Dorothea Horsman

Dame Dorothea Jean Horsman (née Morrell; 17 April 1918 – 7 January 1994) was a New Zealand women's rights advocate.

Biography Horsman was born Dorothea Jean Morrell in Wellington on 17 April 1918, the daughter of Jean Morrell (née Morris) and Samuel Tankard Morrell. She was educated at Auckland Girls' Grammar School, and went on to study at Auckland Teachers' College and Auckland University College, graduating Master of Arts with second-class honours in 1941.

She married Ernest Alan Horsman on 16 December 1943.

Horsman worked as a schoolteacher from 1941 until 1945.

When Alan Horsman was appointed professor of English at the University of Otago in Dunedin in 1957, Dorothea and Alan Horsman and their three children returned to New Zealand.

Horsman served as president of the Federation of University Women from 1973 to 1976, and president of the National Council of Women from 1982 to 1986. From 1980 to 1983, Horsman was president of the Arthritis Foundation of New Zealand. Her husband, Alan Horsman, died in 2019.

Honours and awards In 1977, Horsman was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal.