Connie Purdue
{{Short description|New Zealand trade unionist}}
{{More citations needed|date=October 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2014}}
{{Use New Zealand English|date=October 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Connie Purdue
| honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=NZL|MBE|size=100%}}
| image = Portrait of Connie Purdue.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Purdue photographed for the Takapuna Library in 1992
| birth_name = Constance Miriam Purdue
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1912|05|23|df=y}}
| birth_place = Auckland, New Zealand
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2000|03|16|1912|05|23|df=y}}
| death_place = Auckland, New Zealand
| relatives = Miriam Soljak (mother)
Rosanne Meo (niece)
Sean Fitzpatrick (great-nephew)
Samantha Scott (granddaughter){{Cite web |last=Christian |first=Dionne |date=2021-09-04 |title=Theatre director Sam Scott celebrates her massive company milestone |url=https://womanmagazine.co.nz/theatre-director-sam-scott-celebrates-her-massive-company-milestone/ |access-date=2024-10-22 |website=WOMAN |language=en-NZ}}
| other_names =
| occupation = Trade unionist
| years_active =
| known_for = Equal pay and anti-abortion campaigner
| notable_works =
}}
Constance Miriam Purdue {{post-nominals|country=NZL|MBE|size=85%}} (née Soljak, 23 May 1912 – 16 March 2000) was a New Zealand trade unionist. Formerly a communist and a Labour Party member, she later became a conservative Catholic and an anti-abortion activist.
Early life
Connie Soljak was the daughter of Miriam Soljak (née Cummings), a New Zealand-born feminist, communist and unemployed rights activist mother of Irish descent, and Peter Soljak, a Croatian gumdigger. They eventually settled in the Auckland suburb of Northcote. Miriam Soljak was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Family Planning Association in 1940.{{DNZB|Page |Dorothy |4S36 |Soljak, Miriam Bridelia |16 September 2010}} During the 1930s, Purdue was a member of the Young Communists League, sold their newspapers and even distributed material about sex education, before moderating her views on social democracy and industrial relations, and joining the New Zealand Labour Party and the Auckland Clerical Workers Union of which she was a delegate and an organiser. She was elected successfully to the Auckland Hospital Board and appointed to the Accident Compensation Commission.
Purdue had a string of unhappy marriages, each ended by divorce, as she acknowledged herself in her biographical reference for Robyn Rowland's collection of self-descriptions from feminists and anti-feminists in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and United Kingdom. In her later years, Purdue became celibate. She cherished her grandchildren.
Pro-life activism
While she founded the New Zealand National Organisation for Women, Purdue fell out with many New Zealand feminists when she espoused active anti-abortion views and joined SPUC (the Society for Protection of the Unborn Child). After liberal Catholic novelist Daphne de Jong and others established Feminists for Life in New Zealand, Purdue became an early member. Purdue became increasingly socially conservative from the 1970s onward. In 1983, "Feminists For Life" changed its name to Women for Life, reflecting its change to a socially conservative organisation that opposed feminist social and political reforms, as its original members left. As she aged, she suffered from restricted mobility, abandoned the Labour Party after it embraced pluralism and social liberalism, and joined the New Zealand National Party. This occurred despite the introduction of anti-union legislation, the Employment Contracts Act, in the nineties.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Purdue campaigned against incorporation of feminist objectives within the trade union movement in the Working Women's Charter, attacked Māori moves toward reclamation of their land, language and culture, opposed homosexual law reform, and became involved in an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to prevent New Zealand ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
In the 1975 Queen's Birthday Honours, Purdue was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for community and public services.{{London Gazette |date=14 June 1975 |supp=3 |issue=46595 |page=7407}} In 1993, she was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.{{cite web |url=https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/new-zealand-royal-honours/new-zealand-royal-honours-system/types-new-zealand-royal-honours/other-distinctive-new-zealand-honours/suffrage-medal-register |title=The New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal 1993 – register of recipients |date=26 July 2018 |publisher=Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet |accessdate=18 September 2018}}
Bibliography
- "Connie Purdue" in Robyn Rowland (ed) Women Who Do and Women Who Don't Join the Women's Movement: London: Routledge Kegan Paul: 1984: {{ISBN|0-7102-0296-2}}
- Lesley Hall: "The Personal is Also Political: The Relationship Between Political Activism and Family Life Among Members of the Communist Party of New Zealand": Oral History in New Zealand: 17: 1–11.
References
{{Reflist}}
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Category:New Zealand women activists
Category:New Zealand feminists
Category:New Zealand anti-abortion activists
Category:New Zealand Roman Catholics
Category:New Zealand people of Croatian descent
Category:New Zealand Members of the Order of the British Empire
Category:New Zealand Labour Party politicians
Category:New Zealand National Party politicians
Category:20th-century New Zealand politicians
Category:Recipients of the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal 1993
Category:Members of district health boards in New Zealand