Māori Women and the Vote – Tania Rei (1993)
Published to mark the centenary of New Zealand women gaining the right to vote, this book details Māori women’s participation in the suffrage campaign, set against a longer history of Māori women’s political activism.
Publication details
Rei, T. Māori Women and the Vote. Wellington: Huia Publishers, 1993.
About the book
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Māori women were involved in two suffrage movements at the same time. Māori women supported the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in seeking the right to vote for members of the New Zealand House of Representatives, and they also sought the right to vote and to stand as members of the Māori Parliament – Te Kotahitanga. By the turn of the century both these goals had been achieved. Their involvement in the suffrage movements was a significant development in the story of Māori women and the ways in which they organised at a national level to deal with issues of importance to them and their communities.
Further information
This publication is part of the series Te Takarangi: Celebrating Māori publications - a sample list of 150 non-fiction books produced by a partnership between Royal Society Te Apārangi and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.