The First Country In The World Where Women Voted Legally

I agonized over the title of this piece for some time and finally settled on the above.

Votes For Women Image By: LSE Library, Unsplash

Very few people including many people who live in New Zealand know this country was the first to provide women the right to vote in the process of selecting the country’s government. Why I agonized over the title of this piece was I did not want to appear patronizing by saying women were given the right. Women actually earned the right.

They earned the right to vote just as men earned the right to vote back in the fading days of kings and queens and a wide range of despots. Men were never given the right to vote either; they earned it by overcoming tyranny. Exactly the same thing happened with women only on this occasion, women were dealing with tyranny of a different sort: husbands, brothers, fathers, grandfathers, sons, and elected officials.

The Electoral Bill providing women the right to vote was awarded Royal Assent by Governor Lord Glasgow who served as Governor of New Zealand between 1892 and 1897. The bill was approved on the 19th of September 1893. In the following election held on 28 November 1893, women voted for the first time.