How our foremothers voted in Election 1893
As I walked to the nearest polling booth to cast my vote last Saturday, 26 November 2011, I pondered such questions as where my foremothers had voted, how far away was their nearest polling booth, what route might they have taken, by what form of transport, and so on ...
Although there is no compulsion in New Zealand to disclose our political preferences or who we vote for, there were in 1893, as in 2011, certain politically polarising issues. In essence, Election 1893 was a contest between Richard Seddon's Liberals who had governed for the previous three years and the opposition Conservatives.
The Liberals feared that the newly enfranchised women would be swayed by "clerical influence and social glamour" and so cast their votes for the Conservatives. The latter, significantly supportive of women's suffrage and anticipating their conservative views on social and religious matters would translate into votes for Conservative candidates, expected to overturn the Liberals at the polls. The result? An overwhelming Liberal victory.
Of course, it is impossible to determine at this remove, which political line any of our foremothers might have followed in 1893, but there is room for a little informed speculation ...
Read more in Election 1893 Part 2 : How our foremothers voted
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.