New Zealand, 2002

Director: Brita McVeigh
Producers: Gaylene Preston, Brita McVeigh
Cinematographer: Cameron McLean
Editor: Tim Woodhouse
Music: Paul Casserly

Interviews: Lana Simpson, Mary Alice Watts, Jane Myhre, Shirley Neale, Emerald Gilmour, Lyn Marie Davis, Carolyn Penney.

"Over a cup of tea, these women would hand me these very glamorous pictures of themselves as nubile young hosties, standing proudly in their crimpolene micro-minis, with beehive hairdos, racoon-eyed make up and false eyelashes. They looked so young and so perversely sexy. It was written in the personnel manual that a hostess was required to visit the bathroom to check her appearance every ten minutes. Pre-1974, women employed by the airline were required to leave the industry if they married, became pregnant, or had the audacity to pass their 35th birthday. Airlines in fact behaved like bored husbands, trading in the loyal older woman for the younger, perkier model. And then I discovered a small book, written in 1987, called Human Rights Commission vs. Air New Zealand Ltd.: A Story of Sex Discrimination. It told the story of 17 hostesses, who, after 13 years of struggling for equal rights to promotion, pay and superannuation and for some, years of sustained sexual harassment in the workplace, were seeking two million dollars in discriminatory claims against their employer. What I had now was a story that traced the changing status of women. It finally made sense to me, as the recipient, a woman of the next generation. I had been trying to grasp the anomalies of the 50s, 60s and 70s working environment for a New Zealand air hostess and now I could see a way to tell the stories of these women."--Brita McVeigh