author
Ettie Annie Rout
1877–1936
A bold New Zealand reformer, she became famous for challenging sexual double standards and pushing for practical public health measures during and after the First World War. Her campaigns made her one of the most controversial and striking voices of her time.
1 Audiobook
Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity
by Ettie Annie Rout
About the author
Born in Tasmania in 1877 and later active in New Zealand, Ettie Annie Rout became a writer, campaigner, and outspoken social reformer. She is best remembered for arguing that women should have access to clear information about sex, contraception, and disease prevention at a time when such subjects were often treated as scandalous.
During the First World War, she drew wide attention for organizing welfare work for New Zealand soldiers and for promoting practical ways to reduce venereal disease. Those efforts made her admired by some and fiercely criticized by others, but they also marked her as an unusually fearless public figure who was willing to confront problems many preferred to ignore.
Rout spent much of her later life outside New Zealand and continued writing and campaigning before her death in 1936. Today she is often remembered as a pioneer of sexual health education and as a woman far ahead of the social attitudes of her era.