ABSTRACT
New Zealand Chinese women can be studied in two different ways: first as an ethnic group which has been badly marginalized by institutionalized discrimination, and then as women who have left their homeland and culture to build up their families in a new land. The smallness of the historical Chinese female community in New Zealand is indicative of the racially discriminatory legislation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Chinese goldminers and railroad workers routinely left their wives in China while trying to earn their fortunes abroad. The chapter shows that the graph of educational qualification certainly doesn't match that of occupation and industry. The majority of new immigrants qualified for entry through the new Points System whereby their educational qualification and professional experience counted most. It concludes that as gold mountain women or as astronauts' wives' Chinese women in New Zealand is condemned as aliens in their chosen home.
