New Zealand Women Vote: Suffrage Victory in 1893

Governor Lord Glasgow signed the Electoral Act into law on September 19, 1893, making New Zealand the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in national elections. The achievement came after years of campaigning led by Kate Sheppard and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, whose petition drives had gathered signatures from nearly a quarter of the entire adult female population of the colony. Ten weeks later, women turned out in extraordinary numbers for the general election, with 85 percent of registered women casting ballots. The suffrage movement in New Zealand drew strength from several converging currents. The temperance movement, which saw alcohol as a destroyer of families and household income, attracted women who connected the right to vote with the power to regulate the liquor trade. Liberal politicians saw women’s suffrage as a way to expand their electoral base. And New Zealand’s relatively young colonial society, less burdened by entrenched aristocratic traditions than Britain, proved more receptive to democratic experimentation. Sheppard organized three major petition campaigns between 1891 and 1893. The final petition, presented to Parliament on a roll of paper that stretched across the floor of the legislative chamber, carried 31,872 signatures, roughly one-fifth of all adult women in the colony. The bill passed the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin, but the Legislative Council, the appointed upper chamber, was narrowly divided. Two councilors who had previously voted against suffrage switched their votes, reportedly because they were offended by heavy-handed lobbying from the liquor industry, which opposed women’s suffrage precisely because it expected women to vote for prohibition. New Zealand’s example reverberated across the globe. Australia followed in 1902, Finland in 1906, and Norway in 1913. Britain and the United States did not enfranchise women nationally until 1918 and 1920, respectively. Sheppard became an international figure, corresponding with suffrage leaders worldwide and using New Zealand’s experience as proof that women’s political participation strengthened rather than destabilized democratic governance. New Zealand women could vote in 1893, but they could not stand for Parliament until 1919, and the first woman was not elected until 1933.