Women's Vote

Season 1, Episode 7: Votes, Depressions and Refrigerators

The New Zealand Wars are over… what comes next? A whole lot of political wrangling over how to run the new colony - centralism or provinces? Plus - how refrigeration saved the Kiwi economy from the brink of disaster and how women won the right to vote. 

Kate Sheppard was leader in New Zealand's women's suffrage movement, paving the way for the country to become the first in the world to let women vote. 

And take a brief look at the journey Kiwi women took to be granted the right to vote in NZ. 

Kate Sheppard, the world’s first successful suffragette. Sheppard’s tireless work and petitioning of New Zealand’s parliament in the latter half of the 19th century is largely credited for the nation becoming the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote in 1893. After New Zealand embraced universal suffrage, Sheppard inspired successful suffrage movements in other parts of the world. Today, women have a vote almost everywhere.