Can you guess which country was first to grant the vote to women? It was New Zealand! The Kiwi suffrage story is fascinating.
On September 19, 1893, New Zealand granted all women, including Indigenous Maori women, the vote. Although the women’s suffrage movement was active in Europe and North America it wasn’t until the first world war that most women were granted the right to vote in elections.
For example, Canadian women first won the right to vote in a federal election in 1917, although Indigenous women were not allowed to vote until 1962 when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s government made changes to the Indian Act.
Women won the right to vote in New Zealand through a combination of persistence and a strong relationship with the temperance movement. The temperance movement in New Zealand blamed alcohol for many social problems, with women and children bearing the brunt.
A New Zealand branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in 1885. It was inspired by a tour of the country that year by a member of the American WCTU, Mary Leavitt. The WCTU reasoned that only through political rights would women gain any say over the use and abuse of alcohol.
Kate Shepherd from Christchurch, a leader in the temperance union, became New Zealand’s leading suffragette. She organized a series of petitions to Parliament to demand women the vote.
The liquor industry strongly opposed the petitions. In 1893 the final petition for women’s suffrage gained nearly a quarter of all adult European women’s signatures.
The Prime Minister, Richard Seddon, tried to stop the suffrage bill but his illegal interference inspired two members of Parliament to switch their vote thus allowing a 20 to 18 victory. But the governor of New Zealand, Lord Glasgow, as the representative of the monarch, still had to sign the bill into law, suffragettes put in one final effort and on September 19, 1893, Lord Glasgow signed the bill into law.
There were just six weeks to enrol for the next general election on November 28, but 84 per cent of women registered and 2/3 later voted for the first time. Today Kate Shepherd’s portrait is on the New Zealand $10 bill.
The United Kingdom granted women the vote in 1918 and the United States in 1920.
