Foremothers 1st vote Election 1893
As New Zealand women cast their votes in this year's General Election, they do so as political equals. But it was not always the case. Although universal male suffrage in New Zealand dates from 1879, the colony's adult women were not enfranchised until 1893, and only then after significant, frequently acrimonious, debate and petitioning.
Every New Zealand family of this era must surely have had a suffrage story to tell. For those of us who did not inherit such stories there are, thankfully, certain documents between whose lines we can read. The Suffrage Petition of 1893 is one, as is the Electoral Roll drawn up immediately the Electoral Act was passed into law on 19 September 1893.
Our latest blog offers some 21st century insight into the responses of women, from three descent lines, to their new 19th century political climate. Only by interweaving layers of one set of information - from inherited stories or family folklore - with the layers of official data can we acquire a more expansive understanding of the lives of our foremothers: often the ordinary women whose extraordinary life stories have hitherto gone unrecorded.
To read Election 1893, Foremothers and Political Statements, click here.