Remembering triumph of 125 years ago

It is one thing to pass a law, quite another to see it in practice. The campaigners for women’s suffrage 125 years ago were probably not as confident as they claimed, that most women would actually vote. That is why, having celebrated the 125th anniversary of the passage of legislation giving women the right to vote, we are today marking the anniversary next Wednesday of the first time they voted.

For many of them voting would have been a triumphant act, the culmination of decades of effort, several national petitions, six unsuccessful attempts to get a bill through Parliament, gradually gaining the right to vote in local elections and finally, Parliament, the place of real power.

But as we recall today, Kate Sheppard’s suffragists did not stop working when the right to vote was won. The set about urging women to enrol. They had just six weeks from the passage of the legislation until the rolls would close for the 1893 election.

They succeeded in enrolling more than 100,000 women, about 80 percent of the newly eligible adult female population of that time. On election day, November 28, the female turnout was 82 per cent of those enrolled, exceeding the 70 per cent of enrolled men.

That would have been a great relief to the suffragists because culture can be harder to change than law. Many women 125 years ago would have still regarded government and politics as men’s concerns. How wrong they proved to be. And how much better government and business are proving to be with women exercising their right to share in decisions that matter.