Reflections on Suffrage Day from a stubborn optimist
Victoria Crockford
Director at Heft Communications and Advisory. Director of the Coalition to End Women’s Homlessness. Creating self-determined futures in housing and energy. Executive leadership and governance experience.
I have a camellia tattoo on my right forearm. Along with a peony and an astrolabe (don’t ask), it symbolises my soon to be 10-year-old daughter – the inspiration taken from a camellia bush growing outside my bedroom window in Hawke’s Bay that represents her North Island roots. ?
An apt symbol for a young girl growing into her power and promise 131 years after Māori and Pākehā women aged 21 years and over were granted the right to vote after an absolute hustle of petitions, back door dealings, front door protests, and relentless door-knocking.??
As someone who advises on advocacy and engages with politics regularly, it blows my mind the effort and collective action that was undertaken to fight for the rights of women to vote. At Heft , we often advise our clients to seek strategic alliances and, particularly in the context of reduced government funding options, to consider how to pool resources. These women were absolutely acing that.??
Of course, it was not all women who were made equal under the law. Chinese women, for example, were specifically excluded as ‘aliens’. Māori women, while nominally granted the right to vote, were often structurally excluded via land laws that didn’t recognise communally-owned land. For those activists and advocates working in Māori housing and trying to bring the banks into the 21st Century to recognise multiply-held titles, this is a very long and grimly familiar structural inequity.??
And of course, things don’t always come up smelling of camellia flowers today for women.
As a communications professional, I am reflecting most today on the future rights of my daughter that are eroding before they are even properly articulated, let alone won – the right to be free from violence on social media. ?
There will be many social media professionals out there who are seeing the daily rise of misinformation, hate, racism, and sexism on social media and it is a deep conundrum for those of us who know how powerful that direct connection with audiences (constituents, customers) can be. We encourage engagement – it's the cornerstone of positive public relations. But we also see the warning signs and are constantly alert for what kind of awful conversations we may have to moderate or simply shut down.??
These are the places and spaces where women, especially those with a public profile, are fighting for their right to be both heard and safe. A recent report, published by Te Mana Whakaatu | the Classification Office found that:?
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“girls and women are more likely to experience online violence including more severe violence and gender-based violence, and this spans a continuum across online and offline violence”?
Even knowing what I do, I join the ranks of stubborn optimists who believe that these communications tools can exist for good. That they can harness the power and the energy that took Meri Mangakāhia, Kate Sheppard, and their advocates around the country to create a groundswell of change. Let’s take action to make our digital world a place where women and girls can raise their voices and change the world free from harm and violence.??
Find out more about the work being done to counter extremism and violence online in Aotearoa and around the world:?
Emily Makere Broadmore Jo Cribb Erin Jackson Ellen Read Paul Ash Charlie S. Lee Cowan Rebecca McDonald PLY (née Dubber) Grace Stratton seamus boyer Alex Coogan-Reeves
Executive leader; volunteer champion; tangata tiriti.
5 个月I also have a tattoo of two camellias, underneath the phrase "Nevertheless she persisted". Stubborn optimist too. Love your work Victoria Crockford :-)