File:International Women's Day, 8 March - Kate Sheppard (16008456223).jpg

Each year International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. The first International Women's Day was held in 1911. All around the world, International Women's Day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality. Each year a general theme is chosen, in 2015 the theme is ‘Make It Happen’, effective action for advancing and recognising women.

The above image is of Kate Wilson Sheppard (1848-1934) In ‘White Ribbon’, vol. 20 no. 230, 18 August 1914. Original photo is in the Alexander Turnbull Library. The photo was used in newsletters and publications celebrating the centenary of the Women's Suffrage Petition in 1993, and was transferred to Archives New Zealand by the Ministry of Women's Affairs.

Kate Sheppard: New Zealand’s leader for the Women’s suffrage movement was born in Liverpool in 1847. Kate Malcolm migrated to Christchurch in 1871 and married merchant Walter Sheppard. In 1885 she joined the new WCTU, which advocated women’s suffrage as a means to fight for liquor prohibition. For Kate Sheppard, suffrage quickly became an end in itself. Speaking for a new generation, she argued, ‘We are tired of having a “sphere” doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is “unwomanly”.’

Sheppard travelled the country, writing to newspapers, holding public meetings and lobbying members of Parliament. Opposition was fierce. As Wellington resident Henry Wright wrote, women were ‘recommended to go home, look after their children, cook their husbands’ dinners, empty the slops, and generally attend to the domestic affairs for which Nature designed them’; they should give up ‘meddling in masculine concerns of which they are profoundly ignorant’.

In 1893 Kate Sheppard and her fellow suffragists gathered the signatures of nearly 32,000 women to demonstrate the groundswell of support for their cause. A 270-m-long petition – then the largest ever presented to Parliament – was unrolled across the chamber of the House with dramatic effect. Despite the opposition of Premier Richard Seddon, the Electoral Act 1893 was passed by both houses of Parliament and became law on 19 September. The news took New Zealand by storm and inspired suffrage movements all over the world. [Archives New Zealand holds the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition]

Kate Sheppard continued to work at home and abroad for women’s rights – from contraception to freedom from the corset. She became president of the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCW) and editor of The White Ribbon, the first newspaper in New Zealand to be owned, managed and published solely by women. In 1909 she was elected honorary vice-president of the International Council of Women.

Sheppard outlived two husbands, her only son, and her only grandchild. She died on 13 July 1934, a year after the first woman MP, Labour’s Elizabeth McCombs, entered Parliament.

'Kate Sheppard', URL: www.nzhistory.net.nz/people/kate-sheppard, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 29-Sep-2014

Archives New Zealand Reference: ABKH 7366 W4437