Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Mission Studies

Women in Mission: A Shirt-tail Experience?
Historical Reflections and Contemporary Realities.

“One liners” Elaine Bolitho[1] is how the history of women in mission could be described until recently because the role of women in mission has often been neglected and overlooked.  Even the reputable A History of Christian Missions by Stephen Neill (1964) and David Bosch’s magnum opus, Transforming Mission (1991) largely ignore the vital contribution of women in mission over the centuries.  It is as though women have trained a camera lens through the ages of the church and have found the women missing.  Moreover, a sharp distinction was made between the public world of men and the private domain of women.  Because women have been seen as adjuncts to men, women have been systematically written out of historical and anthropological records.[2] 

This paper tries to refocus the lens of the camera to allow new understandings and interpretations to emerge, not only by revisiting old sources but also by uncovering new sources and bringing these into focus. It will look at the lives of four Church Missionary Society wives to Aotearoa/NZ in the 19th century and consider their vocations, roles and significance. From the beginning the CMS encouraged its men to go as married men with families in order to be able to model pious domesticity and the ideal Christian family.

It was this Victorian ideology which worked for and against the wives – giving them a morally superior status to men but limiting their role to within the home, thus making it a shirt-tail experience. The paper will then consider the current situation of women in mission in the 21st century to try to determine if it is still a shirt-tail experience for women.

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