Chapter 2: Executive summary

Prevailing societal attitudes in Aotearoa New Zealand throughout the Inquiry period resulted in women and girls being placed in a variety of care institutions; those views also shaped their experiences while in care.
During the Inquiry period, Aotearoa New Zealand society held narrow views about the place of women and girls in society, informed by Christian morality, social conservatism and rigid ideas about gender roles, including what constituted appropriate sexual behaviour. Women and girls whose behaviour did not fit these norms were often hidden away or sent to be reformed. Women and girls who were pregnant outside of wedlock were often left with no choice but to go to unmarried mothers’ homes and, once there, were coerced or pressured into adopting out their babies.
Sometimes, women and girls’ appropriate emotional responses or inability to cope with trauma or negative life events led to psychiatric admissions. Medical professionals sometimes dismissed women’s physical pain and symptoms as ‘all in their heads’ and placed them into psychiatric care. Heightened anxieties in the 1950s and 1960s about juvenile delinquency, particularly female ‘promiscuity’, contributed to women and girls being placed in social welfare care.
When in State and faith-based care, women and girls were subjected to unique forms of abuse and neglect, much of which was specific to their gender and layered with misogyny and sexism. Survivors spoke about being treated as promiscuous and dirty, and being shamed, degraded and demonised for their bodies and behaviours. This was experienced in the form of emotional and psychological abuse, including verbal abuse. It was particularly evident in faith-based care settings.
Girls and women in care experienced medical abuse in the form of traumatic and invasive vaginal examinations. These examinations were undertaken on the assumption that girls in care were promiscuous and were infected with sexually transmitted diseases, even in cases where young girls told authorities that they had never had sex. In disability and mental health settings, the Inquiry heard of women being forcibly sterilised, medicalised (including being given contraception without informed consent), as well as women being forced to have abortions – sometimes without their knowledge until after the procedure.
Many women and girls in care were denied access to menstrual products, as well as information and support about menstruation. In faith-based settings, this form of physical neglect was often accompanied by being shamed and verbally abused for being ‘dirty’.
Gendered abuse was particularly evident in unmarried mothers’ homes. Young girls and women were subjected to verbal abuse, physical abuse and forced labour, medical abuse during pregnancy and childbirth, and psychological and emotional abuse through being coerced or forced to adopt out their babies. The demonisation, dehumanisation and subsequent abuse of girls and women in the homes were justified or reinforced by religious beliefs.
The abuse that survivors endured has had lifelong and intergenerational impacts. Women and girls in care who were subjected to vaginal examinations experienced shame, humiliation, physical pain and trauma. For some, this has led to a lifelong fear of doctors and reluctance to seek medical help. Mothers who were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption told the Inquiry about their profound grief, and the effect this has had on the rest of their lives. Māori women and girls who were either birth mothers or babies adopted through closed adoption practices faced severance of connections to their whakapapa, language and culture.
The personal factors that contributed to women and girls being placed into care also meant they were more vulnerable to being abused and neglected in care. This was due to societal attitudes and discrimination based on racism, ableism, disablism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and negative stereotypes about children and young people, poverty and welfare dependency.
Women and girls who were living in poverty, were Māori, Pacific, Takatāpui, Rainbow or MVPFAFF+, Deaf, disabled or experiencing mental distress, had experienced adverse childhood events, and / or had a deferential attitude to people in positions of authority, were more likely to be placed in care, and to be abused and neglected while in care. Women and girls who were, or experienced, multiple combinations of these factors were at higher risk.
Most of the systemic or institutional factors that the Inquiry found contributed to abuse and neglect of children, young people and adults in State and faith-based care did not have a significantly different effect on women and girls. However, some faith-specific factors, including sexism in positions of authority and negative attitudes about female sexuality, contributed to girls and women being shamed, demonised and dehumanised in faith-based care. Christian religious beliefs, like the connection between suffering and salvation and the reformation of sinners, were used to justify the physical, medical and verbal abuse of women and girls in unmarried mothers’ homes.
Societal attitudes throughout the Inquiry period directly contributed to survivors entering care and suffering abuse and neglect in care. For girls and women, the most significant of these societal attitudes was sexism – prejudice and discrimination against girls and women. Although the sexism and gendered discrimination faced by women and girls in Aotearoa New Zealand changed during the half century of the Inquiry period, it did not go away. The influence of negative societal attitudes about women and girls persists to this day.