This countdown to Christmas/Kirihimete, I gift to you… inspiration. On the third day to Christmas, I’d like to introduce the graceful force that was Kate Sheppard.
It was not until 1893, that women could vote in Aotearoa; this made Aotearoa the first British colony and national state to extend equal franchise (but not equal right to hold elected office). This monumental shift in history came about due to the women suffrage movement, led by Kate Sheppard.
In 1847, Kate Wilson Malcolm was born in England, and the family moved in Aotearoa in 1868, after her father died. They settled in Christchurch, and Kate married Walter Sheppard, a merchant, in 1871. She believed advancing womens education was essential to being successful in receiving equality.
She was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1885, and two years later became the national superintendent. Kate worked with the Canterbury Women’s Institute (CWI), founded in 1982, to “Achieve greater equality between men and women by working to remove the inequalities that kept men and women on a different footing.”
In 1919, women were allowed to be elected to the House of Representatives in Aotearoa.
Kate died in 1934, having witnessed some of the womens rights she fought for her entire life come to fruition.
Photo: MacMillan Brown Library.