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Kate Sheppard

Woman Suffrage in New Zealand

Pride of place as the first relatively populous country to grant woman suffrage for national elections goes to New Zealand (the small Isle of Mann was first country to grant woman suffrage for its national legislature), then a British colony. Although enfranchised in 1893, women were not eligible to stand for Parliament until 1919. We can only speculate as to why New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant women suffrage in national elections.

Like other British colonies and former British colonies, New Zealand was a representative democracy, specifically, a Parliamentary democracy. As in other democracies, originally the vote was reserved to property holders: property, nor persons, was represented in Parliament. As the 19th century progressed, increasing segments of the male population were admitted to the franchise by gradually lowering property requirements. In the process, the national Parliament was moving toward more liberal positions -- supporting labor, social and humanitarian reforms, and woman suffrage.

As in most pioneering societies, conservative forces were relatively weak, possibly resulting in a greater readiness to accept new ideas than was common in older communities. Further, the relative scarcity of women and their efforts alongside men to build up a community from a "wilderness" may have resulted in women being held in higher regard in NZ than in more established societies. As will be seen, all of the areas in which woman suffrage occurred early – NZ, western states in the US, Australia, Finland, and Iceland were on the periphery of European society and were either pioneer societies or were relatively late in industrializing.

Further, the native pride New Zealanders embraced in the achievements of their small state and a wish to startle the world with their courage in political experiment may have contributed to early suffrage for women.

Finally, New Zealanders had experience with woman voting in other elections. In 1877, all New Zealand women granted the vote for local school boards; in 1881, for liquor licensing committees; and in 1885, for hospital and charitable aid boards. In addition, various municipalities granted women suffrage for a variety of local offices.

In short, the weakness of traditional conservatism, the responsible use of the ballot in other elections, the surge of radical thought, the tolerance of woman's claims, and the pride of New Zealanders in challenging tradition all coincided in the 1890 to aid passage of woman suffrage for the national legislature.

Mary Müller, wife of a Nelson magistrate, was the first New Zealand woman to advocate for woman suffrage. She published a series of pro-suffrage newspaper articles first locally then nationally in the sixties under the non-de-plume 'Femina'. Her most ambitious work, Appeal to the Men of New Zealand (1869), was written the same year as John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women. Mill was so impressed by her work that he sent her a copy of his new book with a congratulatory letter encouraging her to found a suffrage society. Unable to follow his recommendation, Müller became a corresponding member of a London suffrage society instead and continued her quiet work, including agitation for the 1884 Married Women's Property Act. Only after her husband's death and after women had won the right to vote did Müller identify herself as 'Femina'. Mrs. Müller lived to see woman granted suffrage and to vote in the first election (1893). 'My life has not been all in vain', she wrote to the suffragist leader, Mrs. Sheppard, and again, at the age of 78 years, 'my desire for the complete emancipation of my sex is my dearest earthly prayer.'

The temperance movement in New Zealand performed the same function for New Zealand woman as the abolitionist movement in the US performed for American women. As temperance workers, women won their right to speak in public, developed a philosophy of woman's proper sphere which was distinctly different from men's definition of woman's proper sphere, and learned the skills for leadership and for successful organization building.

As in the US, the NZ temperance movement was the 19th century's movement of women against violence against women. In general, men, not women, most often drank to excess and women and children who suffered. Women were the ones who were beaten and battered by a drunken spouse, women who plodded from bar to bar on payday in an attempt to get some money from their husband before it was drunk away, and women were the ones who took demeaning, and often demoralizing, work to augment their drunken sot husband's pay. At the same time, women had no recourse to the law for a woman was still subjected to her husband. So women gravitated to the temperance movement, a trickle at first. As in the US abolition movement, temperance women met social resistance for 'unbecoming' behavior, forcing female temperance activists towards a more radical feminist ideology.

At the same time, male temperance workers experienced women's true capabilities. They also came to compare the sober, sensible, good-living women with male drunkards, making a mockery of men's pretensions to moral, intellectual, and spiritual superiority. As Grimshaw writes, "[Sir William] Fox once recounted how, in the middle of one day, he walked along a road to address a meeting of women. In the space of one hundred yards he met three drunken men, one of whom was fighting with a policeman, another of whom, a well-dressed tradesman, was vomiting by a wall. All these men, he reflected, had the right to vote, and even to sit in parliament, and yet not one of the intelligent, respectable women whom he was about to address, had the right to lift a finger to protect herself or her family from the legislative injustice of such men."

So the women's desire for amelioration of their disadvantages was simmering beneath the surface of NZ life. In May 1885 the spark was lit when Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt from the Women's Christian Temperance Union of the United States of America delivered a lecture in Christchurch on 'Woman, Her Duties and Responsibilities'. Preaching that woman was entitled to the same freedoms under the law of God as men had, Leavitt sparked the formation of temperance societies throughout NZ. Under Frances Willard the American suffrage movement had gradually adopted a militant tone on the issue of women's political emancipation. Leavitt brought this message with her to NZ along with the temperance message. As in America, the NZ temperance movement embraced a number of pro-women causes including education on child care and nutrition, provision for ex-prisoners, dress reform, sexual equality in marriage, and, of course, woman suffrage. Chapters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) opened throughout NZ, eventually coming together to form New Zealand's first national women's society.

Kate Malcolm Wilson Sheppard, wife of Christchurch business man and councillor, Walter Sheppard, lead the Union's remarkably short suffrage campaigns from its start in February 1887 to its finish in September 1893. Born Kate Malcolm, at Islay, Scotland, she emigrated to NZ in 1848 and married Sheppard in the late '60s. Intelligent and well-educated, Sheppard was a feminist from an early age. WCTU National Franchise Superintendent Sheppard was further politicized in her first year at the WCTU when she observed petitions for the protection of women and children which she had so assiduously organized being tossed aside by the Petitions Committee in Parliament.

More petitions were circulated, more campaigns for and against various politicians were organized, more letters to the editor were sent to newspapers to publicize the cause. By early 1890, most Members of Parliament (MPs) were suffrage supporters. However, politicians are not always ready to vote their convictions – no politician wants to be voted out of office.

In 1892 to appeal to women outside of the Christian and temperance movements, Women's Franchise Leagues were formed throughout New Zealand to supplement the work of the WCTU. Women who did not feel comfortable working in a Christian, a religious, or a temperance organization now had a suffrage organization to join.

Grimshaw details the see-saw battle between suffrage supporters and suffrage opponents. Pro- and anti- suffrage opinions cut across party lines. If a member was conservative and believed that women would vote conservative, then he generally supported suffrage. However, if he believed that women would vote liberal, he generally did not support suffrage. Similarly, liberal men who believed that women would vote liberal supported suffrage, while liberal men who believed that women would vote conservative did not support suffrage.

On 19 September 1893, all fears of the outcome vanished. As the Christchurch Press commented, "We have now got the Female Franchise as surely as we had the measles. It has come to stay, and we must make the best of it." Women worldwide were jubilant, cheering, feasting, offering thanksgiving, and rejoicing. Congratulations pored in to Mrs. Sheppard from around the world. The women had no time to be idle for the next election was close at hand. Suffragists scoured the country registering women to vote. In a few short weeks, by the end of the registration period, well over 100,000 women, about 80% of the total adult female population, had been registered to vote. Once again, the suffragists swung into action campaigning for their favorite candidates. They rewarded their supporters with the favors and punished their opponents with their disfavor.

The long-awaited election day arrived on 28 November. Mrs. Daldy admonished women: 'Let not the babies, the wash-tub, or even dinners prevent the women going to the polls' and Franchise Leagues around the nation organized baby-sitters and poll attendants to facilitate women's voting. The polling was orderly and peaceful. Everyone waited for the election results. The vote was overwhelmingly Liberal: 54 Liberals, 2 Independents, 14 Opposition candidates were elected. To top things off, Mrs. Elizabeth Yates was elected Mayor of Onehunga, the first woman to be elected mayor of any city in the British Empire.

How much of the increase of Liberal support can be attributed to the woman vote is a matter of debate. Liberals had been increasing their representation under the male-only election rules. The consequences of granting woman suffrage will be debated for years. Perhaps Mrs. Sheppard best described the consequences of woman suffrage to NZ:

The mere doing of such an act of justice as enfranchising women was the outcome of a larger vision of rights and duties – a growing enlightenment – a broader conception of humanity as it now is, and as it may become. So that while a large number of women in New Zealand fought a long and hard fight for the right to be governed only with their consent, that right could not have been gained had it not been that a number of earnest men also preached the gospel of the "government by all for the good of all". Briefly, the enfranchisement of women was in itself an expression of the growing sense of justice and humanitarianism in New Zealand. That sense, once aroused, could not stop short at one legislative act, but found further expression, and the women's vote gave it an added political force. pp. 121 - 122

Today's document is Mary Müller's 1869 Appeal to the Men of New Zealand

Footnotes:

1 Grimshaw, pp. 25 - 26

References:

Patricia Grimshaw, Women's Suffrage in New Zealand [Oxford: Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1972]

Margaret Lovell-Smith (ed.), The Woman Question: Writings by the Women who Won the Vote [Auckland: New Women's Press, 1992]

Celebrating Women's Suffrage 106 Years On (NZ)

Return to Women's History Month 2003 Table of Contents

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last updated February 2003