Mail-order brides — innocent pawns?

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 11

Mail-order brides — innocent pawns?

Tonight’s documentary, “Philippine Affair” (9 p.m. on One), looks at the “mail order” phenomenon which sees Filipino women leave their homeland to marry New Zealanders they hardly know.

In this documentary producer/director Jayashree Panjabi sets out to explore what motivates the men, but more importantly the women, in these relationships which usually begin with correspondence courtships. It is a trend, she says, which has developed in

New Zealand only over the last five years or so, although mail-order brides have infiltrated many other westernised (primarily Englishspeaking) countries for more than a decade.

Spurred on by recent media reports of mailorder brides being brutally treated by their Kiwi husbands, Panjabi and reporter Kim Burring visited Manila late last year to film several of these women and their partners in the throes of their arrangements. They discovered a cross-section of marriages, ranging from happy

to disastrous. They followed one couple’s progress back in New Zealand, capturing them on holiday in central Otago. Panjabi says that, contrary to media publicity, the Filipino women involved were not “innocent pawns in a terrible trade” but were generally highly qualified university graduates making conscious decisions about their future.

All were prepared to risk their povertystricken Third World existence for the chance of a better lifestyle in a foreign country.