The National Council of Women of New Zealand is a lobbying group for women's rights. The Council was established in 1896.

Establishment of the Council

Women in New Zealand won the right to the vote

Women's suffrage in New Zealand

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....

 in 1893. Three years later on 13 April 1896, the National Council of Women of New Zealand was established at a women's convention in Christchurch. Kate Sheppard

Kate Sheppard

Katherine Wilson Sheppard Some sources, eg give a birth year of 1847; others eg give a birth year of 1848. was the most prominent member of New Zealand's women's suffrage movement, and is the country's most famous suffragette...

, who had led the campaign for women's suffrage, was elected as the first President. Its aim was to "unite organised societies of women for mutual counsel and co-operation, and all that makes for the good of humanity".

Other founding members included: Anna Stout

Anna Stout

Anna Paterson Stout née Logan was a social reformer in New Zealand.Anna's Scottish parents were active in campaigning for social reforms such as the temperance and freethought movements. At the age of 12 she was accepted to the Girls' Provincial School. After graduation she returned home to...

, the founder of the Women's Franchise League

Women's Franchise League

The Women's Franchise League was an organisation created by the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst together with her husband Richard in 1889, fourteen years before the creation of the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903....

; Margaret Sievwright, founder of the Gisborne

Gisborne, New Zealand

-Economy:The harbour was host to many ships in the past and had developed as a river port to provide a more secure location for shipping compared with the open roadstead of Poverty Bay which can be exposed to southerly swells. A meat works was sited beside the harbour and meat and wool was shipped...

 branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union

Woman's Christian Temperance Union

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." Originally organized on December 23, 1873, in...

; Annie Schnackenberg, president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union during the suffrage campaign; Wilhelmina Sherriff Bain, president of Canterbury Women's Institute and Ada Wells

Ada Wells

Ada Wells née Pike was a feminist and social worker in New Zealand.-Biography:Ada Pike was born near Henley-on-Thames, South Oxfordshire, England. Her parents emigrated to New Zealand with their four girls and one boy in 1873, arriving on the Merope in Lyttelton on 31 October of that year...

, founder of the Canterbury Women's Institute. The Council went into recess in 1906.

Rise again

The Council was revived by Kate Sheppard, Jessie Mackay

Jessie Mackay

Jessie Mackay was a New Zealand poet.Her parents were Scottish. She went to Christchurch to train as a teacher, and taught at small rural schools until 1898....

 and Christina Henderson. They met in April 1918 and a full conference was held in 1919.

External links

• National Council of Women of New Zealand on The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966