Education and Training

From its inception NACEW was aware that the subjects young women took at school influenced their job opportunities. NACEW wanted to ensure that young women stayed at school and also continued with maths and science, at least to School Certificate level.^[18] In 1967, a Council member attended the 'Education of Women in New Zealand' seminar at Victoria University of Wellington and sent recommendations to the Council chair. This same year, NACEW commissioned their very first research on this topic. LM Kennedy, the Department of Education representative on NACEW, completed her work A Study of the Education of Girls in New Zealand.^[19] The research confirmed that the narrow range of employment opportunities open to women correlated with their choice of subjects at secondary and tertiary education, and, in particular, considered that young women should be encouraged to study maths and science. The study showed that male and female students had similar levels of attainment and duration of schooling. However, boys' choice of subjects at school was biased towards maths and sciences while girls were biased towards languages and social studies. Of concern was the fact that only 30 percent of girls studied maths at fifth form level, a subject essential in many work areas. Girls restricted themselves to a narrow range of literary subjects, which were seen as offering limited vocational opportunities. The Council concluded it was important:

• to encourage young women to remain at school longer and gain qualifications to make them less vulnerable in times of unemployment
• to encourage young women into training or jobs that were non-traditional
• to raise awareness that married women have the right to work equally with single women and men, and that women should and could move into non-traditional areas of work.

NACEW circulated this report widely in the following years. On the basis of the report a pamphlet aimed at girls in the third and fourth form was prepared and distributed^[20]. NACEW wanted to inform and influence girls and their parents at the point where decisions about subject choice and schooling were made. By 1972, statistics showed that in the previous four years there was an upward trend in the number of secondary school girls choosing maths and science subjects.

The Council was not alone in working to ensure young women made informed choices. In more recent years, other organisations such as Careers Services, Ministry of Education, and Tertiary Education Commission as well as individual schools and tertiary institutions have carried on NACEW's initial push to ensure women expand their employment opportunities through subject choice.

A further area related to subject choice was NACEW's focus on encouraging women into non-traditional work with the intention that occupational segregation would reduce. Initially NACEW gathered information on this topic asking the New Zealand Trades Certificates Board and similar bodies for the number and proportion of women candidates studying for trades or technical qualifications. Few if any women were training in pastry-cooking, mechanical dentistry, clothing, watchmaking, radio, men's hairdressing, horticulture, trimming, painting and decorating, sign-writing, photo-engraving and printing. NACEW's intention was to prepare a list of non-traditional occupations that women could follow.^[21] Ria McBride, a NACEW member at the time, prepared a paper on the occupational distribution of women workers in 1968. The Council wanted to identify traditional occupations for women 'that [were] not saturated and...might be congenial to women and absorb large numbers without raising conflict for jobs between men and women.' The Department of Labour made a detailed analysis of occupations and found that saturation point had not been reached for clerical workers, teachers, directors and managers, packers, caretakers or cleaners. Barbers, toolmakers, draughtsmen, and electrical workers were seen as appropriate non-traditional occupations for women. However, despite NACEW's efforts towards breaking down occupational segregation and encouraging women into non-traditional areas, limited changes have occurred.