Born in Hamilton in New Zealand in 1950, Helen Clark, you became involved with local politics as a young woman in 1974, before being elected to the national parliament in 1981. What was it like for you as a woman working in politics at the time?
I came from a political family. My father had strong political opinions and politics was talked about among my relatives. It was known that previous generations of my family had strong political views too so it wasn’t unusual for me to be interested in politics.
In 1968, when I went to university, it was an extremely political time in universities across the West as well. At Auckland University, there were growing student protests against New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Vietnam, apartheid in South Africa and the South Pacific being used as a nuclear testing ground by all of the nuclear powers which stimulated my interest in international affairs.
However, when I began running for office at the local and regional levels, and then at the national level, you had to be across all of the domestic issues too. Since I wanted future generations to enjoy the opportunities that I had as a young person – access to a free public hospital system, comprehensive social security since 1938 and affordable tertiary education – I focused on these policies throughout my political career. But, I found that, as a young woman, you could move along steadily, without obstacles, to a certain point. Then, when you started to go into territory which men had traditionally dominated, it became harder.
When I competed for the Labour Party’s nomination for the constituency, which I would go on to represent for 27 and a half years, I was the only woman candidate in a field of seven and there was gender-based opposition. Some people said, ‘She’ll never do any good because this is a working man’s electorate.’ This, of course, wasn’t justified because the numbers of female and male voters in the electorate were roughly equal. But, I began to sense that there were areas that people weren’t comfortable having women in, and that included being a Member of Parliament (MP).
Even though I was based in Auckland, our largest city, throughout my political career – a metropolis with around a third of New Zealand’s population – prior to my election in 1981, Auckland had only ever had one woman MP and she was elected in a by-election in 1941 and then defeated at a general election two years later in 1943. In addition, there had only been at that stage, as I recall, three women cabinet ministers in the history of New Zealand.
Nevertheless, women were slowly on the rise in our country’s politics and the year that I was elected saw the numbers of women MPs double from four to eight although out of a parliament of 92. We were a small and lonely minority. Yet there was empathy across party lines between the two conservative women MPs and six Labour women MPs. We had common interests as women in an overwhelmingly male environment where there wasn’t much expectation that women in politics would achieve much.
Indeed, my aspiration when I entered politics was to be able to do well enough to become a minister, but I never dreamed that I would end up becoming leader of the Labour Party for 15 years and prime minister for nine. That was territory that no woman had occupied before in New Zealand – and very few had around the world – but, over time, it became possible to climb up the ranks before becoming a minister in 1987.
Once I was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, I faced gender-based criticism again. People weren’t used to the prospect of a woman becoming prime minister so there were attacks about my appearance, my voice and even my clothing. But I found that there was little point dwelling on such criticism. I just had to look straight ahead and get on with the task at hand and, by and large, that strategy worked for me.
I think women politicians today are more confident in being able to call out such behaviour than I was at a time when it was very rare to have many women in parliament.
You became the first woman to be elected as prime minister of New Zealand in 1999 and served until 2008. What did you find were the challenges for you as a woman taking up this mantle and, subsequently, during your time serving in the highest political office in the country?
The main challenge for me was getting elected. But, what was of enormous assistance to me was that as Labour’s standing improved after the 1996 election, and as my standing as a prospective prime minister improved, the party in government replaced their male leader with a female leader, Jenny Shipley, so suddenly, New Zealanders were presented with, not only a female Leader of the Opposition, but also with a female prime minister. The 1999 election would see two women competing for the top job and I think that was tremendously helpful in normalizing having women in the top leadership of the country.
Having become prime minister, I became the first among equals in a team. People respected me as the leader. I did find, though, that towards the very end of my premiership, the opposition found ways to attack me again on a gender basis.
Interestingly, when I represented New Zealand at international meetings, I was always in a tiny minority of women leaders too. The APEC Leaders’ Meeting, for example, at the most would have three women at a table of 21. I went to four Commonwealth Leaders’ Meetings as well and there were perhaps two other women in a room of well over 50 men.
I recall, in 2000, I went to the UN Millennium Summit where Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and, at the time, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, convened a meeting of women heads of states and governments and the heads of UN entities. I can still remember the women leaders who were there. There was the prime minister of Bangladesh, the president of Latvia, the prime minister of Dominica and me. We would have fitted into two telephone boxes.
Globally, the situation hasn’t got a lot better since. The number of women leaders of UN member states is typically around 20. We have the unedifying spectacle now of the G7 and the G20 with no woman leader now that Angela Merkel has gone. The only woman you will likely see in the photos is Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission so there is a long way to go at the international level. New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Denmark, all small democracies, have been ahead of the pack but I would love to see more countries catch up.
