The New Zealand Reality
Erik Olssen and Maureen Hickey
The book
During the nineteenth century, men in leading industrialised societies came to be characterised by their occupations – miner, servant, farmer, doctor. The first substantial wave of British immigrants into New Zealand brought this way of thinking and subsequent waves strengthened it. By the early 1900s, it was a unionised society categorised by the breadwinner's wage, which in turn largely determined the chances his wife and children would be given in life. The New Zealand Census reflected this attitude by introducing an occupational census, largely ignoring many features of the colonial workforce and following its British counterpart.
Class and Occupation is the first systematic attempt to identify New Zealand's actual occupational structure from 1893 to 1938, using the information gathered by the Census. The six essays consider how best to construct an occupational structure for both the whole country and for regions/localities within it. Identification of changes in occupational structure occurring across the period casts light on social change in New Zealand and, significantly, women's participation in the paid non-agricultural workforce.
The authors
ERIK OLSSEN is Professor Emeritus and former head of the History Department, University of Otago. He was Principal Investigator of the Caversham Project.
MAUREEN HICKEY is an historian for the Office of Treaty Settlements.
Publication details
Paperback, 320 pages, illustrated, ISBN 1 877372 03 X, $45.00
2005
Out of print