Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women’s Charter.

Abstract

Editors Marie Russell and the late Gay Simpkin set out to share knowledge about the late 1970s campaign for the Working Women’s Charter with a younger generation. Their book provides interesting insights into the history of both the trade union movement and the struggle for women’s rights in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. The Charter was a set of sixteen demands aimed at redressing the inequity and oppression women faced in the workplace and beyond, like “a bill of rights for working women” (21). Its clauses ranged from demands for equality and an end to all discrimination, to access to childcare and reproductive rights. The first five chapters are largely focused on the efforts to win support for it within the labour movement.