The past was a foreign country: Rita Ricketts reflects upon the efforts to promote diversity in New Zealand's diplomatic service.

• Author: Ricketts, Rita

As early as the first century BC, a female diplomat, Feng Liao, represented the Han dynasty of ancient China. There have been others down the ages who breached the male bastion of diplomacy. Coming from privileged backgrounds, they were unlikely models for any woman infiltrating New Zealand's new foreign service. Jean McKenzie (1901-64), New Zealand's first woman head of a diplomatic post, was as far removed as could be imagined from the mandarin class. (1) A blacksmith's daughter, one of seven children, she was obliged to leave school at fourteen to contribute to the family's income. Exceptionally, despite her lack of academic qualifications, she became the first female head of mission (of the Paris Legation in 1955), while most of her (female) contemporaries stayed put, serving as typists, stenographers and archivists. (2) Most seemed happy with their lot, Madie Browne, secretary to Alister McIntosh (departmental head), for example. According to the records, only one (unnamed) shorthand typist had the temerity to protest at the advancement of a 'flibbertigibbet' (Ruth Macky). (3) Regrettably, there are few stories of McKenzie's rise through the ranks, both before and after the foundation of the Department of External Affairs in 1943. It can only be wondered how she felt to sit alongside male representatives at the Ottawa conference in 1932, at meetings of the League of Nations, as personal secretary to the ambassador, Walter Nash, in the New Zealand Legation in Washington in 1941-434 and, at the insistence of Prime Minister Peter Fraser, as a delegate to the first session of the UN General Assembly in 1946? (5)

McIntosh had been wholehearted in his support for McKenzie's final advancement to effective head of post in 1949. But was this because he could not find the right sort of man? The only man offering his services for Paris was the much-derided Charles Boswell, late of the New Zealand Legation in Moscow. He was regarded as 'worse than any woman'. (6) There were other highly qualified women on hand, with honours degrees as well as, in some cases, secretarial and language skills, so why were they passed over? When a young female law graduate, Alison Souter, applied to join the Department of External Affairs in 1950, McIntosh told her that he would 'beg a first-class shorthand typist' but 'a woman lawyer?' Despite his reservations Souter was appointed, though to the legal division, not the diplomatic stream. (7)

During and after the Second World War, it was made clear that women would have to make way for returning servicemen. One lucky employee, Ruth Macky, who crossed this barrier in 1945, wrote to tell McIntosh how grateful she was. (8) Her stint at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 also came courtesy of McIntosh. But after service in Moscow and maternity leave, she was not reappointed. She had dared to question the pay gap between men and women diplomatic staff, and had published an article challenging the accepted (critical) view of life in Russia; later, both she and her husband, Doug Lake, would come under surveillance as security risks. Helen Hampton, who started as a shorthand typist (1936), was also admitted to the diplomatic fold (1947), after completing an economics degree. She was to prosper, despite complaining of misogynist treatment during her first posting (New York, 1947). McIntosh hastened to reassure her that 'strained tempers and tensions' should not deter her 'since she writes precisely the type of report which one likes'. (9)

Inappropriate depiction

A decade later, Hampton's progress was covered in the Wellington Evening Post, where she was photographed wearing a suitable hat and a double row of pearls around her neck. (10) As permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva (1968-71), she was the first woman in the department to have the equivalent of ambassadorial rank. Other women fell by the wayside early in their careers. Lorna McPhee, a delegate at the UNESCO Conference, was warned by McIntosh that there was 'not a ghost of a job for you to come back to'. Unabashed, she replied: 'darling, don't be alarmed--I don't expect to take up residence in External ... [but] you must have some women about to keep up the legend of New Zealand's advanced views'.

The 2022 New Zealand's Foreign Service: A History followed the foreign ministry's attempts to honour the Treaty of Waitangi. It also outlined ways in which discrimination--because of race, colour, religion, ethnicity, sex, physical or mental disability or age--was addressed. Full studies of each historically disadvantaged group, such as those published by the British Foreign Office, were beyond the book's scope. Nonetheless, the history wove in the stories of a surprisingly diverse cast. This further selection of back stories, based on official papers and personal interviews, focuses on the progress (or lack of progress) of Maori and women in the early ministry.

A few years before, deputising for the New Zealand high commissioner in London at the Albert Hall, McPhee was seated 'terrifyingly far forward on the platform'...