Fact for the Day

"New Zealand is the first country to allow women to vote"

Women's suffrage in New Zealand was an important political issue in the late 19th century. Of countries presently independent, New Zealand was the first to give women the vote in modern times.The Electoral Bill granting women the franchise was given Royal Assent by Governor Lord Glasgow on 19 September 1893, and women voted for the first time in the election held on 28 November 1893 (elections for the Māori seats were held on 20 December). In 1893, Elizabeth Yates also became Mayor of Onehunga, the first time such a post had been held by a female anywhere in the British Empire.

In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand became the first self-governing nation to extend the right to vote to all adult women, and the women of the nearby colony of South Australia achieved the same right in 1895 but became the first to obtain also the right to stand (run) for Parliament (women did not win the right to run for the New Zealand legislature until 1919).The first European country to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Principality of Finland and that country, then a part of the Russian Empire with autonomous powers, produced the world's first female members of parliament as a result of the 1907 parliamentary elections.