Women's Suffrage

Colleen Marshall

/ May 1, 2018

2018 marks the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand.

On 19 September 1893 a new Electoral Act was signed by the governor Lord Glasgow giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote. New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

The main suffrage petition was submitted to Parliament on 28 July 1893. Kate Sheppard, president of the Christchurch Women's Christian Temperance Union organised its compilation. It contained the names and addresses of about 24,000 women aged 21 years or older, and was made up of more than 500 individual sheets. Glued together and stretching more than 270 metres, these were famously rolled around a broom handle and presented in Parliament. Women from Canterbury and Otago accounted for nearly half of the signatories. There were 12 other petitions which have not survived, which contributed to a combined total of 31,872 women's signatures. However, women could not stand for Parliament until 1919. Our first female Member of Parliament was Elizabeth McCombs, who won the Lyttleton by-election in 1933.

Several New Zealand female politicians have received international recognition. In 1975 as Raglan candidate for the National Party, Marilyn Waring was elected to Parliament aged just 23, becoming the youngest member in the history of the House. She had to be provided with a personal secretary as she was inundated with mail from women all around the country. In her second term she was the only female MP in government. Her political honesty and outspokenness won her votes from her electorate, but did not endear her to her party leader, Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. However, he appointed her Chair of the Public Expenditure Select Committee, and this experience with national accounts formed the basis for her future career and international reputation as a feminist economist.

In 1984, she crossed the floor to support the Labour Opposition's Nuclear Free New Zealand Bill, an action which ultimately brought about the downfall of Muldoon's government and the election of the Fourth Labour government. Aged only 31, Marilyn retired from Parliament to pursue her interest in global economics, travelling to New York and reading her way through the United Nations System of National Accounts. Her resulting book about the invisibility of women's labour, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, was based on her research and garnered international acclaim. Part of her argument was that unpaid work usually done by women - providing meals, childcare, housekeeping, eldercare, etc - is not considered economic activity by the United Nations System of National Accounts, and subsequently has no economic value. Gloria Steinem wrote the preface to the book and stated that Waring had changed our world view.

After several years of Labour party membership, Helen Clark entered Parliament in 1981, winning the electorate of Mount Albert. Her interests were housing, foreign policy and disarmament. She was appointed Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control, where she worked alongside Marilyn Waring. She became a Cabinet Minister in 1987, deputy leader of the Opposition in 1990 and Leader of the Opposition in 1993. In 1999, she became Prime Minister, the first woman to win the office at a New Zealand general election . She lead the Fifth Labour Government for 3 terms, until losing the general election in 2008. She resigned from the party and became Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. She resigned from this post in 2017 after her bid for Secretary-General for the United Nations was unsuccessful. She spoke recently to Parliament on International Women's Day, and reported that she is enjoying having control of her own diary for the first time in years.

Jacinda Ardern is the latest New Zealand female leader to make the world sit up and take notice. She is New Zealand's youngest elected female Prime Minister, and the youngest female leader of any developed economy in the world. While she is the first Prime Minister to be pregnant in office in New Zealand, she is not the first in the world - Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, gave birth to a daughter while in office in 1990. Vogue recently published an article about Jacinda, and described her as the 'anti-Trump'. These are early days yet, but our hopes are high for Jacinda, who, like Marilyn and Helen before her, has pledged to continue to stand up for what New Zealanders believe in.

Women's Suffrage

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