An Officer And A Gentlewoman The Women Leading The Boys' Club

Two Go-getters Are Blazing a Trail Through a Man’s World

- Fleur Guthrie

Astately four-storey building cloaked in ivy would always catch the eye of Victoria Carter when, as a schoolgirl, she caught the bus through Auckland’s inner city.

Intrigued, she asked her stepfather, respected journalist Pat Booth, what it was.

He replied, ‘Oh, it’s the private Northern Club.’ But in her mind, it became a secret building only for men.

“Which was a strange concept to a child,” says Victoria (54), who found it almost impossible to imagine that 40 years later she would be elected the first female president of the prestigious gentleman’s club.

And what’s more, the former politician isn’t the only trailblazer in the building.

The Officer’s Club – a social organisation for military personnel that made its home within the Northern Club – also recently elected its first female president, Lindy Esslemont (69).

The appointments symbolise that the clubs are no longer male bastions, the women tell the Weekly as they welcome us into the club’s opulent library, but they stress that there’s still a way to go.

“We are so far progressed, but there are still women who don’t know what they’re capable of achieving in their own right,” says Lindy, who served as a captain in the British and Australian armies.

“Or that the door is open,” adds Victoria. “We’ve pushed it open for them and they just need to walk through it! The more that younger women can see older women in different roles and responsibilities, they know they can do it too.