we say what we are and we do what we say: feminisms in educational practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

From four countries (Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States of America) and five disciplines (Counselling & Guidance, Adult Education, Early Years Education, Indigenous Education and Human Development), five feminists in academia come together to share how feminism affects their practice. Ranging in reflections on teaching, research, service and scholarship, this article describes a cooperative enquiry into feminism in action in Aotearoa, New Zealand.     

Separation-individuation and ego identity status in New Zealand university students

This study explores intrapsychic structures underlying Marcia's ego identity statuses in terms of separation-individuation patterns. It was hypothesized that achievement and moratorium adolescents would give greater evidence of intrapsychic differentiation on a projective measure of separation anxiety than would foreclosure or diffusion youths. Marcia's Ego Identity Status Interview and Hansburg's Separation Anxiety Test were administered to 80 female and 60 male volunteers at a New Zealand university. All were under 23 years of age. As predicted, high statuses showed less anxiety than secure attachment or detachment. Contrary to expectation, no differences among attachment styles appeared for low statuses. Difficulties in adapting the identity status interview to the New Zealand context may partially explain these results. A measure of intrapsychic differentiation provides a useful supplement to the identity status interview.This research was supported by a grant from the Internal Research Committee, Victoria University of Wellington. Parts of this research were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, 1985.Received Ph.D in child development from Florida State University in 1977. Current research interest is identity formation from a lifespan perspective.     

Feminist and family history: Some pitfalls

Up from the Pedestal, Aileen S. Kraditor, ed. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970. 369 pp. $2.95.

Everyone Was Brave, William L. O'Neill, Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969. 359 pp. $7.95.

Divorce in the Progressive Era, William L. O'Neill, New Haven: Yale University Press. 1967. 273 pp. $6.50.     

‘Magdalens and moral imbeciles’: Women's homes in nineteenth-century New Zealand

The potential for women's charitable work in nineteenth-century New Zealand was restricted by colonial women's initial isolation from each other and involvement in domestic life, and also by early government assumption of responsibility for welfare. Rescue work provided one of the few outlets for women's voluntary charity, and reflected the sanction given to women's role as a moral, civilising force in colonial society. It illustrates women's role in the development of social work, the limitations of this role in nineteenth-century New Zealand, and modifications to it in the space of three decades. The arguments used to justify women's involvement in rescuing ‘fallen’ members of their own sex were similar to those used in the later nineteenth-century, when women activists sought wider involvement in public life. It is argued that a power based upon moral influence was narrow in scope and ultimately restrictive in the New Zealand context.     

Christine Parker's Peach: The Politics of Filming Desire in 1990's New Zealand

Christine Parker's 1993 live-action short begins with music, the kind of repetitive, slow, percussion-heavy, saxophone-dominated score usually associated with low-budget porn. The film's opening visual, however, is a close-up not of the expected soft flesh, but of the skin of a soft fruit. Lest the viewer miss the joke-i.e., that the rounded, indented, rosy surfaces on display are not attached to a human body at all-the main title Peach appears, underlining the witty substitution. As the exaggeratedly sensual music continues, there is a long dissolve to a fixed frame shot of green background foliage, while a truck drives into view and approaches the camera. The front grille soon fills the screen, as does the truck's license plate, which remains in sight for several seconds. It reads "PF 9037."