Kiwi to Fly in Hamilton

The Gendered Kiwi will take off in Hamilton on Sunday 5 December. Historians from around the country are converging today on Waikato University for their annual conference. 'The Gendered Kiwi', an illustrated collection of new work in social history, will be launched on Sunday with a typical New Zealand morning tea.

'The Gendered Kiwi' builds on existing work on men's history and women's history and points to new ways of seeing New Zealand's past.

The editors of 'The Gendered Kiwi' will be attending the New Zealand Historical Association Conference in Hamilton. Editor Caroline Daley will talk on Physical Culture at 3.30pm on Saturday.

About the book

Blokes, sheilas, good keen men, ladies with plates, Silver Ferns, All Blacks, marching girls and Boy scouts . . . New Zealand culture teems with images of men and women.

'The Gendered Kiwi' analyses the way Pakeha masculinity and femininity - gender relations - have changed over time. It brings together previously unpublished work on topics as diverse as 1930s fashion and feminist men in the 1970s.

Well known historians such as Charlotte Macdonald re-open the debate about whether colonial New Zealand really was a man's country, while Jock Phillips asks new questions about late-twentieth-century leisure.

Other writers canvass the stresses of Depression-era masculinity, men's and women's different use of public space, office politics and power dressing. Gender relations and the family are a theme in several pieces, including those about the colonial family, nineteenth-century criminal trials and World War II.

About the authors

The authors of 'The Gendered Kiwi' are an interesting mix of long-established and well-known scholars with new up and coming historians.

Þ Frazer Andrewes: 'The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit: White-Collar Masculinity in Post-War New Zealand'

Frazer Andrewes is a PhD candidate in the Department of History, University of Melbourne, Australia. Having completed his MA at The University of Auckland on the representation of masculinities in post-war New Zealand culture, he is currently undertaking research into the experiences of modernity in Australia during the 1930s.

Þ Barbara Brookes: 'When Dad Was a Woman: Gender Relations in the 1970s

Barbara Brookes teaches history at the University of Otago. Her previous publications include Abortion in England 1900-1967 (Croom Helm, 1988) and Women in History: Essays on European Women in New Zealand History and Women in History 2, both edited with Charlotte Macdonald and Margaret Tennant (Allen & Unwin, 1986; Bridget Williams Books, 1992).

Þ Caroline Daley: 'A Gendered Domain: Leisure in Auckland, 1890-1940'

Caroline Daley is a lecturer in history at The University of Auckland where she teaches twentieth-century New Zealand social and gender history. She became interested in the gendered history of leisure while working in her book Girls and Women, Men and Boys: Gender in Taradale 1886-1930 (Auckland University Press, 1999). She is now working on a book-length study of gender and leisure in twentieth-century New Zealand.

Þ Bronwyn Dalley: 'Criminal Conversations: Infanticide, Gender and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand'

Bronwyn Dalley is a senior historian at the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs. Her chapter in this volume was researched and written during her tenure at the Stout Research Centre as the J D Stout Fellow in New Zealand Cultural Studies. It is part of a larger study on gender, culture and sexuality in New Zealand urban centres between 1869 and 1929. Another section of her research will appear in Fragments of Life: New Zealand Social and Cultural History, which is to be published in March 2000. She also recently published Family Matters: Child Welfare In Twentieth-Century New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 1998), which draws on contemporary ideas of the child and family, changing concepts of the role of the state and the economic and social developments in New Zealand from 1902 onwards.

Þ Tim Frank: 'Bread Queues and Breadwinners: Gender in the 1930s'

Tim Frank was born in Auckland in 1962 and is married with four children. He is presently researching New Zealand fathers and fatherhood in the early twentieth century for his PhD at The University of Auckland.

Þ Charlotte Macdonald: 'Too Many Men and Too Few Women: Gender's "Fatal Impact" in Nineteenth-Century Colonies'

Charlotte Macdonald teaches in the History Department at Victoria University of Wellington. Her published works include Women in History: Essays on European Women in New Zealand History and Women in History 2, both edited with Barbara Brookes and Margaret Tennant (Allen & Unwin, 1986; Bridget Williams Books, 1992); The Book of New Zealand Women/Ko Kui Ma te Kaupapa, edited with Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams (Bridget Williams Books, 1991); The Vote, The Pill and the Demon Drink (Bridget Williams Books, 1993) and My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates with Frances Porter (AUP/BWB, 1996).

Þ Deborah Montgomerie: 'Sweethearts, Soldiers, Happy Families: Gender and the Second World War'

Deborah Montgomerie is a lecturer in history at The University of Auckland. After completing a master's degree at The University of Auckland she worked as a researcher for the Waitangi Tribunal. In 1989 she went to the US on a Fulbright scholarship, receiving a PhD in American History from Duke University (1993). She is currently working on a book provisionally entitled The Women's War: New Zealand Women 1939-45.

Þ Erik Olssen: 'Families and the Gendering of European New Zealand in the Colonial Period, 1840-80'

Erik Olssen, FRSNZ, has been Professor of History since 1984. He has published several books, among them The Red Feds (Oxford University Press, 1988) and Building the New World (Auckland University Press, 1995). And over 60 papers, including several essays on the history of women and the history of the family in New Zealand. He is also director of the Caversham Project, one of the largest social-history projects in the world.

Þ Jock Phillips: 'Men, Women and Leisure Since the Second World War'

Jock Phillips is acting general manger, Heritage Group in the Department of Internal Affairs. He came to the department in 1989 as the nation's Chief Historian following 16 years teaching American and New Zealand history at Victoria University of Wellington, where he was also the founding director of the Stout Research Centre for the study of New Zealand society, history and culture. From 1993 to 1998 he served as the Conceptual Leader in History at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. He has published 10 books on New Zealand history, of which the best known is A Man's Country?

Þ Danielle Sprecher: 'Good Clothes are Good Business: Gender Consumption and Appearance in the Office, 1918-39'

Danielle Sprecher graduated in 1997 with an MA (Hons) in history from The University of Auckland. Her chapter in this book is based on work from her MA thesis, which was concerned with representations of gender and fashion in the interwar period in New Zealand. Danielle has a long-standing interest in the history of fashion and collects pre-1950s clothes.

The Gendered Kiwi, Caroline Daley & Deborah Montgomerie (eds); AUP, paperback, illustrated, ISBN 1 86940 219; $39.95

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