WOMEN TO THE FORE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 83, 24 January 1941, Page 44

WOMEN TO THE FORE

Talented New Zealanders

large quantity of talent, but it is often forgotten that New Zealand women have made an even greater name for themselves abroad than New Zealand men. In the admission of women to universities, for exZEALAND has exported a

ample, New Zealand was in the, van, and Kate Edgar was actually the first woman: in the British Empire to take a Bachelor of Arts degree. Another New Zealand girl was the first woman graduate in a British University to take a Master of Arts with honours. The greatest name, of course, is that of Katherine Mansfield, who has attained international fame. In the theatre there is Marie Ney and Rosina Buckman, but it is in the literary . sphere that New Zealand women have shone. Jessie Mackay, Eileen Duggan, Ee ee DP Skee. oe A ey ae ee ee

G. B. Lancaster, and Ngaio Marsh are writers of whom any nation might be proud, And the tragic figure of Robin Hyde, limping through war-torn China and eating rice with the poorest of Chinese coolies, will haunt the memory of New Zealand women writers for a generation to come. Then there is: Miss Annie Whitelaw, former headmistress of the Auckland Girls’. Grammar School, who became head of Wycome Abbey, one of the foremost girls’ schools in England. And finally, of course, there is Jean Batten. The successes that New Zealand women have achieved in various fields throughout the world will be discussed in a talk from 1YA at 3.0 p.m. on Sunday, January 26, in the series "New Zealand Brains Abroad."