Wāhine

♫ Kia Ora koutou, I’m Elizabeth Kerekere I come from the Ngāti Oneone, ko Whānau a Kai, ko Te Aitanga a Māhaki, ko Rongowhakaata, ko Ngāi Tāmanuhiri I’m here in the Tairāwhiti I became an activist when I was about 15 years old. I first came out when I was about 16, it was as a lesbian and I hadn’t heard the word takatāpui at that stage When I did from Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, I immediately claimed that, A Māori word that described me, that was linked to our whakapapa and to our ancestors. I was really excited about that. It’s an ancient Māori word that means intimate friend of the same sex. We have reclaimed it to include all Māori who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex or queer. I always want to make sure that that broadness, that breadth of identity always remains with that word and how we use it today. Quite often when people think about takatāpui, they think about sexuality. But gender is actually really critical. So for our trans people, our gender diverse and intersex whanau we need to have a much clearer concept of what gender is about. In this country, the binary of male and female are so very strong but it’s also, in that binary that they’re not equal anyway. Women in this country still do not have the same privileges, the same rights, as men. So when you put into that fluidity and gender diversity into that mix, things get really really tricky very fast and it’s really important for people like me who are cisgendered who are now a bit older, to make sure that we are always advocating on behalf of other people. There are certain privileges that I have as a cisgendered woman in this country, who is femme, and presents in the way that I do. I do not challenge anybody’s notion of what a woman should look like, Tempered with that, of course, is that I’ve had a lifetime of sexual harassment that because of how I look and because of how I present, that often men have felt that that means I’m not intelligent, that I wouldn’t be able to speak for myself, and that actually I’m available for them, which of course, not true. Most of the discrimination I have faced in my life is because I’m Māori. So it’s the racism that has been the bigger factor for me and certainly a lot of the takatapui that I’m around, most of the discrimination is because we’re Māori. So last week I started work with Whāngaia Ngā Pā Harakeke and it brings together a lot of my interests. Violence is not part normal part of our society. Violence against women and children, that’s not natural. It was never part of our culture. This pilot project is about uplifting and empowering our whanau and moving out of a place of violence and unhealthy and unhappy relationships, to move to being happier, to being stronger so that they can thrive. ♫ Kia Ora, my name is Lan Pham I’m currently a counsellor on Environment Canterbury. My background’s in freshwater ecology. It was through seeing the type of people and the conversations that they were having on these governance boards, particularly water governance and then the decisions they were making that made me sort of realise that far out, I had really to step up myself and start getting involved. I’ve never really had like really blatant negative experiences from being a woman. I’ve actually found it being, if anything, more of a strength and a positive thing because you walk into any kind of like rural say hall where you’re liking having a meeting and immediately everyone is like looking at you like ‘I’m sorry are you lost? Like what are you even doing here? That then enabled me to be like hey like this is who I am, this is why I’m here and it’s because of these really important reasons generally it would be around like really endangered native fish. So I think in that sense being a woman in that situation was a positive thing. Where do we still have to go? Gosh. Um the gender pay gap is a huge issue I think we’ve got miles to go in terms of paternity leave in general, for both you know the mums and dads who have young children What’s really positive is getting increasingly common for women to be in positions of power and positions of governance There’s still an element of novelty to it, but you know thanks to people like Jacinda Ardern it’s just becoming more and more normal, and particularly younger women, which I think is really really important I love seeing women just doing their thing you know, not conforming or anything just being like this is who I am and I know how important my role is and I’m just going to rock it That’s the kind of feminist take over that I’m really excited about ♫ My name’s Jackie I am the aunty in charge of the Aunties So I was a kindergarten teacher I rang the local women’s refuge and I asked if they’d like some clothes because as a teacher there’s always kindergarten kids right through to 5 years old and they leave their clothes behind at the end of the term And so yeah, I was sick of it So I rang her up and she came I opened my mouth and said “Ya know, if you need anything else, I’ve got Twitter I’ve got Facebook you know.’’ And well her mouth opened and this list of stuff came out I just sort of carried on getting stuff by myself and with my friends on my personal Facebook page, on my Twitter Donors would normally drop and run but I was encouraged to sit down with the women and talk to them about their lives It meant that I was uber connected with the girls and it also meant I could connect the Aunties to the girls I feel very strongly that women who live in refuges, and women who are homeless, are invisible and they’re invisible because nobody speaks about them and nobody speaks to them What I do is because we owe these women the system that benefits me, personally, as an older white woman Is a system that fucks with them and makes sure they stay where they are and I’m not down with that If you’re young and poor and brown in New Zealand the system is set up to fail you and for you to fail The organisations that I work with, the women that I work with, who are all Māori, Pasifika women and one Pasifika man, they know about this, what I do, they know that’s what works How am I going to work with vulnerable women unless I’m a woman, or a transgender or gender-neutral person who’s not seen as threatening in the first place and then because I’ve kind of been through what they’ve been through there’s that connection, do you see what I mean So everything about my work is about being a woman So what I would hope for the future of New Zealand women is that women are safe, Māori women and Pasifika women in particular, and transgender women actually, are treated fairly because we’re all, we live in this country, together ♫ I’m a student at the University of Canterbury and I do school outreach I wanna to encourage high school students to take up tech ‘cause it’s actually a really fun thing to do I did Word Microsoft stuff at school and then ended up picking up python and I enjoyed that so basically, it grew on from there What I most enjoy about tech is getting to create like light-up boards, so doing light shows, but also being able to make your own boards and soldering your own stuff onto ‘em That sounds really nerdy but I find it really fun I became a Google Student Ambassador last year 2016 I was never really the confident type to go out and do outreach to do public speaking, that’s really scary Ever since that Hamilton woman in tech said said ‘Oh women can’t be in tech industry, they’re more management type people’, I was like hell na girl It basically sparked something inside of me I’m like no that is not true, anyone can do tech My careers advisor told me that I was too stupid to do engineering I was determined to get into University of Canterbury and look at where I am now, doing outreach But yea, it’s just like are you serious? Fight me So I’m fighting back in my own way, in a legal way, not physically fighting, but working hard to change that mentality ♫ My name’s Gaylene Preston and I’m a filmmaker of Aotearoa I come from Greymouth I studied painting at Canterbury I got a job at a psychiatric day hospital I put art therapist on my passport when they said occupation I went off to Cambridge UK with my first husband and I was involved with drama and art and made my first film at Falmouth hospital as part of a drama therapy project I saw the power of it so I’ve stayed making films ever since My kaupapa with my filmmaking is to have the conversation to bring something that’s either secret or a bit invisible because it’s ignored and put it onto the screen so that people can sit in the dark and look and take notice Highlights for me are to do with the conversations that flow from a film I’m really interested in the kōrero So the community arrives to watch a film, there they are, they watch the film and then the film flows back to them and they carry it out of a cinema Sometimes I would like to be able to put directed by George Preston and I think the way my work is viewed would be slightly different on the other hand I’m really proud of the fact that it’s Gaylene Preston that made them I can’t separate myself from the society I’m in so, of course, I’ve been discriminated against as a woman because women get discriminated against I’ve been a solo mother I think that I get away with a certain amount because I am a bit invisible as a woman of a certain age with the camera wearing a hat I got away with a hell of a lot at the United Nations and so that film is the most access anybody’s ever had at the United Nations and I can attribute that to being, me We owe it to our foremothers to take on the argument, to know it’s not handed on a plate, nobody’s going to give you permission, you just do it ♫ Kia Ora my name is Heidi Renata I’m the founder and CEO Chief Energy officer of Innov8HQ in Dunedin We are a co-working co-location business hub I’d seen the concept around the world It reminded me of the business marae, So again going back to my roots of being of Ngāpuhi descent Our Māori traditions, even still today, is having marae to bring hui and people together We opened in October 2016 I’ve been really delighted to have had over 12,500 people through the space, 75 events and we have 18 different businesses that simultaneously work out of here It was meant to be a five-year plan but we’re four years ahead of schedule It’s inspired a lot more women to go and do their own thing and especially Māori, which is one of my core purposes for getting out and doing something like this I do often get asked the question about what it’s like being a woman coming in and working one, in ICT, or just generally in business I grew up with four brothers, two either side of me and an ex-army father so I grew up in pretty much rough and tumble so I guess I have a bit of audacity and a little bravado around how I tend to go about things so I don’t often see so much of a challenge being a woman in an environment like this and by all means I’m not disregarding that there isn’t a real thing but I guess in the sense that I’ve been able to articulate discussions and dialogue with the male population I guess reflecting back, I tautoko and thank all the women that have come through prior to the last 125 years and through previous generations, to allow us to have a voice today I know that a lot of people have historically put a lot of stuff on the line to enable us to have our freedom and our ability to shine ♫ I grew up with three older brothers so in some ways I always felt that what a man could do, I could do, like reverse a trailer and pick up hay and shear a sheep and milk a cow I suppose I have learnt to hold my own in a male world It was 1975, when I was a third year student at Waikato Management Studies, when the Anglican Church actually decided that women could be ordained and I started to have a sense that God was drawing me in that area It’s been 40 years since the first women were ordained and even when they were ordained they weren’t sure whether the ordination service would go ahead because the opposition was quite strong in this country, and so we forget how challenging that was for people and how courageous the church was, how courageous many men of the church were who were able to make that stand and position for the women to be ordained and that meant a great deal when we didn’t have a voice at that time If people can’t see you as a priest then they can’t accept you as a priest and so there’s a bit of pioneering there I would like a lot more gender openness and gender inclusivity and not quite so binary and not quite so rigid and that even includes our image of God Our image of God isn’t necessarily masculine, for me it’s not necessarily feminine either, God for me is God When I first stood up as a priest other women felt like they too could have a ministry So when somebody from a less visible group stands up in the front in a leadership role, it can inspire other people who identify with that role But the courage of 40 years ago is a courage that I think the Church needs to keep being inspired by ♫ Hi my name is Raukawa Tuhura I’m 24 years old and I’m a performing artist I actually just naturally started dancing ‘cos my family was quite a talented family when it comes to performing arts I learnt rock and roll first which is really really weird I got to dance with my cousins and it was just a nice start to it and then when I grew up I started to get into hip hop and I started crumping when I was 12 I was in a dance crew called Crucial Movements and we started to get well-known and I got picked up by a dance company called Fusion So Fusion was a mix of a lot of styles My favourite was voguing wacky I started to kind of play with my sort of gender identity and sexuality I was in a really closed-minded family and we didn’t really know what sexuality was or gender identity was but as soon as I met a lot of people in the LGBT community through dance I finally realised what my identity was, as a trans girl I think there’s quite a balance between positive and negative when it comes to being a transwoman I think for women, of course, they have a lot of negative views and a lot of sexist views when it comes to performing arts and all that sorta stuff but also trans women have an even more worse because there’s not enough roles as trans women in this industry to share The positive outcome for it though is that we actually get to be able to create our own work for us to have a voice My hopes for the future for womenkind is just to be united, especially for us trans women, I just don’t want to see segregation We have a lot of strength as a group ♫ I run an organisation called Limitless and we do career development programmes for young people Two years ago I was in my last year of high school and I was trying to figure out what my next step was going to be I knew a lot of people around me were in the same place so the inspiration for Limitless really came from seeing people who were doing work they were really really passionate about that aligned with their strengths and values and I also knew people who didn’t enjoy their work at all The inspiration to start Limitless was from seeing that contrast and wanting to see young people able to pursue and excel in work that they could be really passionate about, not necessarily that that might be easy work or fun everyday but work that really aligns with their beliefs and their strengths that they bring I’ve learnt so much and it’s been really challenging and you learn a lot about yourself I guess the positive is that I’ve just been amazed by how much generosity there is out there There’s been so many people who have got behind me and got behind Limitless and backed it, whether that’s with their time or their advice or their talent or their resources I guess the negative experiences are more around my own self belief You feel like people put you up to a certain level and you’re scared that if you plan a new programme or do something and it flops then what’s going to happen then? So a real challenge for me has been what does success look like for me and that’s about keeping an eye on the purpose of what Limitless is here for I know so many people that are doing all sorts of career paths and all sorts of work and study which is making such amazing change which sorta has a different view so I think in terms of what New Zealand women and what all New Zealanders are able to do Is just to be able to define their own success, what that looks like for them and for us to sort of appreciate success in its many different forms All throughout my life I’ve had people that have believed in me and that’s sort of enables you to take a leap whereas I know so many young people may not have that same backing so that’s one thing I’m really passionate about seeing more people get access to ♫ I’m Mojo Mathers and I had been a member of Parliament for 6 years until last year I’m currently at home with my partner and remaining active on a number of committees and things My political journey really started with environmental activism so the community I was living in at the time was faced with the proposal of a massive dam to be built practically on top of most of the village Out of my activism in that area I became involved with the Green Party I started to encounter the barriers that deaf people face when they are trying to get politically involved so it became a journey, a personal journey for me learning to reclaim my identity as a deaf woman So when I was finally elected to Parliament, I was New Zealand’s first deaf member of Parliament. Then there was quite a significant discussion around what support I needed to do the work as a Member of Parliament, but it led to some lasting changes Sometimes you have to be at the table to make the changes that are needed for your community I think it’s important to remember that not all women got the vote 125 years ago so Chinese women for example didn’t get the vote until much much later So the getting the vote for some groups of women 125 years ago was a wonderful thing that needs to be celebrated but we’re still very much on the journey to getting real genuine equality for all groups of women. ♫ My name is Sasha Borrisenko and I’m based in Auckland and I’m a journalist So I got into journalism because I really enjoyed history and I loved ballet, tap and jazz and singing and I loved the element of performance and so I went to university to do performing arts and law, naturally if you like history you do law, supposedly, and then I had a passion for social justice so I thought the combination of those things would equal journalism I think every single piece of journalism that I’ve ever done, it’s always because I think it’s you know out of my own lived experience I don’t know, it brings conflict of interest issues into it, although because I have an understanding of it, I think that means that I’m better equipped to look into it So currently I am working for Newsroom, not to be confused with Newshub They’ve been kind of schooling me through investigative stuff which has been wonderful I think kind of all my background has been leading to this ‘Cause I think that ultimately in order for there to be change, people need to have access to information I mean if you just look at in recent times, like the #MeToo campaign, I mean I find it ridiculous that it’s only now coming into the fore, Where that’s something that I think a lot of people have had to put up with for how many millions of years or what not. Journalism can occupy that space to help people get into the same level of understanding or at least to create that level of awareness ♫ I work with textiles and try and innovate new ideas around how we can use the wasted resource that we are throwing into our landfill I’ve always had an interest in textiles My grandmother was a tailoress, and she had a shop here in North East Valley About nine years ago I was working as a sign writer and I got quite sick from all of the solvent I was fired from my job that I was in there but it was probably one of the best things that had happened to me and it made me question what was next and I knew that because I was so ill that I needed to do something that was a bit healthier for my body I won a competition with a piece of wearable art that I made for the Novadown fashion feathers award in 2008 and that’s what really kind of cemented the idea that I actually had some kind of talent with textiles and creating and I applied to polytech and since then it’s just kind of taken off Learning that there was not a lot of sustainable ethos happening in the fashion industry and that’s always been, I’ve always been an environmentally-minded person so it was a need to fulfil that It is the second most environmentally damaging industry behind oil. It's a major problem that we have at the moment so it’s something that I feel quite strongly about helping change It can get a bit cliquey in the fashion industry as well It’s part of the way we’re sold to as an industry that we have to be competitive, we have to be this amazing thing If you’re not "in", then you’re not "cool", then you’re not part of what’s awesome, you know, but actually there are so many people working in much better ways than that So that’s probably the positive side of it that I’m really seeing people building each other up and empowering each other and standing together and collaborating I just really hope that we as people can help each other, not just as women but as humans I think humans together create a better space together then we do apart. ♫ I’m Golriz Ghahraman and I’m a member of Parliament for the Green Party I went to Law School and I studied history as well so I studied sex and gender history, which on my transcript now, for some reason, it says "sex" so I have a degree in sex history I never intended on practicing law but you know, more and more I became focused on human rights so I went and became a defence lawyer I ended up working at a different UN courts in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Cambodia I kind of decided to come back to my roots in New Zealand and I found New Zealand changed It was a weird political climate, like we were talking about mining in our national reserves So that’s what propelled me to become involved in politics What I didn’t forsee was this kind of eruption of various things all over the world like Brexit and Donald Trump. So it’d also become about becoming the first refugee MP and about like representation I would repeatedly get asked if I felt like I was ready to be an MP and I wondered you know how many mid to late 30s men who’ve been a lawyer for 15 years and who have like a Masters in Law and have lived all over the world and getting asked if like, is this, are you going to be able to handle being a law maker? So I do think it’s really important to celebrate the milestones, like 125 years since we got the formal right to vote but I do think we have to remember that just as any civil rights movement highlights, formal equality doesn’t mean access We have all of these panels and all of these talks given to women from all sorts of backgrounds and we get told to you know we just need to be bold, we need to stand up for what we want, we need to push harder, you know look at this one successful woman, you know she believed in herself and I think that’s all great, but it does erase the fact that the system has been designed for millennia to oppress us and we actually need to change that for access Women can’t break that down on our own ♫ Kia ora my name’s Lou Hutchison I work as a suicide prevention co-ordinator in the Wellington region. To be honest it wasn’t something that I envisioned or planned, it was really I guess, it was part of my own lived experience and my own personal journey Having to negotiate services and that, I just discovered the reality of working in the mental health sector My day to day work is really just co-ordinating all the services, trying to ascertain what work is going on in the Wellington region and then promoting and also finding out what isn’t working so engaging with our iwi, our communities, our grassroots organisations ‘cause at the end of the day it’s going to take all of us to solve We can’t just leave it up to mental health services and we know those services aren’t having the outcomes that we want Working in like the mental health area, it’s predominantly I found a lot of females work in that sector I would really love to see more men working in that area and having, balancing it up ‘Cause it’s not just, obviously our stats show the total opposite We really need men to be working in the sector and we need to be encouraging that more And I guess that comes down to the whole pay equity thing It’s not just a woman’s role anything, it’s an extremely valuable role and if we don’t have good mental health, we really don’t have anything I guess my big hopes would be that we understand our history more and our history is embedded into all our education systems and when we understand our history and what’s gone before, I think that will transform our society, We need to go back and analyse the impact colonisation has had on our nation and the impact it still is to this day Marama Fox always said what’s good for Māori is good for everybody and that’s, it is, it’s true ♫ Hello everyone, I’m Lina Lastra, originally from Colombia but now living in Dunedin and the vice president of the Dunedin Multi-Ethnic Council I met a lady, she was the president of the Dunedin Multi-Ethnic Council By then I was the president of the Hispanic Community and she invited me to one of the meetings of the Dunedin Multi-Ethnic Council Obviously I decided to join them I used to be an executive member and I’m now working as their vice-president My role involves many things from giving moral support to the migrants that are in Dunedin that contact the organisation I’m also quite involved with the former refugees My experience with the different ethnic communities has been fantastic as we all know New Zealand is very far away from any country but now that I’m here, I met a lot of people from different parts of the world so I feel that I’m closer to everyone I have read a lot about different cultures, about how people express themselves While their visions and while their dreams, for me, have been very rich experience Down sides of that is that often people contact us and they see us like the person that will find the solution of their problems and unfortunately that is not the case and only can listen to their problems and give them some support or point out to them to the right directions So it is sad to know when somebody’s in a difficult position and they are far away from their country, from their family and they don’t have much support over here I would like to see little girls to understand what is their role in the society and also don’t lose their femininity and their charm of being a woman Quite often I think we get confused about oh we want to be equal with men but then we start to lose who we are ourselves and I don’t want to see that in the NZ society ♫ I’m Katie Milne, I’m a dairy farmer on the West Coast and I’m president of Federated Farmers How I got into Federated Farmers was through being a farmer and wanting to understand policy and how things that councils were bringing down onto us at a farm level would affect us I went to a meeting at the Regional Council office and there was a whole heap of older farmers there, male farmers, you know, and I had short white spikey hair at that time so I fitted in quite well in that regard because they all had white hair or no hair I realised that it was really important as a younger farmer and especially a female farmer, to have my voice heard It’s been an interesting journey, right through the process getting ending up here at presidency In the really early stages there wasn’t very many barriers and so on because dealing with the men that were there, they knew their wives were at home looking after the farm and they were very capable But I have noticed a little bit more now at the top there’s the odd thing so it’s sort of subconscious bias barriers I guess that when you understand them and realise that they’re there, you can try and work your way around them But a lot of fellas don’t know they’ve got these unconscious biases and I think that’s a big barrier It is a business but a lot of the decisions are made at the kitchen table and you know the women have a lot of say in what does happen The fellas think they have the say but actually there’s a lot of it that you know it has to get sanctioned by us first A lot of the projects that are happening on farms too, it’s the wives and the women that have got stuck in We have got generations that are so far removed from the land now but because of that we need people to actually trust us Food producers are doing their best with current tools and so on, they’ve got for the land They don’t have to understand agriculture, but they need to trust people who grow their food ♫

My name’s Ariel, I am a doctor down at the hospital here in New Plymouth When I first went to uni I tried to get into medical school and I missed out so I ended up training as a physiotherapist As soon as I graduated I started a café from scratch I had no business experience whatsoever and then I went back and worked as a physio for a number of years By the time I hit about 25, 26 I just thought you know what I still really want to be a doctor

and I was living up in Auckland at that time and so on a bit of a whim I decided to apply for medical school up there All through medical school I had two different clinics running in two different cities in NZ I had also started a charity and I was trying to develop a programme in Mozambique And I remember my dean at the school pulling me aside, literally telling me to quit medicine because he didn’t think I could do it After talking to a couple of my friends at medical school about it they were shocked because they had marks that were much lower than mine actually overall and they were men, of course, and they had never been asked to quit the programme. But yea, finally graduated last year and I’ve been working as a junior doctor now for the last about four months I’m constantly seen as the nurse or a physio or anything else for a doctor I think for me as well, being of Asian descent, so I was born in Taiwan, I think that it’s always about how you physically look so firstly obviously people can tell you’re a woman by the way you look and then you look like you’re not from here, then that opens up a whole new realm of discrimination I guess a lot of the motivation that I’ve built is because I’ve always been told I can’t do something You know, I grew up in Christchurch which is a very Pakeha town

And I grew up with a lot of bullying and a lot of like "oh you can’t do this ‘cause you’re you know, a certain race" or "you can’t do this ‘cause you’re female" or "you can’t do this because like I’m a type one diabetic as well so even in that sense you know, some kind of disability or chronic illness, "you can’t do that cos you’re diabetic" I’d love to see a New Zealand where we encourage our kids no matter what ♫ I run a little collective called the Rogue Stage by inviting musicians and artists to come to Rotorua It wasn’t that I sat down and decided I am going to do this big thing I heard the music of Delaney Davidson It just struck me I thought ‘wow this is just great' I thought he was American to start off with because I was so such a novice at NZ music I invited him consequently to come to Rotorua and see what I can do At that stage I hadn’t put on a gig at all I learned a lot through that, I learnt that your community’s incredible, incredibly important and the talents people have locally to support you is, I’m so grateful for all the help that I have received We’ve hosted close to 200 shows now I feel the shows have got a feminine touch and I feel that being a woman I can understand that feeling that you want to portray and what you would like your audience to go through The negative is, and this is from the industry point of view, is that you’re a woman, you don’t know the rig, you don’t know the gear, you don’t know how it’s done or things like that and yes some technical issues I don’t know and it’s impossible to know everything Being a woman I think we can cope with a big workload, um maybe it’s just from just my perspective but that’s how I have felt about the Rogue Stage is that it’s an open door to people from all walks of life Thinking of all the amazing women that have gone before me and will certainly follow, it’s incredibly inspiring I see it over and over and over and in New Zealand, where women, wow, we have got incredible women here, in our small community, and I listen to their stories and what they achieve, it’s just incredible ♫ Hi my name’s Bella, I’m 21 years old and I am a transwoman I’ve been out for 10 years now I started out in governance roles and volunteering and showing up at events and talking to people and then I accidentally said yes to too many things and I got very overwhelmed and did way too much in a very short amount of time so then in the last 18 months I’ve sort of turned everything around and focused much more on myself and how I can look after myself but how I can utilise the platforms that I’ve built up to inspire and empower other trans and gender-diverse young people One of the really difficult things that I face a lot within volunteering in this community is a lot of people don’t take the experience that I’ve got seriously, they don’t think that I know what I’m talking about, they don’t think what I’ve got to say is valid and important If I say that as a trans person I’m not ok with something, then I need you to accept that and acknowledge that and we can work together on how we can better work this situation A lot of women and trans women and young people have got really valid ideas and really strong opinions and they are being shut down and being told that they’re not good enough, the drag queens are getting put first and the gays all get put first and things like that and so it’s really difficult I think that progress in the LGBTI community is listening to trans women and giving trans women those platforms to stand up and speak and to say that’s not ok and hey we need some help and I think that would be progress for us and at the moment that’s not happening and that’s what we need to be pushing for and pushing for that in a wider sense outside the LGBTI community as well to really engage the wider community for that support and that acceptance It’s really important that trans and gender-diverse young people know that their identities are important and that they’re valid and that their identities aren’t a barrier for them doing great things in life ♫ So 125 years is a significant milestone and even though it took a bit longer for Māori women to get the vote, Māori women were absolutely and actively involved in the franchise that helped make that happen. And so I want to acknowledge them I would also like to acknowledge all of those women who would not want to be interviewed who wouldn’t see what they do as important but actually it holds our whanau together, holds our society, holds our culture together When we acknowledge the role all of us play and the contributions all of us make that's when we're faster and we are stronger. For Jonny [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ [credits] ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫