This is the first 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).

Janet Hesketh at Celebrating Women reception, Government House, Wellington, on 26 November 2013. From Wikimedia Commons.

Janet May Hesketh née MacKenzie QSM, CNZM, was the President of the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) from 1994 to 1998. Her work as president included advocating for the 1995 UN Beijing Platform for Action and hosting the executive committee of the International Council of Women (ICW) in 1996. 

Janet May MacKenzie was born 23 December 1934 in Hamilton, the eldest daughter of Lilian May Harris and Eric Bruce Mackenzie. Her father was an electrical engineer and head of the New Zealand electricity department which meant the family moved several times in her childhood. The family moved to Nelson in 1940 (where she attended primary school) then in 1946 to Wellington. She graduated from Wellington East Girls College where she played hockey, track, and was a member of the Student Christian Movement, attending the Korori Anglican parish of St. Mary's at Korori. She attended Victoria University where she majored in geography. Very few women then graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree as she did. She taught the demonstration sections for the geography university students and worked as a cartographer. In 1955-56 she started a master's degree on the socio-economic conditions in Karori. In 1957 she taught at Otago Girls High (with no teacher training) for one year and met her husband who was then in dental school - Clive Rossill Hesketh. They married 21 Dec 1957. When she started having children, she dropped out of her graduate program and gave her data to someone else in the department, knowing that she was not going to finish her degree.

She had four children and worked at home as well as pitched in as administrative support for her husband's dentistry surgery office. She told Carol Dawber in an oral history interview in 2016 that she never expected to go back to work - and besides, her husband Clive was "a dominant man" who had said publicly that "no wife of mine is going to work." Her children, Brigit, Alan, Diana, and Margaret, were all involved in swimming and water polo so she became a timekeeper/judge; her three daughters took up Girl Guides, became a leader then commissioner in charge of the camping in her district. At the same time she was involved in the Mother's Union - later named the Association of Anglican Women (AAW). Hesketh met Miriam Dell (a former NCWNZ president) through this group. In the 1960s she became a member of the Social Responsibility Association of Anglicans taking part in lobbying, putting out papers to parishes, and presenting submissions to Parliament as part of an inter-church alliance that would take on political issues. She often served as Dell's proxy at AAW and NCWNZ meetings, and by the late 1970s she started going regularly to NCWNZ Wellington branch meetings as the AAW representative.

In 1980 Hesketh joined the NCWNZ Parliamentary Watch Committee, serving as convener after her first year; and, in 1984 she became national secretary of NCWNZ. That year the NCWNZ national office organised women's forums around the nation to discuss the ratification of the UN Treaty (CEDAW). Though NCWNZ had passed a resolution to ratify it, there was a healthy debate among the many women's organisations hosting the conversations. She edited the NCWNZ's newsletter The Circular from 1986-1992 which gave her experience in how NCWNZ's submissions process worked, helped draft policy and share that information out to the branch membership. In 1988 she was elected NCWNZ Vice President under Jocelyn Fish, who was also a leader in the AAW. According to Dorothy Page, the NCWNZ had in the year ending July 1989 made 68 submissions to parliamentary select committees.

Hesketh told Carol Dawber in her 2016 interview that she believed women's leadership starts in local meetings with asking questions then one's confidence builds. She also admitted that her family expected her to be home full-time, and that she believed that she would not have been NCWNZ president if she had not broken up with her husband Clive when she did.

Hesketh followed upon the presidency of Alison Roxburgh and the joyful 1993 Suffrage Year. Several books were published under her watch. In 1995 Roxburgh's Home Economics Standing Committee published the NCW Centennial Recipe Book. In 1996 Dame Stella Casey organised the publication of the NCWNZ's register of 1700 resolutions dating from 1896 to 1995: One Hundred Years of Resolution: NCW N.Z., 1896-1996. Hesketh added warnings in her "Postscript" to Dorothy Page's centennial history of the National Council of Women of New Zealand. Hesketh worried that women's organisations had fewer members, and the average age of those members was rising. She worried that women were not being appointed to decision-making bodies in the public or private sectors and that the "consciousness of the reasons for appointing women has decreased." She was sure that the NCWNZ served as an important supporter of the Ministry of Women's Affairs which was then just a decade old and under threat. She wrote that the NCWNZ needed to:

....review our methods, our organisation and our attitudes to society so that we will attract women whose lifestyles are different... in an age of specialisation the NCW offers integration and a holistic approach, and even if it is not fashionable, the council must continue to work in this style, always emphasising the value of the interdependence of all parts of society." (pp. 187-188)

Hesketh was in China for the 1995 Beijing conference at which the NZ Minister for Women's Affairs, Jenny Shipley, spoke on behalf of New Zealand. The parallel NGO Forum was held in Huairou for two weeks. Hesketh was one of only eight NGO representatives for NZ at these conferences. At the main conference with 6,000 government delegates and 4,000 accredited NGO representatives, representing 189 countries, The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action was adopted unanimously. The Beijing Platform emphasised the reproductive rights of women, and conservative groups such as the New Zealand chapter for the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union, split away from the NCWNZ over this issue. Nevertheless, considered the premiere document of global agreement on strategic objectives and actions for the achievement of gender equality, the Beijing Platform for Action continues to serve an important role in defining and measuring legal advances for women. (The 30-year review will take place during the Commission’s 69th session to be held in March 2025.)

Hesketh traveled to China the next year to return a visit they had received from representatives of the All China Women's Federation. In her interview with Carol Dawber in 2016, she recalled her visit that year and trying in vain to ask the women's groups about the conditions of factory workers and women's reproductive health issues. These topics were considered by their hosts to be too sensitive to deserve much in-depth discussion. That year she led the festivities when New Zealand hosted the ICW executive meeting with representatives from all over the world. When the Nigerian representatives were denied a visa, Hesketh had to write letters to a multitude of parliamentarians and agencies. She hand-delivered them. The decision was reversed.

In 1997 the Minister of Women's Affairs was exiled from Cabinet, and in December 1997 Jenny Shipley became leader of the National-led coalition and the first woman Prime Minister with an election that brought in women for a record-breaking 30% of the new Parliament. Hesketh worried in her interview with Carol Dawber in 2016 that the number of NCW branches was falling and fewer submissions were being presented.

In her zeal to keep NCWNZ relevant, she sounded a trumpet call in her final President's message in The Circular (October 1998):

NCW processes are slow. We have prided ourselves on trying to be consultative, on involving the individual members of affiliated societies, not just those who represent them at NCW Branch meetings. But society and its younger members, now expect fast results, fast comments on new issues. How is an organisation like NCW going to adapt itself to answer these expectations? ... During the time I have been involved with NCW I have been frequently disappointed that the representatives to NCW Branches, when considering new directions or changes to their procedures say, "but all of us here are happy with what we do" and refuse to make more than very minimal changes. The world is passing us by.

Already a recipient of the Queen's Service Medal (in 1988), Hesketh was made a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in 1996 for her work in the NCWNZ. Janet Hesketh died at 83 on 29 August 2018. Her obituary in the Waikato Times celebrated her leadership as NCWNZ president.