Homework Assignment

DUE – Friday 11^th May

Kate Sheppard

The leader and main figurehead of the suffragist movement in New Zealand - the first country in the world to grant universal adult suffrage to men and women equally.

 Kate was a source of inspiration to suffragist and campaigners for equality between  n the sexes, both in New Zealand and throughout the world.

1.       Where and when was Kate born? Tell me about her family. When did she emigrate? Who did she marry? Did she have any children?

2.      What is a “Social Reformer” and why was Kate one of these people?

3.      What does the word “suffragette” mean?

4.      How did she become interested in this fight for equal rights for women?

5.      What is a Parliamentary Petition? How many did she organise and what were the results?

6.      What happened to the Electoral Act of 1893?

7.      What happens when an act is “amended”?

8.      Who and when was the first woman MP in NZ Parliament?

9.      Who was the first woman Prime Minister of NZ? Who was the first woman to win a general election in NZ?

10. What is democracy?

http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/sheppard.html

http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Heritage/EarlyChristchurch/KateSheppard.asp

http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/default.asp?Find_Quick.asp?PersonEssay=2S20

http://www.elections.org.nz/study/history/votes-for-women.html

Your homework is due on Friday. This week make sure you show Mum and Dad what you are doing and go through your questions. Plan your presentation and use your tidiest handwriting.



Katherine Wilson Sheppard (1848–1934) was a Liverpool-born social reformer who became the first President of the National Council of Women. Kate Malcolm, as she was known, emigrated to NZ with her mother and sister in 1869, married Walter Allen Sheppard, joined the newly established Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1885 and two years later led the campaign for votes for women as Superintendent of the Franchise Department of the WCTU. Between 1888 and 1893 Sheppard organised five parliamentary petitions asking for women to be included among voters in general elections. They were rejected one after the other, but each gained more signatures than the one before until the fifth petition in 1893 carried the names of 31,872 women, about a third of the adult female population at that time. This figure lent weight to efforts being made in Parliament, and in 1893 the Electoral Act was amended accordingly. The National Council of the Women was set up at a meeting in Christchurch in 1896, and Sheppard was the first president. Her political impact in her time was immense.