The role of women

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 23

The role of women

One of New Zealand’s foremost artists, Gretchen Albrecht, has been commissioned to design a poster which will symbolise the changing role of women in New Zealand’s society over the last 100 years.

The commission comes from the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt which is holding a special exhibition this month to mark the centenary year of Sunlight soap. The director of the museum, Mr James Mack, said that Ms Albrecht had been selected as the ideal person to produce a

poster for the exhibition which will focus on the role women have played in the development of contemporary New Zealand. Ms Albrecht composed the first poster for the 1975 International Year of Women.

The exhibition is being sponsored by Unilever New Zealand, Ltd to mark the centenary of Sunlight soap. It opens on May 17. Washday at Apiti, sometime in the 1890 s was the scene pictured in the photograph, believed never before to have been published,

which is one of five winners of the museum’s Centenary Exhibition Search for Artefacts Competition. The search asked for photographs of domestic scenes from the past, examples of household equipment of bygone days, and memorabilia including written recollections of the performance of household duties during the last 100 years. The winning photograph was entered by the woman’s granddaughter, Mrs D. M. Laing, of Hunterville. A washday scene was also the subject of a second

winning photograph in the competition. It was taken in 1908 at Springfield, south-west of Whangarei, of Edith Price and Emily Whittle doing the family wash by hand in big tubs.

The other three winners in the competition were women who contributed family histories. Each of these will be given a contribution by Unilever towards a project in which they believe.

A total of $l5OO prize money will be distributed among the five winners.