New Zealand Grants Universal Suffrage

Date: September 19, 1893 • Location: Rome, Italy

New Zealand became the first country to introduce universal suffrage following the women's suffrage movement led by Kate Sheppard.

Women's suffrage was an important political issue in late nineteenth-century New Zealand. In early colonial New Zealand, as in other European societies, women were excluded from any involvement in politics. Public opinion began to change in the latter half of the nineteenth century and after years of effort by women's suffrage campaigners, led by Kate Sheppard, New Zealand became the first nation in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.