New Zealand, September 19,1893 - Women entitled to Vote
When the Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Act into law on 19
September 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant
women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
Women who owned property and paid rates (mainly widows and 'spinsters')
were allowed to vote in local government elections in Otago and Nelson from
1867. This right was extended to the other provinces in 1876. In the later
nineteenth century new opportunities opened up for women and girls (especially
those from wealthy or middle-class families) in secondary and university
education, medicine, and in church and charitable work. Attention soon turned
to women's legal and political rights.
The passing of the Electoral Act was the culmination of years of
agitation by Kate Sheppard (the country's most famous suffragette) with the
Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and other organisations. As part of
this campaign, a series of massive petitions - including one earlier in 1893
signed by almost one in four adult women in New Zealand - were presented to
Parliament.
Inside parliament, politicians such as John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius
Vogel, William Fox, and John Ballance supported the movement. When Ballance
suddenly died in office (27 April 1893), Richard Seddon replaced him as
Premier. Seddon, though a member of Ballance's Liberal Party, opposed women's
suffrage, which thus suffered an apparent setback as a cause. Despite Seddon's
opposition, Members of Parliament assembled sufficient strength in the House of
Representatives to pass the bill. When it arrived in the Legislative Council,
several previously hostile members, moved to anger at Seddon's "underhand"
behaviour while opposing the bill, voted in favour. This support sufficed to
pass the bill, which the Royal Assent signed into law on 19 September 1893. In
the 1893 general election women voted for the first time.
Even so, New Zealand women still had a long way to go to achieve
political equality. They would not gain the right to stand for Parliament until
1919, and the first female MP (Elizabeth McCombs) was not elected until 1933
– 40 years after the introduction of women's suffrage. The number of
female MPs did not reach double figures until the mid-1980s and women remain
under-represented in Parliament.
