In the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington, in a special room for historical documents, one can view a large roll of paper. Unrolled, it would constitute a strip over 270 metres (about 300 yards) long, made up of 546 sheets pasted together which bear the signatures of nearly 24,000 women, and at least twenty men (The Women’s Suffrage Petition 8). It is the main roll for the petition presented to the House of Representatives, the Lower House of the Parliament, in 1893, appealing for the passage of a bill granting universal suffrage to all adult New Zealand women. Twelve smaller rolls, that have not survived, brought the total up to 31,872 women (almost a quarter of the female population at the time). Unlike …
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Citation: Ross, John C.. "New Zealand is the first country to allow women to vote". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 June 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=5389, accessed 22 November 2024.]
