Background reading · Social Sciences
1893: how women in Aotearoa won the vote
The campaign, the petitions and the people behind the world's first national women's vote.
On 19 September 1893 New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world where women could vote in national elections. It took years of organised campaigning.
The campaign
Campaigners, many from the Women's Christian Temperance Union and led by Kate Sheppard, held meetings, wrote to newspapers and lobbied members of Parliament. They sent petitions to Parliament in 1891, 1892 and 1893. The 1893 petition had about 32,000 signatures, pasted into a roll hundreds of metres long.
Māori women
Māori women voted too. In the Kotahitanga, the Māori parliament, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia argued in 1893 that Māori women should have the vote and be able to stand as members.
Who decided
The law was passed by Parliament in the Liberal Era, when the Liberal government was also bringing in labour laws and old-age pensions. Premier Richard Seddon opposed women's suffrage, but enough members voted for it in both houses, and the Governor signed it into law.
What it didn't change
Women could vote but could not stand for Parliament until 1919. The first woman MP, Elizabeth McCombs, was elected in 1933.
Sources and further reading
Written for Kōkiri Learn students in our own words. Check facts against the sources.