Celebrating 130 years of women’s suffrage

2023 is a special year for wāhine/women and kōtiro/girls in Aotearoa New Zealand as we mark the 130th anniversary of the enduring legacy of women’s suffrage: 19 September 2023. Seven local women who continue the fight for women’s rights and are making their place in history, were asked which wāhine or group of wāhine they admired most from Nelson/Tasman’s history.

Words: Judene Edgar

Much of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s (WCTU) work still goes unrecognised in 2023. Despite the Nelson branch now being closed, nationally they hold conventions, and have an informative website illustrating achievements, and providing advice and education.

WCTU started in New Zealand in 1885 with Kate Sheppard as a founding member, and is now the oldest surviving national organisation of women in New Zealand. The Nelson branch also started in 1885. Three national Presidents originated from Nelson, Catherine Polglase (1969 – 1990), F Rankin (1961 – 1965), and Constance Toomer (serving twice 1951 – 1958 and 1966 – 1969).

They were key players in the 1893 suffrage petition, getting women enrolled to vote speedily followed, establishing National Council of Women in 1896 and the first kindergarten. They led the way for female enfranchisement so women were in strong positions to directly influence change and laws.

WCTU has majorly influenced NZ life, locally and nationally, during those 138 years, campaigning for social change with a “do everything” policy. They focused on social issues like women’s right to vote, homelessness, shelters for abused children and youth, education, soup kitchens, legal aid, prison reform, equal pay and more.

My rōpū of wāhine toa in the 19th-20th century would be the first refugees who resettled in Nelson. They were from Vietnam and Cambodia.

From the 1990s to the present time, others followed from Burma, Bhutan and Nepal, and more recently, Colombia, Rohingya, and Ahmadiyya Muslims. These indigenous women stayed strong for their families, escaping persecution from their own countries and overcoming the barriers of resettlement and integration.

These women came from totally patriarchal societies where women's place is in the home, kitchen and to care for the children; where a work career, let alone voting, is not an option.

These wāhine rōpū, much like the Maori whaea and kuia, are the story-tellers, often serving as important cultural bridges between their communities and predominantly Euro-centric culture of Nelson/Tasman. They are the heart of their whānau and play pivotal roles in nurturing and supporting their communities. Much like any ethnic migrant women of the 19th and 20th century, they were caregivers, educators, healers, and providers, ensuring the wellbeing of their families and helping to strengthen the community fabric; and actively advocating for the rights and well-being of their people.

Born over three decades after women in New Zealand were given the vote, Elspeth Cantile Kennedy challenged the patriarchy and took no heed of the life women were expected to live.

I met Elspeth towards the end of a successful career – still sassy, formidable, and scarily smart. A trustee of the Nelson Tasman Hospice Trust and chair from 1998 until 2014, she was instrumental in establishing the Nelson Hospice in 1999.

Born in Invercargill in 1931, she was running her grandfather’s coal business at 17 and then worked at Invercargill City Council where she became credit manager by age 20 (at the age of 20 I was avoiding university lectures in favour of clubbing)! At 22 she trained at Trinity College London, moving to Nelson to teach singing at the Nelson School of Music.

Skip a few life-filled decades, in 1979 Elspeth was working in a Wellington sharebroking firm. Three years later she became the first woman in New Zealand to become a member of a metropolitan stock exchange.

Ultimately, she became the first New Zealand woman to establish her own brokerage firm, receiving New Year Honours in 1990 and 2009. Respect.

My suffragist heroine is Mary Anne Müller who, despite her geographical isolation, was lobbying for universal suffrage and equity in property ownership thirty years prior to the groundswell led by Kate Sheppard and the WCTU.

Mary Anne employed astute strategies to advocate for social reform. She ‘hid in plain sight’, conducting her life as a conventional, middle-class, well-connected matron, using those connections and social interactions to educate influential politicians about the need for legal reforms.

Mary Anne’s alignment with Nelson Examiner proprietor Charles Elliott facilitated the wide circulation of her many letters and articles, published under the signature of Femmina. Her nom de plume “Femmina” was an inspired choice as it represented a collective voice with which any woman could identify.

In 1869 she wrote New Zealand’s first pamphlet on women’s rights to vote. Titled ‘An Appeal to the Men of New Zealand’, she argued that women should not be discriminated against in law or politics on grounds of their sex.

In 1893, after the passage of the Electoral Bill, she wrote to Kate Sheppard: “It is as though you gathered up the dark threads of my life’s efforts and wove the web in bright sunshine.”

I was raised on Te Āwhina Marae in Motueka by women who were united by a common purpose of weaving together manaakitanga (service), aroha (love) and intellectual integrity, to uplift and support the well-being of our community. They were women who had whakapapa to Te Tauihu and women who came to support our industries of the time - tobacco, hops, horticulture, and fisheries – who eventually married and had their children here.

They kept our home fires burning through the practices of tikanga (customary practices), kept our families safe and fed by being involved in movements such as the Māori Women's Welfare League, Te Kōhanga Reo, and Te Ataarangi, and who ensured that our spiritual well-being and culture through whakamoemiti (prayer) and waiata (song) was, and is, alive and well. They were lobbyists, advocates, and supporters for the return of our lands and equity for all Māori.

I thank and honour those women who have shaped many of us today to believe in ourselves and each other, to love unconditionally, and to serve with integrity - both here at home and around the globe – Ruiha Bailey Manifold, Tiny Bailey Takao, Joyce Te Tio Stephens, Mere Kingi, Sarah Burrows, Priscilla Kelly, Āwhina Grooby, Phoebe Pene and Arohanui Fransen.

One of my local heroes is Pérrine Moncrieff, the famous conservationist who saved the ecological treasure we now know as Abel Tasman National Park.

In 1941 when she began her campaign to establish 15,000 hectares of Crown land as a national park the odds were stacked against her. With war in the Pacific threatening, New Zealand was more concerned with security than protecting our precious ecology. But Moncrieff worked hard to get politicians on-side, arguing that the land was useless for farming or milling.

Her hard work paid off. On 19 December, 1942, Abel Tasman National Park was finally established, 300 years after Abel Tasman’s first encounter with Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri.

Moncrieff’s fight to preserve our ecological heritage also puts me in mind of another local women who fought equally hard to preserve our cultural heritage.

Rose Franks saved the magnificent Tyree Studio Photographic Collection from destruction, and it is now a UNESCO-inscribed treasure cared for by Nelson Provincial Museum. It is the foresight of these women that inspires me on the journey to build a new Archives, Research and Collection Facility for our region and preserve our Regional Heritage Collection for future generations.

A wāhine that I admire is Hūria Mātenga. Hūria was born in the early 1840s at Wakapuaka; the descendant of several great leaders and warriors. With whakapapa to iwi from both Tainui and Tokomaru waka, Hūria was a landowner in Taranaki, Porirua and Nelson.

She came to national attention in 1863 for her role in the rescue of members of the Delaware shipwreck alongside her husband and others. Caught in a storm, the boat was thrown onto the rocks at the foot of the Wakapuaka cliffs. Despite swimming into the stormy seas to help rescue the crew, Hūria was much more than this one heroic act.

While there are many stories to tell of Hūria, the one that I would like to highlight is during the 1882 incarceration of pacifist leaders Tohu Kākhi and Te Whiti-o-Rongomai from Parikaka. Hūria visited them frequently and provided them with food and support.

Known for her courage, strength, beauty and leadership, as well as her manaakitanga and weaving, Hūria was wellknown and respected. When she died in 1909, over 2,000 Māori and Pākehā from all over New Zealand came to farewell her.