A WOMAN OF PRINCIPAL
Settling into her new role as school principal, Jan Tinetti was dealing with a lot.
Not only was she still coping with the impact of two miscarriages and the loss of both parents in recent years, her husband had cancer for the second time and was in a different city getting treatment, while she was juggling her new job with caring for their two young sons, in a town where she knew no one.
A concerned parent of students at the school reached out to the Board of Trustees – only, it wasn’t Jan’s wellbeing they were concerned about.
“There was a letter basically asking how could they have appointed a woman with a husband who was sick with cancer and had two preschoolers? Because she couldn’t possibly do a good job,” recalls Jan.
“I just thought, if I was a man and my wife was in that situation and I had two preschoolers, everybody would have rallied around me. But because I was a woman, everybody criticised me.”
The fact that the principal-turned-Labour list MP now sits in cabinet as the Minister for Women is absolutely no coincidence.
“That really set the tone for me, in realising how up against
