Grand dames and gentle helpmeets: Women and the royal honours system in New Zealand, 1917-2000

Scholars, for the most part, have paid little attention to royal honours systems, both in Britain and in the settler societies whose honours systems are derived from that of Britain. This article challenges that neglect through a particular focus on women's experiences of the New Zealand royal honours system. It uses the New Zealand context as a window on to the gendered nature of honours systems, arguing that the history of honours is a rich field of research for women's historians interested in shifts in society and in gender identities and statuses in the twentieth century. Focusing on the award of titles to women, the article explores patterns in such awards and the representations of the recipients in popular culture. Like many women who have reached the top of a historically male-dominated system, their experiences display a constant disjunction between conformity to traditional images and ideals of the feminine as being exceptionally situated as different from other women.