Revolting Women: The Suffrage Movement

As I mentioned in class the campaign for Women and the vote was not really a search for sexual equality. For many of the middle class women the abuse of alcohol was one of societies worst catalysts. It saw families reduced to poverty despite the fathers earning a decent wage. It was all to common for men to drink away their wages before any could be set aside for rent, food or clothing. It also saw widespread family violence and desertion by wayward men.

Women like Kate Sheppard, Anna Stout and Anne Muller were well off, educated and politically and socially aware. Campaigns by them seeking temperance in the availability of alcohol had gone nowhere. It was difficult to persuade a parliament full of men that their drinking needed to be curbed. Especially when those self same parliamentarians were voted in by men.

In 1885 Mary Leavitt visited from the USA representing the WCTU. She spoke about the Franchise and influenced Sheppard and others into forming their own their organisation. By 1887 branches existed in most large towns and cities. In 1888 a leaflet was distributed to MP's outlining 10 reaons why women should have the vote:

1. Because a democratic government like that of New Zealand already admits the great principle that every adult person, not convicted of crime, nor suspected of lunacy, has an inherent right to a voice in the construction of laws which all must obey.

2. Because it has not yet been proved that the intelligence of women is only equal to that of children, nor that their social status is on a par with that of lunatics or convicts.

3. Because women are affected by the prosperity of the Colony, are concerned in the preservation of its liberty and free institutions, and suffer equally with men from all national errors and mistakes.

4. Because women are less accessible than men to most of the debasing influences now brought to bear upon elections, and by doubling the number of electors to be dealt with, women would make bribery and corruption less effective, as well as more difficult.

5. Because in the quietude of home women are less liable than men to be swayed by mere party feeling, and are inclined to attach great value to uprightness and rectitude of life in a candidate.

6. Because the presence of women at the polling-booth would have a refining and purifying effect.

7. Because the votes of women would add weight and power to the more settled and responsible communities.

8. Because women are endowed with a more constant solicitude for the welfare of the rising generations, thus giving them a more far-reaching concern for something beyond the present moment.

9. Because the admitted physical weakness of women disposes them to exercise more habitual caution, and to feel a deeper interest in the constant preservation of peace, law, and order, and especially in the supremacy of right over might.

10. Because women naturally view each question from a somewhat different standpoint to men, so that whilst their interests, aims, and objects would be very generally the same, they would often see what men had overlooked, and thus add a new security against any partial or one-sided legislation.

By the early 1890s opponents of women's suffrage had begun to mobilise. They warned that any disturbance to the 'natural' gender roles of men and women could have terrible consequences. They claimed that women were to weak to vote, that they lacked the understanding of politics or that they would simply waste their vote by voting as they were told by their male relatives. The liquor industry, fearful that women would support growing demands for the prohibition of alcohol, lobbied sympathetic Members of Parliament and organised their own counter-petitions.

The suffragists' arch-enemy was Henry Smith Fish, a boorish Dunedin politician who hired canvassers to circulate anti-suffrage petitions in pubs. This tactic backfired, however, when it was found that some signatures were false or obtained by trickery.

The campaign did receive support from men who had taken the 'pledge' and were teetotoal. Hall saw an opportunity to corral what he perceived would be a conservative bloc of voters who would thus support the establishment not the newer Liberals. Hall presented the three petitions in 1891, the last with dramatic flair. This saw the Bill passed in the House and moved on to the Upper House. Now that the Council had been balanced after Atkinsons shenanigans Seddon expected that Liberals would reject the Bill. However in a fit of spite two Members who had opposed suffrage voted for the Bill and it became law.

The Council of Women 1896 Its aim was to 'unite all organised Societies of Women for mutual counsel and co-operation, and in the attainment of justice and freedom for women, and for all that makes for the good of humanity'.