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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 950, 25 October 1957, Page 17

"MY sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it." This quotation from John Bunyan was a favourite with Dr Doris Gordon, (above), who is herself described as a Woman With a Sword, in the title of the documentary programme about her which will be heard in the National Women’s Session from the YAs and YZs on Wednesday, October 30. Doris Gordon, who died last year, was largely responsible for the excellent maternity care in New Zealand a. tals today. Joan Faulkner-Blake, who worked with Dr Gordon on her books, has arranged a programme in which her friends and family speak about the person they knew and worked with, and the way in which she attacked the various problems she found. Her husband speaks first of her decision ‘to campaign for better hospital care for mothers and babies, and Doris Pedersen tells of her early work with anaesthesia in childbirth. Her friends describe her efforts in founding the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society, and in the provision of a Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Otago and the postgraduate school for midwifery at Auckland. In the immediate. post-war years Dr Gordon was Director of Maternal and Child Welfare, supervising maternity care throughout New Zealand. If her standards at the time seemed too high for some, they were never too high for Dr Gordon, who believed in the best possible care for all mothers and their children.