Women angry, says Labour leader

Press, 21 August 1978, Page 6

Women angry, says Labour leader

Women are being taken much more seriously as a political force, according to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling). The 1978 election campaign would have a definite "women's vote"—and more than just a one-issue vote on abortion, he said. Abortion was only one of several . issues, although a symbolic one, which had led to the development of a women's vote, he told Canterbury women on Saturday. Mr Rowling talked to a big gathering, mostly women at a breakfast function in Christchurch organised by the Labour Women's Council. Discussing his party’s recently announced policy on women. Mr Rowling said that this year he had met thousands of women who were s ruggling against the odds—women who lived in new, raw suburbs with few facilities; women who were constantly threatened by the

loss of their jobs; and women i struggling to keep their fami- i lies together when the Government and the system • seemed determined to breakup the family. T He spoke of New Zealand- i ers being “quick to label” ' people such as solo mothers. )■ failing to see the difficulty h and deprivation which many of these women had to over- < come. 11 Any politician would have I to be a desperately slowil learner not to absorb some < of the feeling of anger, and the aspirations, of New Zea- t land women in 1978. f Nowhere could employment t for women be worse than | < in Christchurch. He said het was saddened by the plight 1 of women at the Aulsebrooks i factory, manv of whom had t spent a lifetime working) there, and could now see nothing but the end of the t road. a “Women are apparently ' the last people to be con- f sidered, but they are the ones a

who have kept the factory ’j-: gether,” Mr Rowling said. Women were the first to. suffer in an economic recession. They were the first to feel pressures on the home, and in the wofk-place. Women, it seemed, were conIsidered by companies to be !their most expendable item. Mr Rowling expressed conicern that “instead of getting I rid of bigotry,” New Zealand under the present • Government had "lost a great ■deal of tolerance." Human rights usually taken for granted had never existed for women. The right to work was usually seen as; a male right. Both industry: and the Government had. been incredibly sluggish in; moving on job sharing, job training, and retraining for; women. j The right to be heard and I to be listened to was not| always accorded women. “And I speak w.h some: feeling on this,” he said, amid laughter.