THE SUFFRAGE CAMPAIGN: HOW IT ALL BEGAN
“One half of the population has hitherto been held in a position of political bondage as absolute as that which fettered the liberties of the slaves in America… Women were treated as if they had no rights, as if they were less than human beings – were mere appendages to men.”
(Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 222, 19 September 1893, Page 4)
New Zealand leads the world in equality - it was the first country to allow women to have the vote. This achievement was, in its time, radical, but it did not occur overnight. The principle cause of New Zealand's women's suffrage campaign was the global growth and agitation of first-wave feminism. All around the world, this entropy of the 'natural order' was steadily changing the status of women, exemplified best by the Women's Christian Temperance Union (the first women-only organisation dedicated to social renovation), which had "acquired in the United States a markedly feminist character" (Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand). The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was set up in New Zealand in 1885 by Mary Clement Leavitt, a representative of the WCTU from the USA. Her rousing passion during her 1885 lecture in Christchurch - in which she expressed that women were vital to humanity, were entitled to be regarded as equal to man, and had a duty to use their knowledge and intellect to the best of their ability - inspired the foundation of ten New Zealand branches of the WCTU between February and August of that year, with an estimated 600 women joining the ranks, indicating a significant level of enthusiasm towards making change. The group, contrary to its rather exclusive name, dealt with all walks of women’s rights, not just temperance, and NZ women were eager to join. The initiation of the WCTU in NZ seems to have inspired the suffrage movement by offering women an all-girls base upon which to stand, and from which to direct their campaign.
On the subject of temperance, perhaps the second most prominent cause of the suffrage was also the case of New Zealand's heavy drinking culture, which was under fire at the time. Alcohol, its use and its abuse, were key in the establishment of European settlement in New Zealand, but many people felt that alcoholism - and indeed it was alcoholism, as it was widely acknowledged that the main causes of death in 19th-century New Zealand were "drink, drowning, and drowning while drunk" - was a leading cause of domestic abuse and neglect, illness, poverty, and social immorality, and that as it was primarily a male pursuit, inducting women into Parliament and giving them voting rights would be able to rid New Zealand of such things as bribery, crime and drink (this notion is illustrated in the cartoon opposite). Women were globally accepted to be more moral than men, and so having this morality in communion of ethical thinking and politics would help purify a society blemished by alcohol.
Another significant cause for the suffrage campaign was the development of new education and job opportunities for New Zealand's women and girls, which had been opening up throughout the second half of the 19th century. Patricia Grimshaw's Women's Suffrage in New Zealand relates these advancements in loving detail. The first educational development was the establishment of Otago Girls' High School, the first girls-only secondary school in New Zealand, in 1871 (following the foundation of a Dunedin-based boys-only secondary school in the 1860s), and the reception of the right of both sexes to get a free primary education in 1877. Next came universities, specifically the University of New Zealand (the first university in New Zealand), which opened in 1874 – and, indeed, the initiation of the first New Zealand university was a victory for the campaign, as women were never at any point excluded from attending, and in fact proved to be intellectually superior, outstripping the male students (to their disgust). The next step was the ‘infiltration of women into public employment.’ Women had previously been concerned only by domestic duties, but as the 1860-90s progressed, many began taking interest in previously male-dominated industries; Grimshaw states that "the very fact of taking employment outside the home illustrated the changing attitude to the role of women", and as the 20th century approached, women began taking on a myriad of wage-earning careers. There was a boom of female teachers, authors, and journalists: these were typically the easiest professions to enter into, as females had long been employed as governesses, and this skill was considered basically interchangeable with teaching. Nursing was one field into which females were integrated in an abundance, particularly in the 80s, and in fact a vast majority of doctors preferred the service of female nurses to that of male (although this was in part because male workers were three times more expensive to employ); another field was industrial/factory work, which attracted women in droves, as many preferred physical labour to their dull domestic responsibilities. In both of these lines of work, females gradually began to make up the numbers, and by 1891 45,000 women were employed and earning wages. This industrial revolution of sorts meant that men had to begin taking women as serious business competitors, but moreover, competent ones. The final cause, perhaps the most potent due to its ability to think for itself, was the simple belief that women had a right to be emancipated from the oppressive patriarchal society to which they had been subjected for so long. Male MPs such as Julius Vogel, Walter Carncross, and John Ballance, had been advocating suffrage for women from at least 1887, and with the increase in social mobility of woman was coming an adjacent awareness of the injustices women faced in New Zealand's patriarchal society. Granted, women had begun the ascent of the perilous social ladder, but they were still being paid less than their male colleagues, even if they were equally qualified, and were still being treated like objects in the fields they pursued, particularly nursing and factory work. Women were tired of being treated "as if they had no rights, as if they were less than human beings – were mere appendages to men," and many men were equally tired of the state of our outdated society. Change was afoot; those who noticed either wished to harness it or repress it. |
Cartoon by Ashley Hunter, New Zealand Graphic, September 30 1893
"The very fact of taking employment outside the home illustrated the changing attitude to the role of women"
Mary Clement Leavitt, whose rousing speech energised the suffrage campaign.
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So the women’s suffrage movement was greatly inspired by the feminist movement, by society’s increasing awareness of the concept of women’s rights, and by the changing status of women throughout the parallel mediums of societal and domestic life. The introduction of women into so many new walks of life that had previously been dominated by men surely led to the obvious question – if women can be emancipated from educational and workforce gender roles, why not from political ones, too?