"At my school, it was teaching, nursing or medicine, because I was at Otago, and I wasn't able or interested to do any of those, so I chose law," Cartwright told Newstalk ZB.
She said it had been pretty lonely and difficult being a woman lawyer but believed things have improved now and that it "unquestionably" was a wonderful profession for women.
Cartwright said there were still barriers and obstacles that women lawyers faced.
"It's common to most of the community these days and that's the barriers of sexual harassment, sexual attacks, bullying, racial discrimination, those sorts of things," she said.
"I suffered a bit of discrimination, but it was so overt, so out there that ... you knew what you were facing. These days it's much more difficult."
Her "favourite job" was with the war crimes tribunal in Cambodia but she's most proud of having performed the government inquiry into unethical research practices related to the treatment of cervical cancer at National Women's Hospital in 1988. The Cartwright Inquiry, as it became known, is regarded as a watershed moment for the rights of patients.
And Cartwright still has a lot on her plate.
"I can't say it's time to put my slippers on yet. I chair the International Commission of Jurors which is a long-serving group of imminent lawyers and judges throughout the world, I'm on the Administrative Tribunal of the Asian Development Bank, about to start a new job announced next week and various other things. So I am quite busy."
Cartwright, together with fellow Order of New Zealand appointee Sir Tipene O'Regan, leads this year's 187-strong Queen's Birthday and Platinum Jubilee honour list, which also includes three new Dames (Ruth Aitken, Judge Carolyn Henwood and Judith McGregor) and three new Knights (Patrick Hohepa, Hugh Rennie, Collin Tukuitonga).
