Interview with Jocelyn Harris, Founding Member of the Dunedin Collective for Woman (1971-1986)

Protestors, 2012, gouache on cold-pressed tiepolo, 190mm x 280mm, Emma Chalmers from her 'Around the Block on Tenterhooks' series 

An Interview with Jocelyn Harris, Founding Member of the Dunedin Collective for Woman (active 1971-1986)

“It was great fun really. You had a sense of doing and saying things that hadn’t been done for a long time” – Jocelyn Harris

The Dunedin Collective for Woman (DCW) was a Women’s Liberation group active in Dunedin from 1971-1986. Jocelyn Harris, author and Emeritus Professor at Otago University, was a founding member of this movement.

New Zealand was a very different place back then. Women had very well defined gender roles and were expected to get married, to be mothers and to wear make-up. There was nothing even remotely reflecting pay parity in the working world. When Harris was at Otago University in the 1970s there were only 6 women in the medical school year. Judy Medlicott was the only significant women in the law in Dunedin, and was told at a Law Society dinner “you’re not supposed to be here.” Women were not allowed to be President of the Otago University Students Association and were expected to make the tea at meetings (although Harris refused).

Harris was inspired to create the DCW based on these experiences and as a result of visiting the United States and encountering feminism in Boston, as well as her experience of anti-Vietnam war protests. These developments showed her “a different way of seeing, poised on a revelation.” While the DCW was inspired by the likes of the Vietnam War and the Black Power movement, its members also felt that “women’s issues had to be addressed separately.” Harris also remains inspired by British feminism and the idea of changing the system rather than focusing on individual achievement, as in American feminism – and this approach was similarly adopted by the DCW.

The group had over 100 members involved at one time or another. It was structured non-hierarchically – there were no leaders and power and responsibility was shared equally between all members. Smaller groups would also develop within the network and split up so as to focus on particular issues e.g. there was a Theory Group, the Daybreak Bookshop Collective and others.

The collective had numerous functions. It provided a space for women to share their experiences. Women engaged in consciousness-raising i.e. the spreading of ideas, public relations and the drawing in of more women e.g. through talking to politicians, having members attend the National Women’s Federation Conference and through getting women representatives on boards/councils. A Women’s Centre, New Zealand’s first women’s bookshop and a travelling feminist play were all created through the DCW. Its members were active in the introduction of women’s studies courses at the University and established Dunedin’s first child-care centre. Women were able to gain practical skills through their involvement in the organisation, for example in writing, public speaking, making legal submissions, opening a bookshop/business and producing a play. And the DCW organized the Herstory exhibition in 1975 to mark International Women’s Year, where they displayed significant women of the past. Finally, members created a regular newsletter, which went out to a mailing list of 250 individuals all over Otago and Southland.

Through all of these endeavors the group addressed so many issues. In contrast to suffrage, which was a single-issue movement in New Zealand, the DCW “saw a whole range of problems that needed dealing with.” These included the expectation of motherhood and issues faced by unmarried mothers; the need for adequate childcare centres; the end of sexploitation and objectification of women e.g. by protesting the Miss New Zealand contest; women’s gendered roles and stereotyping e.g. in children’s literature and education; equal pay; abortion – with the DCW engaging in pro-choice protests in Dunedin and its sub-group ‘Knowhow’ helping women to go to Australia to obtain abortions; women being refused loans on the basis of their gender; the manner in which legislation impacted on gender equality (e.g. the Accident Compensation Bill which didn’t cover compensation for homemakers; the law around proof of paternity and maintenance of children; matrimonial property law; abortion law; women not being able to serve on juries and Court cases reflecting sexist attitudes) and more. The Dunedin Women’s Refuge (now Te Whare Pounamu Dunedin Women’s Refuge) and Rape Crisis both originated in the DCW and were established by the collective’s members.

The organisation did experience push-back, for example when the women’s room at the University was established “people didn’t get it.” Similarly, the group received negative media when it protested the Miss New Zealand contest. It was difficult for DCW to get media coverage and when they did, it would often not focus on the issues behind the movement but on people’s stereotypes of Women’s Liberation organisations as anti-men, anti-family and ‘bra-burning’.

But for Harris, this stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, being a part of this movement was “so exciting, incredibly exciting… I felt I was among people who understood… we felt we were discovering something. Suddenly everything began to snap into focus – the silent scream of women locked away in the house. There was a feeling of excitement and safety – that we could say things that we couldn’t say in other circumstances.” While the women did feel a sense of anger at the injustice of patriarchy, “we weren’t primarily angry. We had a lot of fun, we really did. It was really very collegial and sisterly.”

Members were for the most part middle-class, Pakeha women with academic backgrounds. Harris recognises the privileges that come with these characteristics, noting that there was a clear class issue with Maori and Pasifika women working in Dunedin occupying largely low-paid jobs. She also recalls an example of a Cook Island women who joined the Collective. A forewoman at Cadbury’s at the time, the woman became inspired to talk about equality at the pulpit in First Church. The police were called and held her for 15 days, with the lawyer from DCW unable to get her released. She ultimately received a conviction and was sent back to Rarotonga where she ended up passing the police exam. AS Harris states, this would have been “a very different story had she been white.”

Several women also identified as lesbian in the organisation. Interestingly, the Theory Group of the DCW identified that the organisation did not account for class divisions, and the gay and straight division. This ultimately led to groups within the DCW splitting off and identity politics were “one of the things which precipitated the end of the Dunedin Collective for Woman.” Additionally, a number of the organisations which were established through the DCW (e.g. the daycare centre, Rape Crisis and Dunedin Women’s Refuge) were running independently of the organisation – “so in a way there was not so much of a need for the central organisation anymore.” The topic of transgender men and women or women with disabilities didn’t even arise during this time. Harris acknowledges things are “quite different now.”

While the group was largely homogenous and didn’t explicitly address issues of class, race, gender or disability, it was to some extent intersectional in its aspirations. One of the early newsletters stated:

“Initially, the Women’s Liberation Movement is concerned with women’s problems and with looking at life from a feminine viewpoint. Eventually, it is envisaged that the movement will broaden into a widely-based organisation for the liberation of all human beings from the stereotyped roles expected of them in their various societies.”

Similarly, “Feminism is the recognition that women’s liberation is more than the vote. It is the whole of human life.”

As feminists in 2018, we consider this to be the forefront of feminism today  - recognizing that every form of oppression is wrong and that every individual’s experience and differing needs from feminism is important and valid.  While Women’s Liberation was limited in the layers of oppression it chose to recognize and address, it was also seminal – the feminism of today could not exist without the passion and dedication of these, our forebears, who planted the seeds for intersectional feminism today.