Kiwi superwoman

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 12

Kiwi superwoman

New Zealand women are phenomenally capable and versatile. They do so much, taken for granted here, that is simply not expected of them elsewhere. Quite a shock when you come back after sixteen years! When it was my turn to provide cookies for my daughter’s American preschool, I made some cinnamon oysters and I received a handwritten note (not even the formidiably enterprising Americans had seen the market for a ‘Thank-you-for-your-home-baked-cookies” card) from the teacher thanking me for such a rare and wonderful treat. It never occurred to me to buy cookies. If it had, I would have. I’m not one for tough options.

Kiwi women, never mind their other responsibilities, bake regularly and think nothing of it.

Once when my American neighbour was helping prepare a dinner party, she asked for my beater to whip the cream. When I produced a hand beater, she was speechless. She said she couldn’t possibly use it because her wrists were too weak. The cream, mind you! New Zealand women grew up using the egg beater to beat the pav. Some probably still do.

Another neighbour had a son who couldn’t eat bought sweets because of artificial additives. I was immediately elevated to the status of “smartest kid on the block” when I produced my Edmonds cookbook and said, “Why don’t you make him some.”

When buying school uniforms in my upmarket Sydney suburb, the assistant told a customer she had no uniforms to fit her child so she would have to wait for new supplies. The child, understandably upset, whinged and her mother said (quite reasonably, I thought) "I cannot give you what they haven’t got” It never occured to the mother, to me, the child, or even the draper that she could make the uniform hejjaelf. But the .school T>ros-

pectus here did not say where to buy uniforms, but what knitting and sewing patterns to use. In one instance, there wasn’t even a pattern available! Nobody seems to need it, I was told. One sociological difference I noted between Australia and New Zealand is that in all the time I lived there, I never knew an Australian woman with a frAP7Pr But in New Zealand every woman I know has

a freezer to store seasonal produce from her garden. And no marks for guessing who tends the vegle garden. And anyone who has a fruit tree will stay up night after night freezing, preserving or turning it into jam, rather than waste it Even when she was an old lady living alone, my mother still preserved all the seasonal produce. My sister-in-law called late one night and re-

lieved me of some apricots which I didn’t have time to preserve. She r of course, found tiine — a widciw with sole support of three young, children and a-recently admitted lawyer with a demanding new job — now where else on earth would such a woman find time hung so heavily on her hands that she had to preserve apricots?

New Zealand women .go about their business making heroic efforts without fuss. I saw one woman riding her bicycle to playcentre with an infant in the toddler’s seat and a baby on her back. Another carried her querulous baby in her backpack while she conducted a school trip around her market garden. Women’s expectations for themselves in the workplace are rising with no relief of what is expected of them on the home front.

When a young Auckland woman was chosen last year as Mrs New Zealand, critics maintained she did not truly represent New Zealand married women. As one letter to the paper put it, “I cannot imagine her bottling pears, mowing the lawns or cutting the hedge .. Obviously the New Zea-> land woman is expected to do all those things and be a doll as well ...