London appointment

Press, 24 July 1976, Page 7

London appointment

Ms Carol Stigley, who was recently appointed Second Secretary (Commercial) and Assistant Trade Commissioner at the New Zealand High Commission in London, is the first married woman to be posted overseas by the department.

“There is a certain amount of the guinea pig about my appointment but I lam quite happy to be one," she said in Christchurch yesterday. “There have been tour single women appointed to the department’s overseas posts in the past but they used to stand out like freaks 'because there were so few [of them,” said Ms Stigley. I “Last year three of us married women started stirring to find out why we could not be sent overseas too. We were given the usual arguments about lack of stability —- ‘married women leave to have babies all the time.’ But I had been getting good grades and after much debating I was finally given an overseas appointment.”

She will be one of tour working at the Commission and her work will concern the promoting of New Zealand’s exports, particularly manufactured products. There was a large potential market for New Zealand manufactured goods in Britain and it was also the way to get into the E.E.C., she said.

“My job will be to act as a catalyst — to put a New Zealand manufacturer in i touch with someone who wants his product.” Ms Stigley, who hails I from Timaru, joined the Department of Trade and Industry, Wellington, in 1969, i working in the trade policy division. In 1970 she was transferred to the department’s district office in Christchurch and then spent two years travelling in Europe and Asia. She returned to the department in 1975, working in the industries division and then the trade policy division. She will take up her new appointment next month.