On 19 September 1893, all women of New Zealand earned the right to vote in parliamentary elections. This equality of suffrage was a world-first, but it did not come easily.

Facing entrenched views of male domination, media backlash and counter-petitions, it took years of hard work and struggle by the Women's Christian Temperance Movement and prominent suffragist, Kate Sheppard. These women and their supporters had been campaigning for the right to vote since the mid-1880s, and they had organised a series of huge petitions to Parliament. In 1891 eight petitions containing more than 9000 signatures were gathered, and in 1892 six petitions containing almost 20,000. In both years the House of Representatives passed electoral bills that would have enfranchised all adult women. On each occasion, however, opponents disrupted the legislation in the more conservative upper house, the Legislative Council, by adding underhand amendments.

This image is the first page of the successful 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition, signed by Mary J. Carpenter and 25,519 others. It was presented to New Zealand's Parliament on 28 July 1893, and led to the signing of a new Electoral Act into law on 19 September 1893.

Only two of the many petitions remain today; the lesser known 1892 petition and the successful 1893. Both are held in the collections at Archives New Zealand. The international significance of the 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition has been recognised by its inclusion on the UNESCO Memory of the World register of documentary heritage.

You can search by name and download signed sheets of the 1893 Petition at www.nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/petition

Archives Reference: LE1 1893/7a www.archway.archives.govt.nz/ViewFullItem.do?code=17687659