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Blokes, sheilas, good keen men, ladies with plates, Silver Ferns, All Blacks, marching girls and Boy Scouts: New Zealand society teems with images of women and men. 

The Gendered Kiwi, a collection of essays, analyses the ways Pākehā masculinity and femininity – gender relations – have changed over time. It brings together previously unpublished essays on topics as diverse as 1930s fashion and feminist men in the 1970s. Scholars such as Charlotte Macdonald re-open the debate about whether colonial New Zealand was really a man’s country, while Jock Philips asks new questions about late-twentieth-century leisure. Other writers canvass the stresses of depression-era masculinity, men’s and women’s different use of public space, office politics and power dressing. Gender relations and the family are a theme in several essays, including those about the colonial family, nineteenth-century criminal trials and World War II. 

The Gendered Kiwi builds on existing work in men’s and women’s history and points to new ways to analyse New Zealand’s past.

Editors

More about Caroline Daley & Deborah Montgomerie 

Reviews

I urge those interested in New Zealand history to buy this book now for their collections. – Hilary Stace, Evening Post