Academic reflects on slow going for women
BIG delays before a woman was first elected to Parliament have become an ‘‘embarrassing and hushed footnote’’ to New Zealand’s proud history in women’s suffrage, an academic says.
A lecture by Jenny Coleman, of Massey University, in Dunedin yesterday marked a littleknown but important anniversary in the longrunning efforts to gain an equal political voice for women in this country.
Exactly 100 years ago yesterday, on October 29, 1919, the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act became law, finally enabling women to stand for election to Parliament, Dr Coleman said.
The Act passed 26 years after women had achieved the right to vote with the Electoral Act 1893.
Dr Coleman is a historical author and academic programmes director at Massey.
Yesterday’s talk was entitled ‘‘An ungallantly long hesitation to show ‘my lady’ to a seat’’.
The early history of women becoming MPs had been an ‘‘embarrassing and hushed footnote’’ to New Zealand’s ‘‘proud status as the first country in the world to grant women the vote’’, she said.
The lengthy delays had reflected ‘‘the entrenched conservatism of male politicians’’ but also showed ‘‘women’s persistence, perseverance, tenacity and resilience’’.
There had been a busy preoccupation with other key issues, and Dr Coleman rejected suggestions that women had made ‘‘little or no effort’’ to qualify themselves for election.
Elizabeth McCombs became New Zealand’s first female member of Parliament in 1933, when she won the Lyttelton byelection, after the death of her husband James McCombs, the seat’s sitting MP.