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Fifty Years a Feminist
In 1971, Sue Kedgley and other members of Auckland University Women’s Liberation carried a coffin into Albert Park to take a stand for women’s rights. She has been an activist ever since. She helped bring Germaine Greer to New Zealand in 1972, worked for women’s equality at the United Nations, made documentaries and wrote books about women’s issues, and was a crusading Green MP. Now, 50 years after that protest, she tells the story of feminism in New Zealand and its intersection with her own remarkable life.
288 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 6, 2026
There was also increasing pressure to conform to a particular dress code, language, lifestyle and ideology, which I found alarming; non-conformity and a spirit of questioning had been a hallmark of the early women’s liberation movement.
With Fifty Years a Feminist, Kedgley shows a particular kind of bravery.
She writes about how she is a feminist.
The throughline
Sandra Coney, on the other hand, claimed International Women’s Year was like a big, fat bloodsucking leech attached to the side of the women’s movement, sucking it dry. Feminists were feeling exhausted by the constant round of meetings and activities. And although the year had helped to make the movement respectable, she worried that ‘when we become respectable, we will cease to be a threat.’
I have a tendency to positively rate New Zealand political autobiographies, but the authors do have a tendency to wander, weighing in about Catholic bishops doing social justice, who coined “chewing gum tax cuts”, or debating house victories. While the authors are reasonable consistent as to political personality, there’s often the desire to give a good “yarn”, where all this sidetracking detracts from the main political point. It means when they do throw in their “left” or “right” slant on events, it feels like an inauthentic afterthought.
Kedgley is far more careful. Her point is feminism, and she will craft her narrative around it. Her parliamentary career is limited to forty pages, with a significant portion of that describing misogynistic behaviour in the House. Her relatively successful broadcasting careers is mainly focused on the feelings of being shortchanged on promotion opportunities as a result of the ‘waiting to be asked’ syndrome. Even parenthood is mainly a vehicle for a critique on the State’s misguided expectations on how a mother should raise their children.
I understand that if this comes across as a bit dull. But Kedgley expresses her points eloquently and does tie them into her personal experiences. She understands the waves and conflicts involved with feminism, both at a New Zealand and at a global level – she seems in line with the description of the trends and clashes in feminism that feature in an academic work like Marjorie Spruill’s Divided We Stand.
My main point is that Kedgley’s book does have more craft than its self-deprecating text lets on. I believe she showed deliberate restraint – avoiding the “yarns” to create a flowing narrative. Perhaps she was truly under utilized as a politician. He descriptions of the differing perspectives are respectful and show insight to the differing forces pulling individuals and groups. She also avoids burying her story in jargon, despite familiarity with it.
I did see a criticism of Kedgley for “negative” comments on other feminists whom Kedgley interacted with. To me they were extremely mild and mostly reflected what was actually happening. I think Germaine Greer will survive people knowing she spent her time in New Zealand pining over a man.
Pride
Even so, I loved the raw, edgy energy of New York, its quirky restaurants and its flourishing cultural life. When John Lennon was assassinated outside the Dakota Building on 8 December 1980, I joined more than 50,000 New Yorkers in a silent vigil in Central Park.
The cool thing about writing reviews for free is that I have no obligation to be consistent, so I will now “damn” Kedgley for focussing on her point and not talking about my own personal crusades.
Kedgley represented New Zealand locally, nationally and internationally. It is an impressive career… …but I struggle to get the vibe she likes New Zealand all that much, other than some nimbyish parochialism for Wellington’s waterfront. I suspect some of it is the failure of imagination that 95% of the population has. She describes her youth:
We seldom left the neighbourhood, other than to go to the Wellington Library, as there wasn’t much to do in Wellington in the 1950s.
…which feels so lacking compared to Patricia Grace’s thinly veiled autobiographical fiction about Wellington a decade before Kedgley’s time. Grace is not writing from a point of nostalgia, but clearly there was an energy that Kedgley fails to convey. Kedgley also waxes lyrical over her New York experiences, which is fair enough but telling in terms of comparison with how she describes New Zealand. She can come off as quite negative and occasionally clumsy, skirting the noble savage line at least once:
Pre-colonisation, Maori women were accorded more respect, given more independence in their whanau, hapu and iwi, and even kept their own names. Pakeha women, however, were effectively slaves to men.*
I wonder if Greer’s disenchantment with New Zealand rubbed off on a young Kedgley.
What this means is that, despite her intelligence and exceptional level of experience by New Zealand standards, she was “adequately utilized” as a Green MP – that while she could be a salesperson for things close to her heart, she wasn’t quite the advertisement for New Zealand she possibly could have been. It’s hard to say “Yes, she should have been more of a propagandist for a country she has quite reasonable issues with,” but I do feel that is part of being an elected representative of a locality or a nation. You advocate, but you also represent.
However, I am moving beyond whether Fifty Years a Feminist is a good book. Whatever my personal grievances, it is a very good book because the author took the time to think about what she was going to write as a coherent whole instead of as a collection of ill-fitting jigsaw pieces.
*One can argue the point, but I feel this is an example of overshooting moral relativism to some sort of inferiority complex. Whatever the faults of Western culture, Queen Victoria was no slave at the signing of the Te Tiriti in 1840.
With Fifty Years a Feminist, Kedgley shows a particular kind of bravery.
She writes about how she is a feminist.
The throughline
Sandra Coney, on the other hand, claimed International Women’s Year was like a big, fat bloodsucking leech attached to the side of the women’s movement, sucking it dry. Feminists were feeling exhausted by the constant round of meetings and activities. And although the year had helped to make the movement respectable, she worried that ‘when we become respectable, we will cease to be a threat.’
I have a tendency to positively rate New Zealand political autobiographies, but the authors do have a tendency to wander, weighing in about Catholic bishops doing social justice, who coined “chewing gum tax cuts”, or debating house victories. While the authors are reasonable consistent as to political personality, there’s often the desire to give a good “yarn”, where all this sidetracking detracts from the main political point. It means when they do throw in their “left” or “right” slant on events, it feels like an inauthentic afterthought.
Kedgley is far more careful. Her point is feminism, and she will craft her narrative around it. Her parliamentary career is limited to forty pages, with a significant portion of that describing misogynistic behaviour in the House. Her relatively successful broadcasting careers is mainly focused on the feelings of being shortchanged on promotion opportunities as a result of the ‘waiting to be asked’ syndrome. Even parenthood is mainly a vehicle for a critique on the State’s misguided expectations on how a mother should raise their children.
I understand that if this comes across as a bit dull. But Kedgley expresses her points eloquently and does tie them into her personal experiences. She understands the waves and conflicts involved with feminism, both at a New Zealand and at a global level – she seems in line with the description of the trends and clashes in feminism that feature in an academic work like Marjorie Spruill’s Divided We Stand.
My main point is that Kedgley’s book does have more craft than its self-deprecating text lets on. I believe she showed deliberate restraint – avoiding the “yarns” to create a flowing narrative. Perhaps she was truly under utilized as a politician. He descriptions of the differing perspectives are respectful and show insight to the differing forces pulling individuals and groups. She also avoids burying her story in jargon, despite familiarity with it.
I did see a criticism of Kedgley for “negative” comments on other feminists whom Kedgley interacted with. To me they were extremely mild and mostly reflected what was actually happening. I think Germaine Greer will survive people knowing she spent her time in New Zealand pining over a man.
Pride
Even so, I loved the raw, edgy energy of New York, its quirky restaurants and its flourishing cultural life. When John Lennon was assassinated outside the Dakota Building on 8 December 1980, I joined more than 50,000 New Yorkers in a silent vigil in Central Park.
The cool thing about writing reviews for free is that I have no obligation to be consistent, so I will now “damn” Kedgley for focussing on her point and not talking about my own personal crusades.
Kedgley represented New Zealand locally, nationally and internationally. It is an impressive career… …but I struggle to get the vibe she likes New Zealand all that much, other than some nimbyish parochialism for Wellington’s waterfront. I suspect some of it is the failure of imagination that 95% of the population has. She describes her youth:
We seldom left the neighbourhood, other than to go to the Wellington Library, as there wasn’t much to do in Wellington in the 1950s.
…which feels so lacking compared to Patricia Grace’s thinly veiled autobiographical fiction about Wellington a decade before Kedgley’s time. Grace is not writing from a point of nostalgia, but clearly there was an energy that Kedgley fails to convey. Kedgley also waxes lyrical over her New York experiences, which is fair enough but telling in terms of comparison with how she describes New Zealand. She can come off as quite negative and occasionally clumsy, skirting the noble savage line at least once:
Pre-colonisation, Maori women were accorded more respect, given more independence in their whanau, hapu and iwi, and even kept their own names. Pakeha women, however, were effectively slaves to men.*
I wonder if Greer’s disenchantment with New Zealand rubbed off on a young Kedgley.
What this means is that, despite her intelligence and exceptional level of experience by New Zealand standards, she was “adequately utilized” as a Green MP – that while she could be a salesperson for things close to her heart, she wasn’t quite the advertisement for New Zealand she possibly could have been. It’s hard to say “Yes, she should have been more of a propagandist for a country she has quite reasonable issues with,” but I do feel that is part of being an elected representative of a locality or a nation. You advocate, but you also represent.
However, I am moving beyond whether Fifty Years a Feminist is a good book. Whatever my personal grievances, it is a very good book because the author took the time to think about what she was going to write as a coherent whole instead of as a collection of ill-fitting jigsaw pieces.
*One can argue the point, but I feel this is an example of overshooting moral relativism to some sort of inferiority complex. Whatever the faults of Western culture, Queen Victoria was no slave at the signing of the Te Tiriti in 1840.
October 10, 2021
Sur Kedgley has had such a cool life with some amazing stories (eg, hanging out with John Lennon and Yoko at a feminist conference, working at the UN). I wasn’t a fan of how gossipy or overly blunt she was in criticising other feminists (eg Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer). But really educational about the feminist movement in NZ.
December 21, 2021
Fascinating look at feminism globally and in Aotearoa over the past 50 years. We still have a way to go but I for one am inspired!
Read
December 31, 2023An interesting blend of personal anecdotes and the wider political context.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews