Women’s education body members named

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 27

Women’s education body members named

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Membership of the Women’s Advisory Committee on Education, which will recommend improvements in the status of girls and women in the education system, has been announced by the Government. The committee of 13 includes 11 appointed by the Minister of Education, Mr Marshall, from the 162 nominations from a wide range of organisations and individuals. There will also be one representative each from the Social Welfare Department and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The chairman will be Ms Lyn Scott, of Hamilton, principal of Hamilton Girls’ High School.

Included are Ms Prue Densem, a lecturer in education at the University of Canterbury, and Ms Jessie Thompson, senior education officer at Christchurch Women’s Prison. Mr Marshall said members of the committee had been appointed because of their background across a range of educational matters, including pre-school and ethnic interests. Three education officers and an advisory

officer had recently been appointed by the Education Department each with specific responsibilities for girls’ and women’s education issues. The functions of these positions were to promote change in the curriculum, teaching resource material and teacher training, and to address the changing needs of Maori and Pacific Island girls and women in education, he said. These officers would be working closely with the new Women’s Advisory Committee.

The. initiatives being taken reflected the Government’s concern that the employment future of more than 50 per cent of the population was being threatened by narrow career choices and rapid technological change. New technology was undermining employment prospects in a host of female-dominated occupations such as sales, clerical, secretarial, retailing and banking, Mr Marshall said.

If women were not to be relegated to a life of intermittent employment they had to broaden their career horizons to take in occupations that until now had been dominated almost exclusively by men.