Today in History

1896 NCW formed in Christchurch

The National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCW) was established in Christchurch by women who had been active in the suffrage campaign that won women the right to vote. They gathered to discuss how to secure reforms to improve the status and condition of women.

The office holders of the NCW included heavyweights of the suffrage movement: Kate Sheppard was the first president, Anna Stout the first vice-president and Ada Wells the first secretary.

Three years after New Zealand became the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all women in 1893, a convention of representatives of 11 women’s groups from throughout the colony formed the NCW. Its aim was to ‘unite all organised Societies of Women for mutual counsel and co-operation, and in the attainment of justice and freedom for women, and for all that makes for the good of humanity’. The NCW still works in the interests of women, but it is a very different organisation from that established in the 1890s.