Barbara Brookes gives voice to a hidden history we’ve never read about. In this session from Going West 2016, she shares the story of her ground-breaking book in conversation with Judith Pringle.

Her book is the first written narrative account of New Zealand’s past from the perspective of the women who lived here. 

In relation to the story she set out to tell, Barbara says “so much of New Zealand history is written in terms of wars… but what about all the women who died in childbirth, which they regularly did in the 19th century, and what did it mean to be the mother of 8 children or 10 children… and what did it mean for Māori mothers to lose all their children in the 19th century with disease imported by the Europeans?”

A History of New Zealand Women is the story of women who spoke out against government incursion of Māori land, of women who farmed, who painted and wove, sang and wrote. It is a history that places the women of Aotearoa in the 21st century at the United Nations, at the Grammy awards, and the Olympics and in fields as diverse as themselves of women who are shaping the new millennium.

Barbara Brookes is Professor of History at Otago University. A History of New Zealand Women was the winner of the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Best Illustrated Non-Fiction.

Judith Pringle is Professor of Organisation Studies and leader of the Gender and Diversity Group Trust at Auckland University of Technology.