40. Circumstances that led to women and girls entering State and faith-based care during the Inquiry period varied depending on the care setting and their own personal circumstances. However, sexism and gender-based discrimination played a particular role that led to many women and girls entering care.

Sexism and gender-based discrimination led to placement in care

41. For many women and girls, the circumstances that led them into State and faith-based care was based on social norms and stigma about gender roles, mothering, pregnancy, female immorality and sexuality (especially with respect to perceived promiscuity), miscarriage, stillbirth and marital difficulties. Views on gender and family life were influenced by faith-based beliefs such as sin and redemption.

42. These effects were compounded for Māori and Pacific women and girls, who were targeted based on racist attitudes and discrimination, faced heightened surveillance and were held to a different moral standard than boys and men.

43. The circumstances that led women and girls into psychiatric care, unmarried mothers’ homes and social welfare care were often strongly influenced by sexism and gender-based discrimination.

Entries of women and girls into psychiatric care

44. The Confidential Forum and the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service observed that pathways into psychiatric settings could be gendered. Prejudice, sexist attitudes and a lack of knowledge and understanding of different behaviours or conditions saw some women and girls admitted to psychiatric care settings for reasons that would be viewed today as wholly inappropriate.[26]

45. Psychiatric admissions often reflected prevailing societal norms and attitudes about women’s gender roles, mothering, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth and marital difficulties.[27] Societal norms and stigma about female sexuality also influenced entries, particularly in relation to perceived promiscuity.

46. Sometimes, women and girls’ appropriate emotional responses or inability to cope with trauma or negative life events led to admissions. For example, Māori survivor Ms LW was taken by her mother to a doctor in the 1980s when she was aged 18 to discuss the mental distress she had been experiencing because of childhood sexual abuse. The doctor referred her for psychiatric assessment at Wellington Hospital and that same day she was placed into psychiatric care in Porirua Hospital.[28]

47. In other cases, doctors and other clinicians minimised or dismissed women and girls’ pain or physical health concerns, and considered this warranted psychiatric intervention. NZ European survivor Ms AT told the Inquiry that she went to two GPs in the 1980s to discuss her heavy, painful periods but both were adamant this was “all in [her] head”.[29] The second GP she saw referred her to Hastings Psychiatric Unit, where she was given antipsychotic medication.[30] Ms AT said that before being discharged a large ovarian cyst was found and removed,[31] which corroborated her view that her symptoms had a physical cause.

48. The Confidential Listening and Assistance Service found that young women admitted to psychiatric institutions for post-partum depression often stayed for many years.[32] NZ European survivor Ms SF shared with the Inquiry that a diagnosis of post-partum depression influenced her entry into a mental health care setting, however her diagnosis was later changed to something other than post-partum depression.[33]

Entries of women and girls into unmarried mothers’ homes

49. During the first half of the Inquiry period, many unmarried women who became pregnant experienced intense discrimination and judgement, often based on perceived promiscuity.[34] The shame and stigma associated with sexual behaviour and pregnancy outside of marriage intersected with the lack of employment options and financial support available to girls and women to create an environment where many unmarried women and girls who became pregnant had few options other than unmarried mothers’ homes. Many girls were sent to unmarried mothers’ homes by their families in the early stages of pregnancy.[35] Susan Williams, a survivor of Bethany Home (The Salvation Army) in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington, explained that “we were all sent there to hide our shame or just hide”.[36]

50. The social attitudes and beliefs that unmarried mothers were incapable of being good parents,[37] and that children born to unmarried mothers would also carry a social stigma contributed to the adoption rate during the Inquiry period. Although the 1969 Status of Children Act granted equal legal status of children of both married and unmarried parents, the Children and Young Persons Act 1974 still required the birth of a child to an unmarried mother to be notified to a social worker.[38] Pregnant single girls and women faced significant pressure, or even coercion, including through a lack of informed consent, to have their babies adopted out.[39]

51. During the Inquiry period, the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian churches and The Salvation Army had a role in operating unmarried mothers’ homes and in arranging adoptions. Expert witness Barbara Sumner told the Inquiry she considered the role that The Salvation Army had in the facilitation of adoptions through its Bethany homes over a lengthy time period was akin to it running an adoption agency or programme.[40]

52. Pressure to adopt came from family members, prospective adoptive parents,[41] authorities such as social workers, and medical professionals like nurses and doctors. It could be heightened for girls or young women who became pregnant while already in the care of the State themselves.[42] For example, Māori survivor Ms LV, who has a learning disability, was re-admitted into Lake Alice Hospital in Rangitikei with her 3-month-old baby when she was 24 years old. Her baby was taken away from her by a social worker two days after admission:

“I did not give informed consent to [my child] being adopted, I did not have any way of understanding what was happening and my rights.”[43]

53. Pākehā survivor Ann-Marie Shelley’s experience of being pressured to adopt her child out was intergenerational and included both the Catholic Church and The Salvation Army.[44] Her birth mother, who was herself adopted, was 17 years old when she was pressured to adopt Ann-Marie to a Catholic family. In 1973, when Ann-Marie fell pregnant aged 18, she was placed in a home for unmarried mothers and ordered not to reappear in her hometown of Te Awa Kairangi ki Uta Upper Hutt in case her parents’ friends were to see her pregnant. Her parents did not visit her and demanded Ann-Marie adopt her son out.

Entries of women and girls into social welfare care

54. Social welfare institutions, which included State and faith-based care facilities like boys’ and girls’ homes and youth justice institutions, were often used as a way of curbing delinquent behaviour. Social attitudes focused on female sexuality and perceived promiscuity contributed to women and girls entering social welfare care during the Inquiry period.

55. During the 1950s and 1960s, heightened social anxiety about juvenile delinquency, and the associated belief that this was caused by female sexuality, were amplified following the release of the 1954 Mazengarb Report. This resulted in greater policing of children and young people, and them being taken into care due to being ‘indigent’, ‘not under proper control’ and ‘delinquent’.[45] Expert witness Professor Elizabeth Stanley explained that girls and young women were held to a different moral standard than boys. They would come to the attention of State authorities for things like running away, staying out or behaving in a way that was judged as being sexually promiscuous.[46]

56. Māori and Pacific girls and women faced greater levels of surveillance and State intervention[47] due to sexist discrimination in combination with racism, which framed them as lazy, unintelligent and hyper-sexual. This view is evident in a 1965 letter from the Whangarei District Child Welfare Officer about admissions of girls to Fareham House in Pae-Tū-Mokai Featherston or Kingslea Girls’ Home in Ōtautahi Christchurch:

“The girls whom I refer are, in the main, the dull backward, affection-starved Māori girls who cannot produce anything near a reasonable day’s work and who try and get their needed affection from any male who is handy.”[48]

57. Māori and Pacific parents were also discriminated against, which contributed to their children being placed into care. For example, in the records of Māori survivor Gwen Anderson, a child welfare officer wrote that the children appeared “happy and well adjusted” but described her mother as a “toothless shapeless hag” and the family home as “primitive and most pathetic”.[49]

58. This led to a disproportionately high number of Māori and Pacific girls entering social welfare care throughout the Inquiry period. For example:

• In 1961, of the 37 girls admitted into Kingslea Girls’ Home in Ōtautahi Christchurch, 40 percent (15 girls) were identified as Māori or Pacific. In 1970, this proportion had increased to 58 percent (36 girls) of the 62 girls admitted being identified as Māori or Pacific.[50]
• In 1975, of the 38 girls admitted into Allendale Girls’ Home in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland between February and April that year, 61 percent (23 girls) were identified as Māori and 8 percent (three girls) were identified as Pacific.[51] Over representation of Māori girls in Allendale Girls’ Home was also recorded in 1981 and 1983.[52]
• A 1987 Department of Social Welfare study found that, of 239 girls aged 15–16 who were under the guardianship of the Director-General of Social Welfare, 51 percent were Māori, 37 percent were Pākehā and 12 percent were from other ethnic groups, primarily of “Pacific Island origin”.[53]

Footnotes