This Swan Lake Camellia was planted on the grounds of the Waitaki Boys High School in 1993 in honour of this historic civil rights event.
Women's suffrage was granted after about two decades of campaigning by women such as Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann Müller and organizations such as the New Zealand branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They felt that female voting would increase the morality of politics; their opponents argued that politics was outside women's 'natural sphere' of the home and family. Suffrage advocates countered that allowing women to vote would encourage policies which protected and nurtured families.
From 1887, various attempts were made to pass bills enabling female suffrage; each bill came close to passing but none succeeded until a government strategy to foil the 1893 bill backfired. By 1893 there was considerable popular support for women's suffrage, and the Electoral Bill passed through the Lower House with a large majority. The Legislative Council (upper house) was divided on the issue, but when Premier Richard Seddon ordered a Liberal Party councillor to change his vote, two other councillors were so annoyed by Seddon's interference that they changed sides and voted for the bill, allowing it to pass by 20 votes to 18. Seddon was anti-prohibitionist, and had hoped to stop the bill in the upper house.
Both the Liberal government and the opposition subsequently claimed credit for the enfranchisement of women, and sought women's newly acquired votes on these grounds.
Women were not eligible to be elected to the House of Representatives until 1919 though, when three women, including Ellen Melville stood. The first woman to win an election (to the seat held by her late husband, see widow's succession) was Elizabeth McCombs in 1933, followed by Catherine Stewart (1938), Mary Dreaver (1941), Mary Grigg (1942) and Mabel Howard (1943). Melville stood for the Reform Party and Grigg for the National Party, while Stewart, Dreaver and Howard were all Labour Party. The first Maori woman MP was Iriaka Ratana in 1949; she succeeded to the seat held by her late husband.
Women were not eligible to be appointed to the New Zealand Legislative Council (the Upper House of Parliament) until 1941. The first two women (Mary Dreaver and Mary Patricia Anderson of Greymouth) were appointed in 1946 by the Labour Government. In 1950 the "suicide squad" appointed by the National Government to abolish the Legislative Council included three women: Mrs Cora Burrell of Christchurch, Mrs Ethel Gould of Auckland and Agnes Louisa Weston of Wellington.
In 1989 Helen Clark became the first female Deputy Prime Minister. In 1997 the then current Prime Minister of New Zealand Jim Bolger lost the support of the National Party and was replaced by Jenny Shipley, making her the first female Prime Minister of New Zealand. In 1999, Clark became the second female Prime Minister of New Zealand, and the first woman to gain the position at an election.