From Suffrage to a Seat in the House - The path to parliament for New Zealand women, by Jenny Coleman

New Zealand proudly celebrates its place as the first country to grant women the right to vote. Yet it took another 40 years for a woman to be elected to Parliament.

The journey ‘from the home to the House’ was painfully slow. Many male parliamentarians who had reluctantly accepted women’s suffrage resisted any further progress, using political maneuvering and filibustering to keep women out of Parliament. But with an additional 130,000 voters enrolled, politicians began to recognise that women’s votes, and their voices, mattered.

In this essential work, Jenny Coleman brings a neglected chapter of the nation’s electoral history into focus. Drawing on a wide range of sources, she traces women’s struggle for a role in governing their country and paints a rich portrait of a changing colonial society, where new ideas and demands for social reform repeatedly challenged the status quo.

Publisher: Otago University Press
Print publication date: July 2020
Pages: 338
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781988592268