Women's suffrage in New Zealand

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Victory of women's suffrage in New Zealand: on September 8, 1893, it was passed in parliament.

The women's suffrage in New Zealand was established in 1893 initially only as active introduced suffrage. However, New Zealand was the first independent state in which women were allowed to vote at all . The passive female suffrage followed in 1919 and the first choice of a woman to the national parliament fourteen years later. Until the mid-1980s, the number of women MPs was in the single digits. In the 2017 general election, 38% were women. In the early 21st century, women held each of the key political positions at least once. The commitment of politicians and activists for women's suffrage was based, among other things, on the ideas of the British philosopher John Stuart Mill and the efforts of the abstinence movement , which came to New Zealand from the USA. The introduction of women's suffrage was greatly facilitated by the fact that the party landscape and class antagonisms had not yet consolidated in the young state and that the indigenous population had already been granted the same rights as immigrants when it came to male suffrage. The numerous petitions accelerated the development. Between 1878 and 1887, several bills that provided the right to vote for all women or at least for the wealthy among them failed. In 1891 and 1892, bills aimed at making all women voters were given a majority in the House of Commons ; the bills were rejected in the more conservative upper house .

historical development

Male suffrage

The right to vote in the Commonwealth Realm New Zealand was linked to British citizenship under the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 , which gave men the right to vote and stand for election . Māori had owned these since the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, and immigrants could generally obtain them. For the Chinese, however, acquisition was not possible for a long time. Prior to the country's gold rush , such as the Otago gold rush , there were few Chinese in New Zealand, and some of them had acquired British citizenship and therefore could vote. Then, however, many Chinese poured into the country and faced racism and exclusion from society. Chinese people who came to the country in search of gold in the 1860s and 1870s were banned from acquiring citizenship between 1908 and 1952, so they could not vote regardless of gender. The exclusion was not primarily due to voting rights, but was part of the country's immigration policy. For a long time this welcomed only whites and was directed specifically against the Chinese. In the beginning only a few Maoris exercised their right to vote. The Maroi Representation Act of 1867 then provided for four special seats for Maoris, three for the North Island and one for the South Island, based on the right to vote for adult men . These seats should only be occupied by Maoris; Maoris should also be able to take over other seats. As a result, voter turnout among the Maoris rose.

The way to introduce active women's suffrage

An early milestone in the advocacy of women's suffrage can in Scripture to appeal to the men of New Zealand (call to the New Zealand men) by Mary Ann Mueller (Femina) are from 1869 seen. In 1871 Mary Ann Colclough (Polly Plum) gave her first public lecture on women's rights, including women's suffrage.

Women gained voting rights at the local level very quickly: as early as 1867, some wealthy women were eligible to vote in some municipalities; in 1875 this was consolidated throughout the country; in the election to the school administration bodies in 1877 all female heads of household were given the right to vote, which was interpreted as all adult women ; 1881 followed the right to vote for the elections of the committees that made the licensing of alcohol.

In August 1878, Robert Stout introduced an election bill to parliament. It provided active and passive suffrage for elections to the House of Commons for women who owned a house. Stout also boasted that his government was the first to make the right to vote for women into law, and incorporated this into the August 1878 bill; but this provision has already been rejected by the House of Commons. The provision on active women's suffrage, on the other hand, was adopted with 41 votes to 23 and later also in the House of Lords . But the law failed because of another provision that concerned the right to vote for Maoris.

In 1879 the government bill was changed and put to the vote as the Qualification of Electors Bill . According to this, women who had possessions should be able to vote. Both those who rejected women's suffrage in general and those for whom the regulation did not go far enough voted against this proposal. In 1880 a bill by James Wallis failed in the first reading, and he withdrew a second bill in 1881 before the second reading.

In 1887 the House of Commons received two petitions for women's suffrage with around 350 signatures. In the same year Julius Vogel drafted a bill according to which women should be able to vote on the same basis as men. The proposal was referred to the committee. Opponents urged that the right to vote be restricted to wealthy women, some supporters of the bill left the meeting, and opponents entered the hall. A short-term vote on an essential part of the bill resulted in a defeat and Vogel was forced to withdraw his proposal.

In 1888 two petitions with around 800 signatures were presented to parliament.

1890 brought John Hall , a woman electoral law to parliament. Despite the majority support, it failed because it could no longer be dealt with in good time before the end of the session. Hall then tried an amendment to the electoral law, but it was rejected.

In 1891 Hall successfully launched a bill to introduce women's suffrage in the lower house , but was defeated by two votes in the upper house , where the conservatives were in the majority.

Women's Suffrage Cartoon from New Zealand: Ladies, Vote for the Conservatives to whom you owe your right to vote!

In 1892 women's suffrage was included in a government election bill. This was not so easy to reject, as solidarity was expected from the members of the government, even if they had a different opinion in private. John Ballance was unable to attend the crucial meeting for health reasons. His representative Richard Seddon was close to the alcohol industry and was therefore an opponent of women's suffrage. He brought down the bill by bringing in allegedly submitted postal votes in the lower house. Although the government draft has now been referred to the House of Lords, there were confidants of Seddon who were instructed not to support the draft.

Since Hall, who supported women's suffrage, had announced that he would soon be leaving parliament, it was imperative to act quickly. He brought in a competition proposal for the government's electoral bill, so that advocates of women's suffrage now had two irons in the fire. Before the decisive vote on the government bill in the House of Lords, Seddon went too far with his manipulations of MPs and met resistance: two MPs who had previously voted against the bill now voted in protest of his actions in order to render Seddon's fraudulent machinations ineffective. So in New Zealand, two opponents of women's suffrage were decisive in making it law.

On September 8, 1893, the law granting British citizenship to New Zealanders aged 21 and over was passed with a majority of two votes. Maori women were included. On September 19th, the Governor Lord Glasgow signed it , which brought the law into effect. However, some groups of women were still excluded; as in some other states, this included prison inmates and women in psychiatric hospitals.

Cartoon about the first election with women's suffrage that led to a Liberal victory.

For the November 1893 election, which followed the introduction of women's suffrage, more than 100,000 of the approximately 140,000 adult New Zealanders registered as voters.

Passive women's suffrage

House of Commons

The passive right to vote for women in the House of Commons elections was not achieved until October 29, 1919 with the Women's Parliamentary Rights Act . In the parliamentary election of 1919, three women ran, but none of them was elected. The first election of a woman to the national parliament, Labor MP Elizabeth Reid McCombs , came fourteen years later, on September 13, 1933. It was a by-election for the port city of Lyttelton . The by-election was made necessary by the death of her husband, MP James Mc Combs. Elizabeth Reid McCombs died in 1935. Labor politician Catherine Stewart was the second woman to sit in Parliament from 1938 to 1943 for the Wellington West constituency. In 1949, Labor politician Iriaka Ratana became the first Maori MP. She took the place of her deceased husband, who held the Maori mandate for the western regions. Until the mid-1980s, the number of women MPs was in the single digits. In the first election with quotas ( mixed member proportional (MMP) ) in 1996, 35 women were elected to parliament, almost 30% of the MPs.

House of Lords

It was not until 1941 that women gained the right to stand for election to the House of Lords . In 1946, Mary Dreaver and Mary Anderson became the first women to become members of the House of Lords. They retained their mandates until the House of Lords was abolished in 1950.

Investigation of possible influencing factors on the development of women's suffrage

Women's access to education

Learmonth White Dalrymple, 1880

Access for girls and women was already a matter of course in New Zealand at the end of the 19th century, and by 1893 half of the students were female. This situation goes back in large part to the educator Learmonth White Dalrymple . As early as the mid-19th century, she had successfully campaigned for secondary education for girls and the admission of young women to university. As a result of the good education, women actively participated in working life outside the home.

Women's organizations

Kate Sheppard 1905

1885 came Mary Leavitt , delegated by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), from the United States to New Zealand and founded in 1885 together with the social reformer and suffragette Kate Sheppard , the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand . In 1886 there were already 15 branches. It quickly became clear to the women that they could only achieve more politically if women had the right to vote and could be elected themselves. At a congress under the presidency of Anne Ward in 1886, the commitment to women's suffrage was decided. For this purpose, the Franchise Department (electoral law department) was established within the WCTU in New Zealand in 1887 , the director of which was Kate Sheppard. From now on she led the campaign for full suffrage for women in New Zealand. 1888 she published the highly influential magazine Ten reasons why New Zealand women should receive the right to vote (Ten Reasons Why the Women of New Zealand Should Vote) and showed in a very independent, fearless mindset: the importance of women raising children give them the opportunity to look beyond the moment; their weaker physical constitution teaches them consideration and commitment to the preservation of peace, law and order, above all to raise rights over power; doubling the electorate would reduce the risk of corruption; and, last but not least, a democracy like New Zealand should recognize that all innocent people should participate in the drafting of laws that should apply to all.

In 1889 the Dunedin Seamstress Union was founded. Many members, including Vice President Harriet Morison , campaigned for women's suffrage. The Women's Franchise League was founded in 1892 and attracted attention first in Dunedin and then in other parts of the country.

The scientist Patricia Grimshaw takes the view that the introduction of the right to vote was due to the work of the feminist movement in New Zealand. The WCTU also had feminist motives.

Forming alliances

With the abstinence movement

The abstinence movement had a major influence . The New Zealanders were not only interested in enforcing political rights, but also in influencing society. After the economic downturn of the 1880s, the negative effects of excessive alcohol consumption had become ubiquitous. As in the USA and Great Britain, women in New Zealand, who were particularly the ones who suffered, formed organizations. They also benefited from these skills and experience in advocating women's suffrage.

With women from all walks of life

From the 1890s onwards, the WCTU intensified its efforts to reach as many women as possible. She made contact with working class women who were working through the trade unions to improve their situation. Their concerns could easily be combined with the demand for women's suffrage, so that a cooperation came about. Sheppard tried to mobilize all New Zealand women, including those in the countryside. To do this, she also used recruiters who visited housewives as well as women at work. 90 to 95 percent of women signed a petition for women to vote.

Petitions

First page of the petition for women's suffrage, which was incorporated into the 1893 Women's Suffrage Act.

In 1891, 1892, and 1893, Kate Sheppard's activists submitted haunting petitions to parliament. In 1891 more than 9,000 signatures were collected in eight petitions, in 1892 almost 20,000 in six petitions and in 1893 almost 32,000 in 13 petitions, which made up almost a quarter of the adult women of European descent in New Zealand. New Zealand was one of the few countries where petitioning in parliament encouraged women to vote. These defeated the opponents' argument that women did not want women's suffrage at all.

Party political conditions

In New Zealand parliamentarians' reservations about women's suffrage were smaller than in other states. The parties did not have a long history, and the differences between them were much smaller than in Britain, for example, and the party discipline far less pronounced than there. This prevented factual issues from becoming a political plaything.

Three political leaders made special contributions to the introduction of women's suffrage: Julius Vogel , Robert Stout and William Pember Reeves . But the commitment of leading politicians to women's suffrage could not bring about any change in women's suffrage, as the example of Great Britain shows; there the advocacy of Benjamin Disraeli and Balfour did not lead to success.

Role model awareness of the young democracy

Cartoon about women's suffrage from New Zealand

New Zealand prided itself on its progressive democratic legislation which aroused international interest. It has been called the modern world's political brain and true democracy . The introduction of women's suffrage was another progressive undertaking that New Zealand was able to draw attention to.

Low class awareness

In other states the existence of social classes had hindered the introduction of women's suffrage. In New Zealand there were hardly any class differences, as most of the residents did not have a long history in the country in which a status could have been established.

Position of the indigenous population

In 1893, suffragette and activist Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia called on the Māori parliament to give Māori women the right to vote and stand for election to this body, but her attempt failed. When parliaments dealt with women's suffrage between 1890 and 1893, there was little to no effort to expel Māori women. The political rights of women could be granted because the four special Māori mandates also applied to them. The universal women's suffrage of 1893 did not abolish this previously designed system, which should protect the settlers from possible military attacks by Māori s and their political power. The electoral law of September 19, 1893 brought universal suffrage for Māori women and white women.

Participation of women in political life

Milestones in the past: executive

On November 29, 1893, the day after the first general election to which women were allowed, Elizabeth Yates of Onehunga was elected mayor as the first woman in the British Empire . In 1947 MP Mabel Howard became New Zealand's first female minister. Until the defeat of the Labor Party in 1949, she was Minister for Health and Child Welfare, and Minister for Social Affairs in the Labor government from 1957 to 1960. In 1972 MP Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan became the first Māori minister. In 1997, after quarrels in the New Zealand National Party , Jenny Shipley of New Zealand replaced its chairman Jim Bolger in the party chairmanship and became New Zealand's first female Prime Minister. After the November 1999 elections, Labor MP Helen Clark became the country's first elected Prime Minister.

present

In the 2017 general election, 38% were women; In 1981 it was only 9%. In the early 21st century, women already hold each of the key political positions at least once: Jacinda Ardern became the third Prime Minister in 2017 , Patsy Reddy became Governor General in 2019 , Margaret Wilson was Speaker of the House of Commons from 2004 to 2008 and Attorney General from 1999 to 2005 . Sian Elias was President of the Supreme Court from 1999 to 2019 and Helen Winkelmann has been President of the Supreme Court since 2019 .

Web links

  • Women and the vote: Page 6 - Women's suffrage petition. In: NZHistory, New Zealand history online. Ministry for Culture & Heritage , March 13, 2018(English, petition for women's suffrage from 1893, with search function).;
  • Questions for Polly Plum. In: NZHistory, New Zealand history online. Ministry for Culture & Heritage, August 2, 2018(letters to Mary Ann Colclough (Polly Plum) and replies to them).;
  • Meri Mangakāhia. In: NZHistory, New Zealand history online. Ministry for Culture & Heritage, September 13, 2018(English, Maori, therein: Call of the women's rights activist for the introduction of women's suffrage in the Maori parliament).;
  • Female MPs 1933-2014. In: NZHistory, New Zealand history online. Ministry for Culture & Heritage, March 13, 2018(numbers for New Zealand women MPs since 1933).;

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Patricia Grimshaw: Settler anxieties, indigenous peoples and women's suffrage in the colonies of Australie, New Zealand and Hawai'i, 1888 to 1902. In: Louise Edwards, Mina Roces (ed.): Women's Suffrage in Asia . Routledge Shorton New York, 2004, pp. 220-239, p. 227.
  2. ^ Mary Ann Müller: An Appel to the Men of New Zealand. 1869, Retrieved July 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Women and the Vote. New Zealand History, accessed July 1, 2019 .
  4. ^ According to another source as early as 1886. - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. Retrieved October 5, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Patricia Grimshaw: Women's Suffrage in New Zealand. Auckland University Press, Auckland 1987, p. 13, in: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 107.
  6. ↑ a b c Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 108.
  7. ↑ a b Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 110.
  8. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 111.
  9. ↑ a b c Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 113.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g Women and the Vote. New Zealand History, accessed June 30, 2019 .
  11. ↑ a b Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 114.
  12. ↑ a b c Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 115.
  13. ↑ a b c d Women and the Vote. New Zealand History, accessed June 30, 2019 .
  14. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 118.
  15. ^ A b Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 277.
  16. ^ Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 278.
  17. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 107.
  18. ^ Richard J. Evans: The Femnists: Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Austraasia 1840-1920. Croom Helm, London 1977, p. 61, quoted from: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 107.
  19. ^ Women's Christian Temperance Union: Ten reasons why the women of New Zealand should vote (1888). Retrieved July 1, 2019 .
  20. ↑ a b Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 112.
  21. ↑ a b c Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 116.
  22. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 117.
  23. ^ Daniel T. Rodgers: Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1998, p. 55, quoted from: Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 116.
  24. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 116/117.
  25. ↑ Patricia Grimshaw: Settler anxieties, indigenous peoples and women's suffrage in the colonies of Australie, New Zealand and Hawai'i, 1888 to 1902. In: Louise Edwards, Mina Roces (ed.): Women's Suffrage in Asia. Routledge Shorton New York, 2004, pp. 220-239, p. 226.