Appeal over bus licence adjourned ‘New breed of Maori women a challenge’

Press, 2 June 1984, Page 5

Appeal over bus licence adjourned

‘New breed of Maori women a challenge’

PA Rotorua An arrogant, demanding new breed of Maori women was offering a growing challenge to the Maori Women's Welfare League, according to one league member, Mrs Myrtle Walker. Militant, often narrowminded, and offensively dismissive of others’ attitudes, this new Maori woman was highly educated and likely to be a university graduate, Mrs Walker said in Rotorua. However, Mrs Walker said that she did admire the women for their honesty and courage and because they were “doing something.”

“It is good that a lot of young women are coming forward to help others. That outweighs everything else.” Mrs Walker said that the “new breed” regularly attended the growing number, of hui wahine which had developed over the last five years, and which had become a formidable alternative to the Maori Women’s Welfare League, now established for more than 30 years. Mrs Walker said she had met about 50 such women at Welcome Bay, Tauranga, last month in a hui from which men were excluded. Attended by 450 women from throughout New Zealand, nearly all of them

Maori and aged between 16 and 40, the meeting was on women’s issues and included discussion of sexual violence and the promotion of Maori values and health education. But the militant Maori women among them had upset many by their adoption of men’s clothing and manners, and many of the other Maori women had been reluctant to support the militants’ proposals for action on some issues, Mrs Walker said. She said she had gone to the hui to lead a workshop on flax weaving. “It was the most unusual hui I have been to, but I found it useful,” she said.