Dame Silvia Cartwright has been a trailblazer for women in the fields of law and justice, and she's detailed her life story in a new memoir.

She was one of two women studying law at Otago University in the 1960s, and went on to become New Zealand's first female High Court judge and the second woman to hold the role of Governor-General at a time when the sector was overly male. 

She's been on an extraordinary professional journey, which she's detailed in her new memoir That Woman.

"I do remember reading, or at least glancing at a book about Roman law when I was about 14 - but I think it was a process of elimination. In those days , if a woman studied at university, the options were fairly limited to teaching, nursing, or - being Dunedin - medicine."

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