Modern era ‘suffragists’ connecting
Agroup of women recognised as our “modern suffragists” will today gather to celebrate the 125th anniversary of New Zealand women getting the vote.
Attendees at the Women’s Fund’s retreat day were chosen after being put forward as those deserving recognition for the change they were driving in areas such as domestic violence and social equality.
Networking and mentoring sessions at the Ellen Melville centre in Auckland’s CBD will be followed with an award ceremony.
Organiser Dellwyn Stuart, who also runs the Women’s Foundation, said the event was about building a network of support around women doing something positive for their community.
“What we set out to do was find women who really embodied the modern suffragist,” Stuart said. “Women who had seen something in their community that they weren’t comfortable with . . . rolling up their sleeves and getting on with trying to make change happen.”
Jackie Clark, of domestic-violence charity The Aunties, said she wasn’t usually comfortable in a conference but had come to see the event as a way to represent the women she worked with. “That kind of put it in perspective for me. I basically went . . . suck it up buttercup.”
Clark said the suffragists provided shoulders to stand on — but we needed to do better with the baton we’d been handed.
“My view has always been that we have to fight now, for the rights of all marginalised people,” she said.
For Mengzhu Fu, from the Shakti Family Centre, her relationship with the Suffrage 125 anniversary event was a “complicated one”. The 28-yearold is of Chinese descent and Chinese New Zealanders did not gain the right to vote until 1952.
While Fu saw it as an “important historical milestone” for the recognition of Western women’s humanity, she said there was a way to go to achieve equality between genders — as well as across ethnicities, religions, class and various gender identities.
Stuart said she hoped the event would provide an opportunity for the women to connect with one another.