On September 19, 1893, New Zealand became the first modern country where women won the right to vote in parliamentary elections (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 1). However, the campaign for women’s suffrage began long before New Zealand’s governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Bill into law.

In 1840, New Zealand became a colony in the British Empire. Despite its ability to self-govern, the colony did not become a politically independent Dominion until 1907. As nationalism spread in New Zealand during the late 19^th century, New Zealanders debated how they could channel the pioneering spirit of the colonial frontier into a unified national identity. (Sulkunen 93; Dalziel 89).

New Zealanders regarded their self-governance as an opportunity to experiment with democracy. They envisioned a nation free from Britain’s social ills and the limitations of its firmly entrenched political system (Dalziel 94). Women were excluded from politics back in Britain; until 1893, the same held true for women in New Zealand (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). New Zealanders realized that breaking with this precedent could demonstrate the colony’s sophistication and progressiveness (Dalziel 92). This association of women’s political equality with civilization stemmed from the ideas of philosopher John Stuart Mill and British feminists (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). By extending the vote to women and the Maori, New Zealand could prove its worthiness of independent nationhood (Dalziel 88). Although New Zealanders strove to distinguish themselves from Britain’s system, a traditional gendered and colonial worldview heavily informed the fight for women’s suffrage.

Traditional notions of women’s moral authority and a gendered public-private divide pervaded suffrage activism (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). Much of the discourse centered on women’s ‘natural’ domestic roles as wives and mothers. Without exposure to the corrupting forces of public life, like politics and business, women remained morally pure. By offering moral guidance within the family, they provided a strong foundation for society (Dalziel 93; Sulkunen 94).

Kate Sheppard, one of New Zealand’s most prominent and outspoken suffragists, embraced the idea of women’s moral authority at public meetings and in the press (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2; Sulkunen 97). She argued that women could extend the moral benefit beyond their immediate families to society at large, by voting for social reforms, like temperance (Dalziel 93).

The moral reform argument was popular, and the establishment of the New Zealand branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the mid-1880s reinvigorated the suffrage movement. Sheppard, the WCTU, and other activists led three massive petition drives advocating for parliamentary suffrage bills. By 1893, the third petition drive obtained almost 32,000 signatures, representing ¼ of the adult population of European women in New Zealand (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2).

Despite growing public support for women’s suffrage, conflicts of interest, political divides, and cultural concerns threatened to stymie the movement. In fact, when suffrage bills were introduced in Parliament in 1878, 1879, and 1887, each of the measures were narrowly defeated. Because of the powerful influence of the WCTU, alcohol manufacturers worried that enfranchising women would eventually lead to the prohibition of alcohol (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). To protect their financial interests, they appealed to sympathetic parliamentarians. Additionally, some Liberal members in Parliament opposed suffrage, because they believed that women would support their Conservative opponents at the ballot box (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2; Dalziel 91).

Some Maori men sought to exclude women from public affairs. Not unlike European domestic ideology, in Maori culture, the public and private spheres were gendered. Because the public sphere was regarded as sacred and reserved for men, women’s participation in activism and the political system was viewed as a cultural threat (Sulkunen 99). Women’s enfranchisement would also increase European influence in parliament. Although many suffrage proposals included white and Maori women, colonists of European descent made up most of the population (Sulkunen 99). In addition, Maori men were already limited to only four seats in Parliament (Grimshaw 562).

Despite this resistance, a successful women’s suffrage bill became a reality during the summer of 1893. In June 1893, Richard Seddon introduced an Electoral Bill that included a provision for women’s suffrage into Parliament (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). By September, it passed in both houses. With Lord Glasgow’s signature on September 19, 1893, the bill granted white and Maori women over the age of 21 the right to vote in parliamentary elections (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2).

However, the system was far from perfect. The bill explicitly excluded immigrants, prisoners, and institutionalized mental patients. Additionally, women could still not legally run for Parliament until 1919; a woman was not elected to Parliament until 1933 (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2). Many Maori women remained ineligible to vote due to requirements that a voter must own property or pay taxes, and much of Maori land was owned collectively (Dalziel 96; Grimshaw 562; Sulkunen 98). Lawmakers included these requirements to encourage the Maori to assimilate to European social standards and abandon their cultural traditions. They also allowed white New Zealanders to limit the impact Maori women could have while appearing politically progressive (Grimshaw 572). Despite these setbacks, women turned out to vote in high numbers and continued to advocate for women’s rights by backing parliamentarians who supported women’s issues (Sulkunen 105).

Works Cited

Dalziel, Raewyn. “An Experiment in the Social Laboratory?: Suffrage, National Identity, and Mythologies of Race in New Zealand.” Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race, edited by Ian Christopher Fletcher, et al., E-book, Taylor & Francis Group, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/depaul/detail.action?docID=1099144.

Grimshaw, Patricia. “Settler Anxieties, Indigenous Peoples, and Women's Suffrage in the Colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i, 1888 to 1902.” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 69, no. 4, 2000, pp. 553–572. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3641224.  Accessed 19 Sep. 2020.

Ministry for Culture and Heritage. “New Zealand Women and the Vote.” New Zealand History, 20 Dec. 2018. nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage. Accessed 19 Sep. 2020.

Sulkunen, Irma. “An International Comparison of Women’s Suffrage: The Cases of Finland and New Zealand in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Women's History, vol. 27, no. 4, 2015, pp. 88-111. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/jwh.2015.0040. Accessed 19 Sep. 2020.