19/09/2026
An incredible story of standing up for what's fair and a reminder that what we enjoy today as women has been hard won.
The repeal of the Fair Pay Amendments Act also reminds us that the fight continues ❤️
The freezing works paid her 68 cents less an hour for the same knife.
Makarewa, Southland, 6 August 1975, 7:10am, -2 degrees, yard smells like blood and steam and diesel. Smoke from stack one, 30 metres high, that never stopped. Mereana Te Aroha Rangi, 38, in the photo, overalls, hairnet, arms crossed. Ngāi Tahu, from Bluff, mother of 4, worked at Southland Frozen Meat, boning room, since 1966, 9 years. She b***d 40 lambs an hour, 320 a day, 6 days a week, hands in 2-degree water, knife 15 centimetres, that she sharpened herself because the men's sharpener wouldn't do women's knives.
What was taken was not dramatic. It was precise.
Men classified as "bo**rs" got $2.78 an hour in 1975. Women classified as "female bo**rs" got $2.10, same work, same room, same cold, same knife. Difference 68 cents an hour. 27.20 dollars a week. 1,360 dollars a year. Over her 9 years, 12,240 dollars taken. She had the pay slips to prove it, 432 slips, kept in a biscuit tin, Arnott's, under her bed, with her tax returns.
What remained was the work.
She could bone a lamb in 72 seconds, clean, no bone chip, no waste. The foreman, Mr. Bill Thompson, 52, from Invercargill, 23 years at the works, knew it. He put her on the hardest line, line 3, where the lambs were bigger, because she was faster than two men. He still called her "love."
System's indifference was a character who wore a tie in a freezing works.
The union delegate, Mr. Jim Keenan, 44, said at the smoko room meeting on 12 March 1975, 10:15am, 22 men, 3 women, "Equal pay is not a union issue, it's a women's issue." The manager, Mr. R. S. Anderson, 58, said in his office, wood-panelled, heater on, "We pay market rates, Mereana. Women don't stay as long." She had stayed 9 years, longer than 11 men in the room.
Her weapon was precision, patience, documentation.
She didn't shout. She wrote down every shift, start 6am, finish 2:30pm, every lamb count, every pay slip number, in a school exercise book, 1B5, 40 pages, $0.18 from Whitcoulls. She wrote: "12 March 1975, 42 lambs/hr, 8 hrs, 336, $16.80." She got her husband, Pita, 40, truck driver, to copy it, because her writing was bad. She took it to the Equal Pay hearing in Christchurch, 19 November 1975, bus 6 hours, with 2 other women, one Pākehā, 41, one Samoan, 29. They had 3 biscuit tins.
The system eventually bent. Not quickly.
In 1976, the Arbitration Court ruled the classification illegal. In 1977, Southland Frozen Meat paid back pay, $1,847 to Mereana, cheque, 23 December, just before Christmas. She bought a fridge, $499, and put the tin on top. The classification changed to "b***r," no female, in the 1978 award. 34 women got raises.
Mereana never bent. She kept boning at 40 an hour until 1983, when her hands gave out, arthritis, left thumb. She still has the knife, 15 centimetres, handle taped with black tape, in her kitchen in Bluff, drawer 2, with the biscuit tin.
She said once to a young Pākehā woman in 1979 who asked why she didn't just leave, "If I leave, they say women can't do it. If I stay and write it down, they have to pay."
Some yards are mud and smoke and a woman in overalls with arms crossed in 1975 who kept 432 pay slips in an Arnott's tin so they would have to pay.
