Gathering of women at decade’s end

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 1

Gathering of women at decade’s end

Hundreds of women from Auckland to Invercargill will attend a festival in Christchurch at the weekend to mark the end of the International Decade for Women.

The festival will begin on Friday evening with a public opening at the Christchurch Town Hall. The gathering will be addressed by the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Ann Hercus; the director of the Australian Equal Opportunity Employment Bureau, Dr Gail Radford; and the president of the International Council of Women, Dame Miriam Dell.

The meeting will be opened with a special poem for women written and read to music by Keri Hulme. Seventy-four workshops will be held at Christchurch Teachers’ College on Saturday over three session times. They include topics such as pregnancy and childbirth, psychodrama, the law and women, the lesbian option, and stress management.

An interfaith service will be held in the Teachers’ College auditorium on Sunday morning, opened with an Indian candle-lighting ceremony.

On Monday, festival delegates can take part in a variety of activities, includ-’ ing a rural tour, walks at Onawe peninsula, Weka Pass, and Mclntosh Beach, horse trekking, small-bore rifle shooting, and rock climbing. Photographs and arts and crafts will be displayed throughout the festival. The convener of the festival organising committee, Mrs Grace Hollander, said last evening that registrations had started slowly but were now coming in at the rate of more than 100 a day. The Town Hall opening session is restricted only by the hall’s capacity but some of the workshops have been restricted by the organisers to 20 or 30 participants and are filling fast. “It looks as though we are going to get a good crowd,” Mrs Hollander said.