This is the second of a series of articles focusing on the NCWNZ Past Presidents Oral History Project with interviews by Carol Dawber in 2016. See the introductory article in The Circular at "NCWNZ Past Presidents oral history interviews from 2016" (August 2024).
Barbara Winifred Glenie née Beckett QSO was the President of the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) from 1998 to 2002. Her work as president included developing NCWNZ's first strategic plan and creating an operations manual for the home office and the executive officer. Glenie remembered in her oral history interview how important it was for the NCWNZ under her leadership to maintain and strengthen the connections with the Māori Women's Welfare League and PACIFICA Inc.
Barbara Winifred Beckett was born on 20 September 1948 in Auckland to Victor Lockwood Beckett and Wilma Winifred Beckett née Lanagan. Her parents had a publishing business that they ran together. She was the youngest child of three, and they were raised in Remuera. She attended a private girls school, St. Cuthbert's College where she was a school prefect and games captain. She went straight on to Auckland University where she earned a science degree in botany in 1966. Thereafter she became a medical social worker, working at Green Lane Hospital then Auckland Hospital's child health unit focusing particularly on mental health and human development.
She married at twenty-four to Richard James Glenie who worked in his family's business, a chain of retail stores. They had three children together: Timothy (who became a cardiologist), Andrew (a lawyer), and Felicity (a civil engineer). She did part-time work at home - National Research Bureau coding and proofreading for her brother who took over the family publishing business. She also was cooking for a local delicatessen when she joined the Young Wives group at St. Aidan's Church. She joined a diocesan committee and became a delegate to NCW Auckland for the Association of Anglican Women. She told Carol Dawber, the interviewer, that she remembered feeling that she felt she was not involved enough in church to continue representing the Anglican Women, so she became a representative instead of the "Old Girls" from St. Cuthbert's College and then a delegate from the Federation of Graduate Women. While she was part of the Auckland branch, meeting at the Ellen Melville Hall once a month, the issues around abortion and the law reform split the branch.
Glenie didn't remember if NCWNZ came to a particular decision on the Abortion Law Reform because of the divisions across the branches. She became a representative for the Auckland branch to the NCWNZ Health Standing Committee, and she had fond memories of the good women she met: "thinking women" even if not holding an academic degree who contributed heartily to a good debate. The Health Standing Committee set up a task force to address the recommendations from the Cartwright Enquiry on Cervical Screening – and from that was chosen to represent NCWNZ on the District Health Board ethics committee. She became chair of that committee which addressed research proposals involving human reproductive technology issues, including IVF or turning off equipment for a minor who would never recover. When a convenor of the Health Standing Committee, she remembered working with University staff to develop a maternity services survey to get input from NCWNZ members across the country regarding the role of midwives, mortality rates, or shortening hospital stays.
During this time of serving on the NCWNZ standing committees for health and for employment, she was elected to the National Board. She remembered feeling strongly that the Board had been Wellington-focused and having a representative from Auckland was an important change. She took responsibility for The Circular and used her experience with publishing world to digitise and reformat it to include images and longer articles. She was also on the selection committee for NCWNZ's first executive officer. A year later she stood for Vice President, served for two years then stood for the presidency in 1998.
In her interview, Glenie remembered that while she was president, she encouraged younger women to do various jobs and to join the Board. Many of them were in the paid workforce and had good time management skills. She also tried to address the need for more cultural diversity in NCWNZ. She invited representatives of the Māori Women's Welfare League, PACIFICA Inc., and Shakti Community Council to meetings. She had a Board member designated to work with Pacifica women. However, she felt their efforts were only "moderately successful" since the NCWNZ governing and decision-making infrastructures were "not necessarily favoured by other ethnic groups." Early in her time, church groups had been quite strong in the NCWNZ membership but had waned. Fewer women were joining social organisations, and since NCWNZ was an umbrella group for women's groups, it was crucial for everyone to grow membership numbers. She remembered that there were more representatives from professional groups, e.g. medical women's group, women in law, and service organisations like Zonta and Soroptomist International which were gaining in strength because women using them for networking. As president, she pushed for individual memberships and encouraged branches to have "open days." She and the Board started an online forum called "Girltalk" which was open access to involve non-members in the big discussions. However, she felt that the quality of debate was not as rich with so many individual members. Usually, the member organisations would have discussed action items and brought broad-based opinions to the national level. Despite everyone's efforts membership numbers declined. She told the interviewer, “I found that whole membership thing frustrating and disappointing.”
Glenie also worked closely with Judy Lawrence, the CEO of the Ministry of Women's Affairs. She feared that the government no longer needed an umbrella group of women's organisations since the Ministry would speak with government about women's issues. She remembered that she feared the credibility of NCWNZ was diminished by falling memberships.
Meanwhile, Glenie was still working full-time, editing trade magazines for her family publishing business. She recalled being on several committees, doing her own housework and being a "keen gardener" at her home in Remuera and with three tertiary students still at home. However, she remembered missing out on family events because of board meetings scheduled in Wellington. She would attend five or six meetings a year, going down on a Thursday and returning home on Sunday. She spoke every day on the phone with the executive officer running the NCWNZ operations and connecting with other women's organisations.
Early in her time as president, she led the development of NCWNZ's first strategic plan. She got a copy of the University of Auckland's strategic plan and modelled a draft on that. The Board included a qualified accountant, a lawyer, women involved on the international scene and with a solid "business nous on the Board" she was able to move the organisation into more of a business model. The strategic plan focussed on five major goals: advocacy, membership, administration, financial, and international. She and the executive officer created an operations manual, formalising office systems rather than relying on institutional knowledge of the Wellington-based leadership. The powerhouse of NCWNZ was the standing committees. She remembered she had good convenors, and each Board member was allocated to a standing committee to take responsibility for writing submissions. Glenie ran training days for convenors; she made sure they each had a slot to speak at national meetings, and their findings were fed through to the ICW and CEDAW. This focus "stopped a scattergun approach," and stopped more vocal people getting their issues out there ahead of others.
She received an invitation from the All-China Women’s Federation to visit China, and she attended together with Jacqui Te Kani, president of the MWWL - "we were very much there as partners." She also remembered the importance of contributing to CEDAW reporting, conducting workshops around the country, and working with other organisations. In her 1999 preface to the Waikato University Population Studies Centre’s New Zealand’s Contraceptive Revolutions, Glenie spoke out as NCWNZ National President, stating: "There is no doubt that a major social revolution has come about with the introduction of the hormonal contraceptive pill." She gave credit to NCWNZ's Past President Dame Jocelyn Fish for her coordinating role. Ultimately, Glenie believed "All issues are women's issues." Her role as president was to empower women and to remember that NCWNZ "has always fought for mankind not just women, for the good of society."
In June 2004, on the occasion of the New Zealand celebration of the Queen's birthday, Barbara Glenie was awarded the QSO, Companion of the Queen's Order for Public Services.
Glenie emphasised her gratitude to the opportunities that NCWNZ gave her. She said that she personally developed important organisational skills, and that the work with the NCWNZ "broadened my mind; I saw what was like to be an employer, and I met great people I'm still networking with. I was lucky, I was paid for much of the work on panels and committees [appointed upon recommendation by NCWNZ]. I wouldn’t have had those opportunities without NCW."
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See also The Circular article on NCWNZ Past President Janet Hesketh QSM, CNZM (September 24, 2024).
To read more articles from The Circular (January-February 2025) issue 650, click on the tag below.