When Lord Glasgow, the governor at that time in New Zealand signed a new Electoral Act into law be aved as the early independent country in the whole world to give women the right to vote during parliamentary elections.
As women in majority of other democracies which includes the Great Britain and the United States of America we’re not given the right to vote until after the World War I. New Zealand’s world leadership in women’s voting became a prominent part of our attention as a trailblazing ‘social laboratory‘.
The passage of the Act was the completion of years of uproar made by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and other groups. As part of this movement, a series of enormous requests were illustrated before the Parliament; those assembled in the year 1893 were jointly signed by nearly a quarter of the adult female population of New Zealand.
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As of the years 1891 & 1892, the House of Representatives enacted an electoral bill that would permit all adult women to be able to vote. All eyes were channelled on the Legislative Council, where those two measures had gone awry.
Liquor interests worried that female voters would surely vote for their prohibitionist opponents, requested the Council to dismiss the proposal. Suffragists conceded with complete rallies and a flurry of telegrams to members.
New Premier Richard Seddon and other foes of women’s voting right did all they could to destroy the passage of the women’s right voting bill, but this time their interests reversed. Two opposition legislative members who had formerly rejected the women’s suffrage differed their votes to humiliate Seddon. Then on 8th September, the bill was enacted by 20 votes to 18.
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On 28th November, 1892, over 90,000 New Zealand women left to the polls and voted. Despite threats from suffrage opponents that ‘lady voters’ might be victimized at polling booths, the atmosphere on election day was relieved, even cheerfully.
Women now had an extended way to go to achieve political equivalence. They were not given the right to stand for Parliament positions until the year 1919. The first female MP was not elected until the year 1933. Women of today remain under-represented in Parliament, making up 41% of MPs in the year 2019.
