Extension: 1893, how women in Aotearoa won the 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. 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

How they won support

The campaigners argued that women paid taxes and obeyed the law, so they should have a say in making it. Opponents, including the liquor industry, worried that women voters would support banning alcohol. Newspapers printed arguments on both sides, and cartoonists mocked the campaigners. Within weeks of the law passing, more than 100,000 women had enrolled to vote in the 1893 election.

Women could vote but could not stand for Parliament until 1919. The first woman MP, Elizabeth McCombs, was elected in 1933. Compare this petition with the 1972 Māori language petition: both used signatures to push Parliament to change who is heard.