to read through these docu- are dealt with in the book. Ideally, though, I ments because they provide an opportunity to would have liked the space to develop the at least partially immerse oneself in the ex- analysis of the relationship between those citement of the era. That is one of the joys of conditions and the processes of militarization archival research. more fully. Although our present moment is different, debates over the relationship of Jennifer Roth: women to the military continue and, again, Looking back, is there any part of the book understanding what is at stake in those de- you would revisit or rethink? bates depends on understanding what else has been said in the past. Liz Millward: If I could return to it, I would expand it. It covers a very particular period of interwar References aviation, from 1922, when the International Berg, L. and R. Kearns. “America Unlimited,” Committee on Air Navigation banned women Environment and Planning D: Society and from holding “B,” or commercial, pilot’s Space. 16 (1998): 128–132. licences, to 1937, when Batten completed the

124 www.msvu.ca/atlantis ■□ 36.1, 2013 Burton, A. Burdens of History. Chapel Hill: Mackersey, I. Jean Batten: The Garbo of the University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Skies. London: Warner, 1990.

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