Top 10 women who have shaped New Zealand

According to a panel of influential women put together by the New Zealand Woman's Weekly the following is a list of "New Zealand's 10 most inspiring women":

1. Helen Clark
2. Kate Sheppard
3. Jean Batten
4. Janet Frame
5. Dame Silvia Cartwright
6. Dame Whina Cooper
7. Marilyn Waring
8. The Topp Twins
9. Dame Rosanne Meo
10. Dame Lois Muir

(FYI that is 11 women!)

The Top Ten list was devised as a celebration of the 80th birthday of the founding of the NZ Woman's Weekly and reported in the issue dated 25th June 2012 (cover pictured above).

Janet Frame was a regular reader of the NZWW which has been a local institution from the very first. She told the Woman's Weekly during one of her interviews with the magazine (in 1983) that her Mum had "always got  it" and that she herself collected the handy hints ("they're very useful").

Janet Frame's two interviews with the NZWW are quoted in Janet Frame in her own Words (Penguin NZ 2011). Janet Frame was also the subject of an article in the Christmas issue last December 2011.

It's good to know that Janet Frame's determination to become a writer in spite of all the odds against her, still inspires new generations of New Zealand women and girls. Janet Frame showed remarkable perserverance, courage and determination to pursue her vocation, at a time when any attempt to go against conformity and convention was treated with suspicion and even punishment.

Her enduring and much-loved body of work stands as a tribute to her courage in the face of sexism and narrowmindedness.