Pages tagged with: women in politics

Ada Wells worked tirelessly in a bid to achieve equality and economic independence for women. She is perhaps best remembered for her contribution to the women's suffrage campaign in the 1880s and 90s, and for becoming the first woman elected to the Christchurch City Council in 1917.

Elizabeth Yates' election as mayor of Onehunga on 29 November 1893 – the day after New Zealand women had led the world by voting in a general election for the first time – cemented her place as a pioneer of women's political rights. She was the first woman in the British Empire to hold the office of mayor.

Feminist and social reformer

Anna was strongly influenced by her Presbyterian parents who were committed to the prohibition movement and heavily involved in other social reforms. She shared these values with her husband Robert Stout, a barrister and Member of Parliament, whom she married in 1876. He became Attorney-General in 1878 and was Premier from 1884 to 1887. Anna commuted between Dunedin and Wellington while raising six children.

Meri Te Tai Mangakahia (1868–1920), of Te Rarawa, was born in the Hokianga district. Her husband, Hamiora Mangakahia of Hauraki, was elected Premier of the Māori Kotahitanga Parliament in 1892. At a meeting of the Parliament in Hawke’s Bay in 1893 Meri Te Tai presented a motion requesting that women participate in the selection of members.

Forty years after women in New Zealand received the right to vote, Elizabeth McCombs became the first female Member of Parliament. She won a by-election in the Lyttelton seat for the Labour Party on 13 September 1933.

According to one of her elder sisters (she was one of nine children) Elizabeth was 'lazy at school and we did not expect great things from her'. She became politically active, however, in organisations dedicated to the removal of women's civil and political disabilities, and was a prominent figure in the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union.