Wikipedia x Online Cenotaph: Women in Wartime.
Blog by Anjuli Selvadurai, Wikimedian in Residence, and Sophie Elborough, Collection Technician, Research Support
On Tuesday 15th July 2025, Wikimedian in Residence Anjuli Selvadurai, Online Cenotaph Collection Technician Sophie Elborough, and Online Cenotaph and Enquiries Services Manager Victoria Passau hosted Women in Wartime, a public talk held in the Research Library Te Pātaka Mātāpuna. The session sought to cast light on the vital, though often underrepresented, role women played in wartime. By highlighting the stories of two women, the event demonstrated how Online Cenotaph and Wikipedia, both open access platforms, can work together to strengthen public knowledge and foster collaborative engagement.
Although scholarship on women’s wartime experiences has grown in recent decades, significant gaps remain in public understanding. The turmoil and violence of the World Wars shattered existing social frameworks, divided families, and brought sudden changes to New Zealand society. Ideals of femininity and the ‘modern woman’ were swiftly redefined to meet wartime demands. Yet, progress was never linear, and women’s advancements into both the workforce and the defence force had to tow a fine line between demonstrating their strength and competence without being allowed to threaten existing male hegemony.
These tensions and contradictions are evident in the experiences of Matron Nina May Palmer and Warrant Officer Catherine Frances Bryers (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ruanui). Their stories illustrate the reality of life during conflict and demonstrate the breadth of women’s experiences within the forces, spanning both World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII). The Women in Wartime event was the culmination of an effort to platform these women’s lives on Wikipedia and, in doing so, cementing them in the dominant narrative.
Nina May Palmer
Nina May Palmer, better known as May, graduated as a registered nurse in 1902 and during the summer of 1913, she had her first experience of war while she was holidaying with her mother in Europe.1 When war broke out in the Balkans, May offered her services as a nurse and despite running her own private hospital in central Wellington for 10 years, little could prepare her for the wounds of war. In a letter to the New Zealand nursing journal Kai Tiaki, May reported that she dealt with “many shockingly badly shattered limbs”, “terrible head injuries chiefly caused by shrapnel”, and “cases where the intestines and bladder had been riddled with bullets.”2 While others may have been deterred by these experiences, May was not, and when World War I began, she was one of the first New Zealand nurses to embark to the Front.
Despite many nurses eagerly offering their services, the government declined to send any with the New Zealand troops, instead choosing to rely on British nurses. While their position did eventually change, many nurses were unwilling to wait and decided to pay their own way to England. May was one such nurse. By October 1914 she made the difficult journey to Marseilles, travelling from Wellington to the island of Malta before her ship, the Morea, was ordered to go no further.3 May, not one to be dissuaded, continued to Sicily and on to mainland Italy where she made the long overland journey to join the French Red Cross where she found overwhelmed hospitals and patients with “horrible and dangerous wounds.”4 While May was treating patients, she fell sick and, in October 1916, she was admitted to hospital in Southampton, England with breast cancer.5 Following the removal of her right breast she was declared ‘permanently unfit’ and discharged from service. Despite this, May applied again to serve with the French Red Cross, writing an impassioned letter to a fellow nursing colleague. Her application was accepted and May worked with the French Red Cross until the war ended, after which she became matron of a hospital built to care for the 20,000 men who were employed to build the Assassin Dam in Sudan.6
May died in 1962 at 91 after a lifetime of impressive service and incredible generosity. The contributions of Nina May Palmer and other brave women brought about fundamental shifts in the landscape of New Zealand society. The First World War brought women’s contributions to the forefront, not only across the health, welfare, and support sectors in which they had been traditionally cast, but also as capable workers and core drivers of the economy. Despite this increasing recognition, many of the material changes for women were short-term as opportunities faded away after the conflict ended and men returned home. In an effort to maintain social cohesion in the face of such grief and tragedy, New Zealand society developed a greater focus on the values of continuity and conservatism. This pushed many women back into traditional roles and meant that when World War II broke out, women were facing both new and familiar challenges limiting their ability to contribute to the war effort.
Catherine Francis Bryers
This was particularly true for wāhine Māori whose stories are still absent from much of our military history as they faced, in the words of Stacey Fraser and Angela Wanhalla, “a double invisibility of service due to their gender and ethnicity.”7 This erasure was true for both wāhine in the services and those on the home front, as the economic and domestic labour of Māori women went largely unacknowledged. The total number of Māori women who joined the services during WWII, and information about how they were incorporated into recruitment and training programmes, is still unknown. Despite these gaps, the stories passed down from women involved in these organisations tell of incredible tenacity and commitment to service.
One of these wāhine was Catherine Frances Bryers (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Ruanui) who served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as part of the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). In total, the New Zealand Air Force accepted 4,753 women for service and only 186 of these women have been identified as wāhine Māori.8 A small number of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, also known as WAAFs, were employed as aircraft hands or transport drivers, but most were posted to kitchens or mess halls, or serving as clerks, telephone operators, or working in medical support roles. Frances fit into a similar role, beginning her career at Hobsonville Base as an accounts payable clerk.9 She quickly became known for her keen eye for detail and her impressive efficiency, eventually working her way up to run the accounts department. In addition to her meticulous work, Frances was described as a warm and empathetic person who a fellow WAAF described as “a wonderful woman, with much love and compassion for us younger ones… we could go to her about anything, whether it was work-related or personal”.10 Frances was “quiet and unassuming, but had a delightful sparkle about her when we were all out of uniform at a social function!”11
When the war ended, Frances’s service with the RNZAF continued as she had the honour of being one of only two Māori women selected from the WAAF to take part in the Victory Parade in London. Frances wrote that she was immensely proud “to be representing the many members of our race who had served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.”12 In 1952, she made history when she was promoted to Warrant Officer, the highest rank for non-commissioned officers, becoming the first women to hold this rank in peacetime.13 The next year Frances attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and received the Queen’s Coronation Medal, though it was in 1961 that she would receive her greatest honour.14 It was then that Frances was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for outstanding service to the RNZAF as her, “exemplary conduct, ability, loyalty, and personality made her an asset in every respect.”15 Frances died in 1989 at age 72 and, in honour of her service, a road in Hobsonville Point was named after her. While this is a meaningful acknowledgement of Frances’s service, in a place close to her heart, her story remains relatively unknown on a broader scale.
Wikipedia: Women in Red
Despite the vital roles these women played, and their extensive achievements they were awarded during their lifetimes, neither had Wikipedia pages. In preparation for the event, Anjuli and Sophie created and updated these pages to demonstrate the possibilities for collaboration and connection between Online Cenotaph and Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a platform that can bring a lot of recognition to women like May and Frances, potentially connecting their stories with researchers worldwide.
Wikipedia is one of the world’s most visited websites, often the first-place people go to get an overview on almost any topic. The online encyclopedia holds a level of authority in legitimising information too. Due to its model of neutral toned compilations of information and sources on a topic, Wikipedia truly reflects what content our history books and society deem important. Content bias manifests in statistics like, only 20.13% of biography articles on Wikipedia being about women and only 13% of Wikipedia editors identifying as women.16
There are a lot of notable women out there that are not yet present on Wikipedia. This is because it is much harder to make the case of notability for women because they are less represented in our media, history books and museum collections. Unfortunately, the systematic biases of our world seep into Wikipedia too. This highlights just how important it is to keep researching, reporting and producing content about women. This is where the Women in Red movement comes in, a global project that aims to even the imbalance and ensure women and their histories are represented online.
Wikiproject x Online Cenotaph utilises Auckland Museum’s biographical database, Online Cenotaph, which aims to share underrepresented histories of New Zealand’s involvement in conflict over time.
The Cenotaph Stories article, ‘New Zealand Nurses in Samoa’ served as a fundamental resource in creating and improving the pages for each of these history making women who were the first New Zealand nurses to see active service in WWI as part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force stationed at Apia Hospital in Samoa. Their stories highlight the surprising breadth of New Zealand’s involvement in WWI as well as the struggles women faced just to serve.
Wikipedia’s collaborative nature allows others to edit and improve upon this research and even join in on the project. As we continue to strive to represent diverse histories and stories significant to Aotearoa, we hope that you can join us in sharing, platforming and preserving these online.
References
1 White, Georgina. May Palmer. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. First published: 2 July 2021.
2 Palmer, N. M, “Nursing the Greeks in Salonika during the last Balkan War”, Kai Tiaki: the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume VII, Issue 4 (October 1914), 173.
3 White (2021).
4 May Palmer, “Under the French Red Cross” in Kai Tiaki: the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume VIII, Issue 1 (January 1915), 15.
5 White (2021).
6 ibid.
7 Stacey Fraser and Angela Wanhalla. An Invisible History: Wāhine Māori in the Air Force during World War II. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. First published: 11 January 2021.
8ibid.
9What’s in a Name: Frances Bryers Road, Hobsonville Point.
10 ibid.
11ibid.
12 Fraser and Wanhalla (2021)
13 ibid.
14What’s in a Name: Frances Bryers Road, Hobsonville Point.
15ibid.
Women in Red
If you are interested in getting involved in the Wikiproject x Online Cenotaph or the Women in Red movement, please contact wikipedia@aucklandmuseum.com.
Header image credit: Group. No. 9 Airwoman Recruit course. RNZAF Station Taieri. L-R: Back; Robinson, Anderson, Simpson, Price, Herdson, O\u0027Shea, Clark, Looby. Middle; Herewini, Parsons, Sheehan, Tuapawa, Bennett, Flavell, Witana, Rewa. Front; Ross, Ruston, Martin, instructor, instructor, Benson, Nicholas, Edwards. Image kindly provided by the Air Force Museum of New Zealand. CC-BY-NC-3.0